A writer explores her personal connections to author Rachel Field.
“Something happens during the writing of a biography that feels a lot like falling in love,” Wood writes in her prologue, explaining her intense drive to tell the story of Field, a Newbery Award–winning novelist and poet active in the early 20th century. After purchasing Field’s summer home on Sutton Island, Maine, Wood found herself surrounded by Field’s last remaining possessions and “lingering wisps of [her] creative energy.” Through meticulous research, Wood uses letters and poems to reconstruct Field’s life, from her childhood at the turn of the century to her hard-won success as a children’s author. Field’s childhood in an illustrious family provided inspiration for her legacy, but it was her unrequited love for a gay Southern gentleman and insecurities about her appearance that Wood believes inspired Field’s best poems and her “wonderful” adult novel Time out of Mind (1935), which earned a Kirkus Star, both somewhat overlooked following her death. Field would eventually find love and relocate to California, witnessing the early, bustling days of Hollywood. She tried to build a family until her untimely and surprising death. Interwoven throughout this story are letters directly from Wood to Field detailing her unfaltering admiration and how Field’s story took Wood on her own journeys across the country and on to finding her own voice as a writer. Wood makes some admirable attempts to take some critical distance from Field. She provides insightful analysis of Field’s work, discusses the two women’s similar, yet vastly different, struggles over career and family, and even addresses Field’s privilege and seemingly racist remarks. But Wood always returns to effusive, consistent admiration for her subject matter. Readers may not walk away with the same devotion and excitement that Wood desperately wants to share, but her passionate prose and carefully curated primary sources will certainly convince readers that Field is not a writer to overlook.
An eloquent, detailed tribute to a less well-known but inspiring author.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-045-1
Page Count: 392
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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 28, 2022
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The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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