A captivating, insightful memoir.
A diligent search for self through years of affliction.
Award-winning playwright Ruhl, a MacArthur fellow and two-time Pulitzer finalist, was pregnant when she opened a fortune cookie that contained a cryptic message: “Deliver that what is inside you, and it will save your life.” What was inside her turned out to be much more than fraternal twins. In a wise, intimate, and moving memoir, the author recounts a decade of illness, recovery, and self-transformation that followed her pregnancy. It began the day after delivering the twins, when the left side of her face became paralyzed; she had developed Bell’s palsy, a rare condition of nerve damage. She could not blink her left eye and, equally devastating, she could not smile. Although most people recover from Bell’s palsy within months, Ruhl’s persisted, causing not only physical discomforts—she had trouble eating and enunciating—but psychological and emotional distress. “Is the self the face?” she wondered as she became increasingly depressed at the facial asymmetry that seemed to her so “ugly.” Although she had considered herself a person of little vanity, now she “veered dangerously close to self-pity” and also self-blame for not getting better. Ruhl engagingly reports on her interactions with a host of therapists and medical practitioners—some brusque and dismissive, some caring and helpful; she even sought advice from a Tibetan lama. Sometimes, she admits, “I felt like anatomy rather than a whole.” A positive test for celiac disease helped to explain why nerve growth was inhibited, but it still took years before she could produce a semblance of a smile. Within her chronicle of illness, the author deftly weaves memories of her father; thoughts about motherhood, friendship, writing; and perceptive reflections about the meaning of smiling, especially for women. “I thought I could not truly reenter the world until I could smile again,” she writes; “and yet, how could I be happy enough to smile again when I couldn’t reenter the world?”
A captivating, insightful memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982150-94-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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