A very thoughtful appraisal of a life lived between two worlds.
A successful engineer and family man looks back on his life in this affecting memoir.
Sri Burugapalli was born in a rural village in India into a middle-class farming family. His father sent the 3-year-old Sri up to Hyderabad, to Sri’s uncle Krishna, a real martinet, for his schooling. Sri was devastated and lonely but applied himself dutifully. He was a bright child and a hard worker. Then his father, feeling himself a failure, committed suicide, leaving Sri, just a schoolboy—the oldest of three siblings and the only son—as the man of the family. The author writes that, at 12 years old, “[he] had become a sort of sad little adult.” This is the kind of trauma that takes up a quiet residency in one’s soul; nevertheless, Sri pushed on, made it to America and engineering graduate school, and, over time, became a sterling example of American success. Later, he acquired an MBA and an even more advanced Harvard business degree. He and his wife, Meena, seemed to have it all—then came a tragic event that grabbed him by the scruff, as it were, and gave him a damn good shaking. He finally came to realize what he had sensed all along: All that material and social success—the wheeling and dealing, the globe-trotting, the six-figure salary—was nothing compared to the family life that he had been scanting. He ditched it all to set himself up as a local property manager who got to come home every night.
In one sense, Burugapalli’s story is a cliché: the hard-charging go-getter who finally realizes what is really important in life. But the author brings a lot more to the table; for one thing, he is an immigrant, part of the Indian diaspora of educated young men who made it big from humble beginnings (think Silicon Valley). As a poor grad student in Michigan, he was always on the lookout for opportunities, and seized them. (‘Fortune favors the prepared’ could well be his motto.) And he lived between two radically different worlds—he and Meena couldn’t get married, for example, until he managed to arrange marriages for his two sisters. Readers learn a great deal about Indian family traditions, like the fact that one doesn’t get married without consulting an astrologer, and that shame is a powerful motivator. Sri’s discipline and energy are astounding, and his steady rise in the engineering and business worlds comes as no surprise. He admits to being a cheapskate, but eventually he and Meena acquired a nice car, a lakefront house, a speedboat, and other toys. This is also a story about the wrenching process of becoming American (note that the couple chose an ‘American’ name for their daughter, Renée, rather than a traditionally Indian name). The wrenching adjustments were not just bureaucratic, but also cultural; Sri and Meena finally realized that they had no ties left to India, and their homeland would remain a fond if ambiguous memory. Late in the book, Sri worries about “not living up to [his] full potential,” meaning his success in the business world. But isn’t he finally realizing his full potential as a loving human being, not a corner-office CEO?
A very thoughtful appraisal of a life lived between two worlds.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2025
ISBN: 9781967547005
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
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
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