My Three Fathers: a memoir of family, avoidance, and learning to trust the self

The useful part

bookshelf shop now amazon Awards & Accolades Our Verdict GET IT Lorente charts her winding path to self-love while revisiting her complicated childhood in this memoir. The author, a writer based in San Francisco, didn't get off to a strong start when it came to familial stability: Her biological father, Juan, left when her 18-year-old mother got pregnant in 1975.

How it works

• 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.
• That tenure was short-lived—by 1983, they had moved to Seattle, where her mother met her third husband, Hamid, who, per Lorente, "didn't know how to be a stepfather." The author discusses the ways in which...
• "Women were taught to hold it in and turn it on themselves," she writes, describing her mother and herself.
• After her own divorce in 2010, she worried about what she was passing on to her three sons.
• By her mid-40s, the author had come to believe that "every relationship with a man will end either in heartbreak or apathy." Lorente's prose is light and intentional.

What to take from it

"What else can we do with all that rage?" In short, sometimes-disjointed chapters chronicling five decades, she returns to the impact of her formative years while reckoning with her experiences of parenting and her unhealthy cycles of heartbreak. This revelation—decades in the making—has brought her to a place where she can begin to process her past grief and learn to trust her sense of self. July 12, 2022 A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

Example or evidence

• "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.
• 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.
• 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...

Details worth keeping

MY THREE FATHERS | Kirkus Reviews BOOK LIST 20 Best October Books for Young Readers 0 shop now amazon bookshelf Awards & Accolades Our Verdict GET IT MY THREE FATHERS by Jamie Leigh Lorente ‧ RELEASE DATE: today An affecting account of one woman's difficult journey to selfhood. An affecting account of one woman's difficult journey to selfhood. 0 Pub Date: today ISBN: 9798897400287 Page Count: 280 Publisher:

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