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THE SUMMONING

THE KEYS TO BACKWARD

A gauzy but very readable imagistic memoir.

In Shafer’s memoir, the author wanders in the “secret garden” of her memories.

The Summoning: The Keys to Backward, Tara Shafer, Gatekeeper Press 2025

In this brief nonfiction debut, Shafer begins with memories and impressions drawn from her childhood (in one of many good artistic choices made by the author, the photographs reproduced in these sections are in black-and-white—the text’s later sections include full-color images) and steadily expands the scope of these vignettes to encompass the wider world and a broader array of existential questions about time, place, and memory. The memory-focused portions of these early parts of the book are suffused with nostalgia but given an edge—there is a hard, clear-eyed acknowledgement of the past’s unreachability. “It is not easyto correct a mistake—even if one could embody time and become a contortionist, gruesome and fascinating,” Shafer writes, positing that “the very most authentic longing shouldreorder time.” The author steadily weaves memory and impression together in these reflections, which often incorporate flights of poetic language. “I thought that tears were courage,” she writes in this vein, “that grief must be swaddled and rocked like an infant until it spends itself and gives weight to multi-dimensional dreamscapes with the tidal rhythms of its soft petal breath.” Shafer writes with a dreamy kind of eloquence that can be very enjoyable to take in (“Dancers turn into snowflakes and shimmer down a dark path,” reads one passage of evocative imagery). But readers must pay a substantial toll in the form of enduring a good deal of woo-woo pseudo-profundities typical of inspirational memoirs: “This story is nonlinear. All stories are,” readers are told, even though this is demonstrably untrue; “Know what you don’t know,” the author urges, even though this is, by definition, impossible. Still, patient readers will find plenty of beauty in these pages.

A gauzy but very readable imagistic memoir.

Pub Date: June 9, 2025

ISBN: 9781662961038

Page Count: 132

Publisher: Gatekeeper Press

Review Posted Online: June 12, 2025

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TANQUERAY

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

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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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LOVE, PAMELA

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

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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

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