Johnson remains a fashion pioneer, but her storytelling lacks the wit or polish necessary to make the book a success.
A memoir from the model whom fashion designer Halston once called "the new beauty ‘It Girl.’ ”
In August 1974, Johnson (True Beauty: Secrets of Radiant Beauty for Women of Every Age and Color, 1994) transformed the fashion industry as the first African-American to appear on the cover of American Vogue. That appearance, she writes, “left an enduring mark on the country, its view of beauty, and the meaning of beauty for decades to come.” However, as she notes, her life and career have been scarred by unwanted sexual advances that began at age 12 and that include a frightening 1986 incident with Bill Cosby (which the author has talked about publicly following other allegations against the comedian). Johnson’s observation that modeling was "an industry that I would find to be overflowing with a toxic mix of deceit, manipulation, abuse, and backstabbing" is echoed in the details of her unstable personal life, which has been marked by a string of codependent relationships with leeching, unfaithful, or drug-dealing men who robbed her of her livelihood and self-respect, jeopardized her health, and nearly ruined her professional reputation. When she finally recognized that her life had become a battle of "self-loathing and self-destruction,” she was able to start down the hard road toward redemption. Though she remains a sympathetic, candid narrator, Johnson recounts these doomed romances and other personal issues with repetitious lamentations, and she doesn’t seem to have gleaned much wisdom from the experiences. She also litters the book with clichés—on one page, she uses "bright and early," "best and brightest," "nearest and dearest," and "crystal clear.” These are not only distracting, but they hold readers at a distance and demonstrate the author’s lack of real insight.
Johnson remains a fashion pioneer, but her storytelling lacks the wit or polish necessary to make the book a success.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7441-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
