An immigrant’s keen reflection on life in a vast metropolis.
With this latest memoir, Pronko muses on life in Japan’s singular capital city.
Sometimes it takes the eye of an outsider to capture what is unique about a place. Pronko, an American literature professor at Meiji Gakuin University, has lived in Tokyo for decades and has written extensively about its many faces. “Words pointing at Tokyo are not Tokyo, granted,” writes Pronko in his preface. “But words can…reveal life’s delightful and intriguing parts. Words are a way to see inside Tokyo.” With these essays, he touches on common associations with the massive city: its labyrinthian train system, its culture of photography, the views of Mount Fuji (which Pronko has from his apartment, even if he has “to lean over the edge of the balcony or hoist myself up on my rickety cinderblock garden wall”). He also explores less familiar territory, like the delicacy of deep-fried fish bones served in sake, the cathartic process of having his tatami mats collected for refurbishing, and the toads that appear everywhere in the city in the spring alongside the cherry blossoms. Pronko ponders the growing popularity of the Christmas tree among Tokyoites and offers several essays about his work at the university, where his students have helped shape his understanding of love, death, and language in Japan. Pronko approaches his topics with humility and loving curiosity, less an expert than simply one of the millions cycling like blood cells through the city’s veins. “I don’t think anyone could claim to know Tokyo completely,” he writes. “It’s not that I saw Tokyo completely,” he clarifies of his ongoing attempts to capture the city’s rhythms. “It’s that I tried to experience it fully.” Pronko succeeds in imbuing Tokyo with serene magic, and readers may feel compelled to book plane tickets upon completing this volume. They may also simply feel inspired to take a walk in their own city and take in details they’ve never noticed before.
An immigrant’s keen reflection on life in a vast metropolis.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781942410348
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Raked Gravel Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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