A remarkable and moving story, despite its meandering structure, of one family’s survival against myriad forces of nature.
A woman’s reminiscences of her World War II–era childhood in the wilds of French Canada, which was marked by hunger, brutal winters and simple pleasures.
Rose-Aimee dedicates this memoir to her “children and grandchildren, step-children and grandchildren,” stating that she recorded “the memories she has wanted to share with [them] for a long time.” The reader feels seated at the storyteller’s knee as she spins tales from her youth that begin in Degele, a miniscule village not many miles outside the scenic, French-speaking Notre-Dame-du-Lac. Though in the vicinity of the tourist destination, Degele was a cultural world away in its poverty, rusticity and remoteness. In 1942, the year her family moved into the cabin where most of the memoir is set, virtually all the village’s men had been sent to the war, and her father was one of very few remaining. His presence, while a comfort, was not enough to keep food in his wife and three daughters’ mouths during the harsh winter months. Forced to accept a dangerous and distant logging job, he left his frail and depressive wife to fend for the children during the first snows in hopes of providing for them. The author gives us the harrowing tale of dwindling food supplies and firewood that forced her malnourished mother out into the snow and wind to scavenge for food. Though terrified for her mother, the 5-year-old Rose-Aimee distracted her infant sisters from their aching bellies by spinning vivid tales of sweet delights like their favorite, sucre a la crème. Her descriptions of food and hunger are some of the most affecting in this slim volume, and this episode is the crown jewel of her anecdotes. The memoir’s middle loses the tension of the early chapters and digresses into something of an inventory of family history and memory that offers weak narrative pull for the common reader. The pacing quickens in the final third as we return to the immediate family and a deeper investigation of the parents’ troubled marriage. Though the writing contains well-wrought images and the colloquial orality of Rose-Aimee’s narration often charms, these also inhibit the story’s integrity as distinct from her telling. A more scrupulous attention to structure and pacing could have delivered this truly affecting and compelling tale with the dynamic momentum it calls for.
A remarkable and moving story, despite its meandering structure, of one family’s survival against myriad forces of nature.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0983051749
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Epigraph Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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
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