A call for healing and understanding that humanizes those struggling with addiction.
Jacobson offers a memoir of sisterhood and dealing with addiction through faith and family bonds.
Growing up, the author always admired her sister, Pam. Pam was a straight-A student and an indomitable sports competitor, so it was no surprise when the college scholarship offers started pouring in. Pam had the world at her fingertips, and nobody doubted that she would succeed—until her final year of high school, when Pam started to change. She became irritable and aggressive, her performances in academics and sports declined, and her basic hygiene suffered. It became apparent that Pam was using drugs as she gradually drifted further from her family. Over the years, Pam became estranged, marring her core relationships by stealing from loved ones and lashing out in violent outbursts. Over a decade later, Pam returned to Jacobson’s life, pregnant and unable to care for the coming baby. What could have been a rock-bottom moment instead became the catalyst that shifted the tides of Pam’s life, as the birth of her daughter gave her purpose and rekindled her relationship with the author, who readily adopted the child. Jacobson takes great care to grant her sister the dignity she deserves while recounting the story of their shared struggles, divulging her own experiences to lend hope to others. She’s open about her feelings of shame and anger, and about the internal work she had to do before she could become a proper advocate for Pam. (“I often felt undeserving of any help because I was not the one living on the street, sleeping behind dumpsters…I came to realize that if I want to be a support to Pam, I have to accept help as well.”) She champions her faith in God and her commitment to advocacy for helping her find her way, and she encourages others to better themselves and find purpose in their own journeys of healing. Jacobson’s honesty and dedication to making a difference for people like Pam, along with Pam’s own resilience, are the narrative’s highlights, making for an emotionally moving memoir that espouses cultivating hope and compassion in dark times.
A call for healing and understanding that humanizes those struggling with addiction.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781990688522
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Ingenium Books Publishing Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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