Vivid stories of anguish and survival that are sometimes obscured by genealogical minutiae.
A Métis clan weathers bitter cold, ethnic bias, and sexual molestation in Canada’s Northwest Territories in this memoir.
Hardy, whose father was a White Canadian and mother was a Métis of mixed European and Shúhta Got’ıne First Nation ancestry, looks back to the 1850s in tracing his family’s history in Fort Norman and other subarctic villages. The author chronicles several generations of forebears: the women bearing heroic numbers of children and the men working as fur traders, clerks, and managers for the Hudson Bay Company. He moves on to his boyhood in Fort Norman, where he traveled by dog sled and absorbed the Métis cultural stew: Families still trapped and hunted but embraced Christianity and prized formal education. The book’s centerpiece is Hardy’s adolescent experience at a Roman Catholic boarding school, where he lived in a dormitory whose supervisor repeatedly raped him and other boys. (He includes a blistering indictment of the church for covering up such crimes.) Later chapters describe his career as a lawyer and Métis rights advocate and plumb the damage wrought by the molestation ordeal, which manifested in his alcoholism and failed marriage. Much of Hardy’s labyrinthine account consists of dry genealogical information that will be of interest mainly to family members. But there are also intriguing snippets of frontier history and lore: an episode of famine and cannibalism; his grandfather’s killing of a moose with a knife; and tales of the monstrous “Náhgáneh” bushman. The author also paints a revealing picture of social tensions, exploring how the Métis uneasily navigated White bigotry and Indigenous resentment and the antagonisms between Catholics and Anglicans. (Before his wedding, Hardy’s Catholic Métis grandfather had to sign a contract guaranteeing that he would let his wife and children practice Anglicanism.) Hardy’s prose, usually lucid and workmanlike, is searing in conveying his victimization at school—“It was about thirty years until I started losing the rotten smell of his body, which was ground into my senses”—and lyrical in evoking nature. (“There would be” the northern lights, “swirling like paintbrushes, spreading colour across the skies, which were filled with bright stars that glittered like diamonds.”) Beneath the reams of family factoids, readers will get an authentic and sometimes harrowing view of life in the Northwest Territories.
Vivid stories of anguish and survival that are sometimes obscured by genealogical minutiae.Pub Date: April 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-912667-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
