Incisive, courageous writing in a vivid family account that proves both sensitive and challenging.
In this debut memoir, a woman recounts growing up with a mother confined to her bed because of multiple sclerosis.
Raised in Northern Michigan in the 1960s and ’70s, Menara was one of 10 siblings living in a two-bedroom, tin-roofed hut. The author was born in 1963 to parents who were recently divorced. In the mid-’60s, her mother, Shirley, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which led to her being bedridden and cared for by her children. The memoir recalls how, as a child, Menara coped with emptying bedpans, assisting with sanitary towels, and giving enemas. The book also portrays a challenging relationship with a mother who showed moments of tenderness but also ordered her kids to dish out punishments on her behalf, which included administering severe beatings with a pancake turner and starving one brother. One particularly nightmarish moment details Shirley’s demand that newly born puppies be flushed down the toilet. Despite such traumas, visits from social services instilled a genuine fear in the author of being taken away. Menara is a keenly observant writer, particularly with regard to recognizing the rare, simple pleasures of her childhood: “I shoved my face in the fresh sweetness of the purple buds then continued on my walk as I gazed at the sun filtering through the towering trees.” Similarly, she never shies away from describing the horrors of her mother’s terminal illness: “Her backside was saddled with bedsores; the stench was unbearable. In one section the flesh was stripped to the bone.” This can make for an upsetting read, but the author’s inner strength and positivity prove sufficient to lighten the ordeal: “I savored those affectionate moments; like a banana turning bad, there were bits I cut off, salvaged, and treasured.” This is an eloquently recounted and heartbreaking story—readers will admire Menara’s honesty, although her willingness to describe the most intimate details of her caregiving duties may prove too frank for some tastes. Illustrated with family photographs throughout, the memoir closes with an unexpected revelation and offers a message of hope and healing that will be of value to others who have faced similar circumstances.
Incisive, courageous writing in a vivid family account that proves both sensitive and challenging.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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