A compelling journey of faith, healing, and finding purpose.
Rodriguez’s story offers a testament to being “gay, faithful, and fully loved by God.”
As a teenager in Peoria, Illinois, in the 1990s, the author says that he found a sense of belonging in his church’s youth group. Its leader, Derek, offered him the chance to move to Washington state with him and help build a youth group. (Some names in the text have been changed, according to the author.) Rodriguez jumped at the chance to leave behind a stifling town and make something of himself while serving God. Instead, he says, he endured Derek’s increasingly domineering behavior; Rodriguez was also rejected by church authorities when Derek looked into his internet search history and discovered that he’d been visiting gay chatrooms. This discovery began the gay author’s yearslong attempt to change his sexual orientation through “reprogramming.” He initially attended the Living Hope Youth Retreat, then found a Christian therapist and was eventually invited to attend the exclusive Transformed by Grace ministry. Not until a florist named Chad entered his life did Rodriguez begin to see a path for his life based on self-acceptance, rather than self-repression. Chad was openly gay, and soon, Rodriguez began to talk to more people about the possibility of being both queer and Christian. He attended a support group dedicated to “building bridges between the church and the LGBTQ+ community” and came to realize that “reprogramming” groups weren’t the safe space he thought them to be. His journey to accepting himself as a gay man, and then coming out, didn’t follow a linear path. He’s “still undoing the harm of conversion therapy,” he writes, but he’s also found the courage to speak out against churches that harm queer people and champion those that embody the ideal that “God loves you just as you are.”
Rodriguez writes earnestly and honestly about a traumatic topic without sacrificing humor or hope, which is a rare talent. He opens his recollection by describing himself as “hustling for Jesus while chatting on Grindr with a man named Jesús”; throughout, he details the tension between his identity and his faith with careful self-awareness, as well as sharp wit. This tension can be seen most poignantly when he tells of confessing to his therapist that he no longer wished to deny his sexuality; his therapist admitted that he’d long wished for that, but he’d chosen not to say anything. Rodriguez’s reply—“You knew I was drowning. And you just…let me?”—perfectly encapsulates the feelings of betrayal he suffered, and the injury that had been done to him. Lines such as “Churches want the time and privacy to ‘figure it out’ while queer people bear the pain of their ambiguity” effectively demonstrate the pain that churches inflict when they deny the harm of conversion therapy and the possibility of queer acceptance within the Christian faith. The author went on to co-found Church Clarity, an organization that helps queer people find affirming faith communities. Overall, Rodriguez’s memoir effectively advocates for change while maintaining the inherent value of organized religion.
A compelling journey of faith, healing, and finding purpose.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798889835431
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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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