A seething indictment of a culture obsessed with the pageantry of pain.
In her debut poetry collection, Zinn demolishes societal cliches of gender, trauma, and media.
Everyone knows the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: She’s crazy, but in a sexy way; she rejects norms, but still feeds the male ego. She’s, of course, not like other girls. But according to the author, she is—or rather, she’s just a stack of real-life traumas and stigmas women face, wearing a trench coat (and purple hair) to be sold onscreen. The opener, “Pitching a More Honest Manic Pixie Dream Girl Movie,” reads like a recipe: Mix acoustic guitar, slow-rolling tears, a girl who “talks fast, swears often, laughs too loudly, and drops allusions to a hairpin trigger around unresolved issues with her father”; after a lengthy monologue, the “Sad Boy” lead will leave her. Zinn even includes notes about “ongoing litigation” regarding this trope’s prevalence, with references across the book’s five “acts” to offenders such as 500 Days of Summer, 13 Reasons Why, and Silver Linings Playbook. The author also considers real-life women who paved the way for the MPDG figure, such as Sylvia Plath (who died by suicide) and Zelda Fitzgerald (who perished in a fire at the sanitorium where she was committed). While burning cliches at the stake, Zinn illustrates the real, unglossed-over toll of mental illness and misogyny in a culture that either ignores or monetizes women’s pain, including what appear to be her own experiences, including the aftermath of a suicide attempt, the danger in rejecting a man you don’t like, endless disregard for one’s boundaries, the stigma of mental health diagnoses, and sexual assault. The book has acerbic moments of levity (such as an origin story for Chuck E. Cheese), but it’s clear that the author wants readers to sit in uncomfortable emotions and recognize the distance between how women suffer and the version of it marketed to the culture at large. Her thesis, in a nutshell: “Even through the barred windows / of the most secure psychiatric facilities, / the male gaze is still inescapable.”
A seething indictment of a culture obsessed with the pageantry of pain.Pub Date: May 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781735886466
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Game Over Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
