A moving account of awareness of privilege and the courage to move beyond it.
A memoir of a relationship between a domestic worker and her employer’s daughter.
Sanford, a founding member of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and co-author and co-editor of multiple editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves, offers a riveting account of her friendship with her family’s housekeeper. Growing up in a well-off WASP family, Sanford experienced all the perks of their world. The story begins with the arrival of a young Black domestic worker named Mary White, who was just 15—barely older than the author—when she started working for the family in 1956.The book chronicles the changing dynamics of their relationship—which became a close friendship—along with Sanford’s own process of moving away from her privileged milieu and later coming out as a lesbian. White was never treated“like one of the family” even though she became an invaluable member of the household—even caring for the author’s mother when she was seriously ill. She worked for Sanford’s family for many years in many capacities, even after finding work as a corrections officer. The author tells of how White managed and covered for severe family problems, including both parents’ alcoholism and Sanford’s father’s abusive behavior. She also describes how White’s work led to a great deal of self-sacrifice, including following Sanford’s parents to Florida when they retired there, and why she did so wasn’t always about money. Over the course of this book, the author reflects on the personal growth and increasing awareness that accompanied her changing relationship with White. Along the way, she effectively highlights the uneasy dance that she undertook as they moved away from an employer-employee dynamic and how she learned to let White do her job when she was on the job (“My resistance to her proffered help assaulted her in ways I would later come to regret”). Overall, it’s an excellent and revealing account of their friendship, although it’s likely to make readers wish that White could have written a parallel memoir telling her own story.
A moving account of awareness of privilege and the courage to move beyond it.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 318
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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