A warm homage to a pioneering activist.
A queen’s legacy.
Drawing on interviews and archival sources, Tourmaline, an artist, Black transgender activist, and Guggenheim Fellow, celebrates trans icon, sex worker, and activist Marsha P. Johnson (1945-92). Born Malcolm, she grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she first tried on her sister’s and mother’s clothing at age 5. In high school, she escaped to New York City on weekends, finding a thriving community of trans people in Times Square and the West Village. She said, “That’s what made me in New York, that’s what made me in New Jersey, that’s what made me in the world: when I became a drag queen, I started to live my life as a woman.” She finally moved to New York in 1963 and changed her name to Marsha. It was a tense time to be queer: Cross-dressing and homosexuality were criminalized, making trans people victims of persecution and violence. In 1969, this oppression erupted in the Stonewall Riots, at which Marsha stood in the forefront of defiance. She joined the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, dedicated to advocating for young trans people. Tourmaline charts Marsha’s transition, which involved hormone replacement therapy, and her successful career as an entertainer. With makeup, beaded jewelry, flowered crown, and glitzy fashion, she cut a memorable figure. Her “groundbreaking commitment to queer glamour and performance,” Tourmaline writes, “paved the way for Black gender-bending, sexually transgressive superstars like Prince and RuPaul.” She was a caring friend, devoting herself “to small, daily acts of beauty,” but she was also troubled: Besides recurring depression, she was HIV positive and suffered from chronic pain from a bullet in her back that could not be removed (a client—a shame-filled taxi driver—shot her after their encounter). Her death at age 47 may have been suicide or murder. In a well-researched biography, Tourmaline makes a persuasive case for remembering her.
A warm homage to a pioneering activist.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593185667
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tiny Reparations
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
