An intriguing account of a search for biological kin.
Two adoptees offer a joint memoir of looking for their birth parents.
Teacher, musician, and photographer Craig-Evans always wanted to know her origins, and her friend Diggins, a designer and writer, wondered about the health history of her biological family. Both were curious if they’d ever met their relatives as strangers, without knowing it. In 2015, when they were both in their 40s, they decided to team up to investigate these questions, and they share their adventure in the pages of this book. The pair started with DNA tests and online searching but ended up sometimes relying on friends and volunteer “search angels”—people with experience at finding birth relatives. Because each set of parents didn’t get married, the authors located two distinct biological families for each of them. Once they'd obtained names and contact information, they proceeded slowly, afraid of the reaction they might receive. Craig-Evans found a mother who was eager to connect and a father who did not want his family to know that he had another daughter. Diggins discovered that her father had lived a short, tragic life, and that her mother was reluctant to tell her own family about this fact of her past. After detailing the searches, the authors include four annual updates on their families, as well as the experiences of six other people who set out to find their own biological parents. Overall, these stories make for a dramatic reading experience, and they’ll be informative for other adoptees who may be considering investigating their own origins. Craig-Evans and Diggins engagingly reflect on many adoption-related issues, such as what creates a sense of connection, or why people choose to accept or reject a biological bond. The alternating points of view of the two authors render some of the material repetitive, but, on the whole, their book effectively shows the rewards and risks of the process.
An intriguing account of a search for biological kin.Pub Date: April 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781946932174
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Marcinson Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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