A candid but unevenly executed portrait of one woman’s turbulent life.
Beaird’s debut memoir traces her fraught relationship with her family and her faith in God to set her on the right path.
One of the author's first memories, she says, is when her father accidentally knocked her out when she was only 2 years old. She goes on to note that her father was physically abusive to her mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder; her mom also gave Beaird " ‘wake-up' pills" when she was only a child, she says. Despite these behaviors, the author writes, she still loved her parents: “Daddy was a big old kid at heart when Momma wasn’t driving him crazy.” Still, her home life was tumultuous, and that chaos, as well as the fact that a family friend raped her when she was 11, had a lasting impact on her life. She says that she struggled through relationships with a string of abusive men, including the father of her two children, and endured an addiction to methamphetamines. She also writes of being raped by a cab driver in 1979. Over the course of multiple marriages and many jobs, Beaird says, she slowly but surely came to learn what was most important to her in her life. She found inspiration in God and in country music, and she took her father’s advice to heart: “The only thing standing between you and anything you want in this life is yourself.” At the beginning of this remembrance, the author divulges, “I chose not to have [my book] professionally edited because I wanted to tell my story, my way.” As a result, Beaird relates her account in an earnest, if unadorned, manner. There are occasional typographical errors that detract from the prose, which adopts a nonstop, stream-of-consciousness style. For example, while recounting a time when her husband, Clark, got in a fight, she writes, “I vaguely remember tending to Clark’s wounds later when we returned to our apartment, but not much more than that comes to mind. Come to think of it; I do have one more memory from that period.” This conversational approach effectively allows Beaird’s personality to shine through on each page, but it also gives the narrative an unavoidably scattered feeling.
A candid but unevenly executed portrait of one woman’s turbulent life.Pub Date: April 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5356-1772-7
Page Count: 446
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 27, 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
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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