A well-written but somewhat static account of a hurricane’s impact on a family.
A memoir shows that even a disaster can’t harm a loving family.
When Hurricane Agnes flooded Eastern Pennsylvania in 1972, it took years for the area to recover. But amid the turmoil, one family made the most of the catastrophe. Jones discovered as a young girl that her parents, three siblings, and friends were all-important. For the next several years, as the area returned to normalcy, life was one huge sleepover for her and her family. The author recalls “Aunt Sadie” (not a relative, just a close friend), whose large, boisterous Lebanese family welcomed the Joneses with laughter and food. There, the Jones siblings realized they didn’t miss home that much. It was the beginning of a nomadic several years that the author enjoyed: “I felt happy in my heart, like I was a part of this family, because even though they weren’t real family, they treated us like they were.” The Joneses discovered benefits as they experienced life beyond their old neighborhood. At one point, the author’s father observed: “Trees don’t always decide where to grow, but wherever they find themselves, they figure out a way to survive.” In Jones’ memoir, there are no life-or-death moments, and the buildup to the flood is slow, steady, and secondary to the author’s journey. In fact, the family had already left the area by the time the levee broke: “ ‘Everything is going to be fine,’ Dad said. When Dad said everything was going to be fine, it usually was.” This passage pretty much sets the tone of the book, for there is no drama that drives the story and no serious arguments or confrontations. There is just a bunch of children (from Jones’ perspective) playing in the woods and being kids. Still, this well-crafted, uplifting memoir offers many rich, evocative details about family life after the flood. As the Joneses were granted temporary housing in a government trailer park along with other refugees, Dad started salvaging his printing business. New neighbors who didn’t share the Jones family’s blue-collar background inspired the author’s mother to realize her own potential and growth. She trained to be a nurse and became aware of women’s rights, much to Dad’s consternation. The family, composed and content, seemed not so much to flee a disaster as to embrace new life choices.
A well-written but somewhat static account of a hurricane’s impact on a family.Pub Date: June 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73408-352-1
Page Count: 315
Publisher: LAKE Publications
Review Posted Online: 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
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