A searing but ultimately hopeful indictment of sexual exploitation.
Victims of sex trafficking fight for freedom with the help of Christian compassion in this nonfiction work.
Filmmaker, journalist, and anti-trafficking activist Yu Friedman recounts her investigation into coerced sex work across eastern Asia. She tells of the danger she encountered while filming seedy storefront bordellos on a 2012 trip to the Chinese province of Yunnan and revisits the Korean women forced into sex work during World War II, about whom she wrote in Silenced No More (2015). She interviews North Korean women who were driven by starvation to immigrate to China and then sold as brides to farmers; talks to Hong Kong nightclub hostesses who toil to pay off debts to traffickers; and tells of preteen Cambodian children in Thailand, driven into sex slavery. Somber patterns emerge from the stories: Impoverished women are lured from home by false promises of high-paying jobs and then imprisoned by traffickers, who beat and rape them until they submit to forced sex work; many struggle with addiction and have unwanted children, and a lack of education and a victim-blaming culture leave them with few options. But Yu Friedman finds inspiration in Christian groups such as Door of Hope, which offers counseling, shelter, and job training to women trying to break free. Her narrative sometimes takes a melodramatic tone—“I felt a sense of dread and oppressive danger looking out at this pit of hell,” she writes of one red-light district—and is often framed around redemption arcs that culminate in turns toward God; one describes a Chinese crime boss who embraced Christianity and shuttered his brothel after an angel visited him in a dream. But her reportage is sympathetic and perceptive, and her prose is often evocative: “When I first met Kat, she was bright-eyed and cried easily at the thought of entertaining men. A few months later, she was emaciated, her skin had turned sallow, her long jet-black hair was limp and greasy, and her eyes had the wide-eyed bloodshot look of a regular drug user.” The result is a revealing look at a shocking humanitarian crisis.
A searing but ultimately hopeful indictment of sexual exploitation.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-9-814954-34-1
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Penguin Random House SEA
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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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