A buoyant, bighearted account of music and self-discovery.
A man recounts his journey from closeted minister to the leader of a gay chorus in this debut memoir.
Seelig was raised in a large Baptist family in Texas, the younger of two sons. His father was a “bigwig with the Baptist administration in downtown Dallas,” and his mother was a professional singer and voice coach. The author excelled musically and academically—it was almost a given for any Seelig in the Baptist community—but he soon discovered things about himself that did not fully square with rigid Southern Baptist teachings. He had fantasies about touching other men, though a nonconsensual experience with a man in college complicated and confused his desires. “This haunted me my entire sophomore year,” he recalls. “I did not know where to put it. Was I gay? I didn’t think so.” The author dedicated himself to his faith, particularly the musical aspects of it. He studied opera and became a music minister. He eventually got married and became a father. After falling in love with a man and admitting as much to his Christian counselor, Seelig was forced to tell his wife, which led swiftly to him losing his job and getting a divorce. At age 35, the author was pushed into beginning his life anew. He did so in a community that seemed designed for his skill set: the world of gay choirs. Seelig’s prose is full of personality, as here, where he describes the centrality of music to his life: “I started at…age three singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ while standing on the piano bench. This evolved into The Marriage of Figaro in Switzerland and a solo recital singing Rachmaninov at Carnegie Hall. It was at my very core. It became my life, both ‘what I do’ and ‘who I am.’ ” Music brought him many things, including entering the Guinness Book of World Records for “longest choral concert,” appearing in an Emmy Award–winning documentary, carrying the 1996 Olympic torch, and meeting Maya Angelou. The memoir also chronicles Seelig’s experience of ostracization from his religious community, learning to live with HIV, and forging a new path for himself in life’s second act. It’s an inspirational story, one that deftly examines some of the contradictions of modern American life.
A buoyant, bighearted account of music and self-discovery.Pub Date: May 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63528-106-4
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Nurturing Faith Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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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