Book Review
"Gypsy" - Memoirs of America's Most Celebrated Stripper
By Gypsy Rose Lee and Erik Preminger
Rating: *****
Gypsy Rose Lee is the most famous stripper world-wide. She was literally thrown into the deep end of stripping when a star performer failed to show up and her bossy mother persuaded her to fill the time slot. A star was born and Gypsy soon had the world eating out of the palm of her hand... She has an amazing story. There are so many reasons women decide to start stripping. The money is a huge draw (of course), but there is usually always something deeper influencing our choices.

Book Review - "Traci Lords Underneath It All" by Traci Elizabeth Lords

Rating: *****

15 year-old Nora Kuzma's descent into the world of porn is motivated by a will to survive. Her mother doesn't create a stable home for her, neglects her and hops in and out of unhealthy relationships that take their toll on her four daughters. In one of her mother's dysfunctional relationships Nora is sexually abused.

Nora decides to make it on her own and assumes the name Traci Lords. She is influenced and manipulated by others to become the most recognized porn star world-wide. This autobiography tells of her struggle to return to a normal life and to become a successful actress and recording artist.

The depth of emotion and feeling that Traci puts into her writing really gives you an insight into her world and into her mind. I'm truly shocked at the behaviour of the people who influenced her to become involved with porn.

Her epic battle to be respected as a person, not a child porn star, is an inspiration. Everything Traci touches, turns to gold. She is truly an alchemist and this piece of writing is a blessing for victims of sexual abuse.

Book Review - 'A piece of Cake' by Cupcake Brown

The start of this book describing Cupcake's mother's death captured me in a number of seconds. Cupcake Brown is an honest, colourful and vivid character from her childhood through to her adult years. She is thrust into the child welfare system at 11 years old and is verbally, physically and sexually abused. She struggles with a crack cocaine addiction and her appetite for drugs is always on the up. The amount of drugs she takes is horrifying. Towards the end, the continual list of drugs she takes becomes so monotonous, I wondered whether the book was going to end and I reacted to it by becoming extremely depressed. However, by the end of the book I felt it was definately inspiring for anyone wanting to recover from drug addiction.

Book Review - "Candy Girl" - A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody

Diablo Cody is a screenwriter who won an academy award for her film Juno in 2007. Her book ‘Candy Girl’ has a recent second edition and the success of this book can be put down to two different reasons. The most probable is Diablo’s success as a screenwriter and this arousing an interest in her memoir. The other reason is the title of the book appeals to a broader market because she brands herself as an ‘unlikely’ candidate for stripping. However, surprisingly a high majority of strippers come from middle class families like her own.

This book presents one year of Diablo’s life hopping from strip club to strip club. She becomes a stripper, as well as a peep show girl and a phone sex operator. She spends 6 months stripping. This short time frame emphasizes the fact that Diablo’s experience is limited and results in her sometimes over-simplistic writing style and short-sighted perspective. Through this book, it’s hard to believe that Diablo went from stripping to performing illegal sexual acts in just one year.

Diablo started stripping because she was bored with her job as a copy typist and approached stripping from a journalist’s perspective. Every stripper’s reasons to start stripping are purely financial and not based on experimental research like Diablo’s. Her self-imposed distance from the ‘realness’ of stripping just skims the surface of this career. Diablo’s book is a compilation of facts from start to finish. Like a diary of events, this happened and then that happened… without going too deep. Diablo appears to hold stripping at arms length through the book, so she can somehow not be touched by it. It’s an understandable defense mechanism, but doesn’t offer enough substance for the reader.

Diablo’s work is littered with street-jargon and pop-culture references such as “Dinero to spare-o”, that elude the older reader; when simple words like “plenty of cash” are clearer and more effective to use. Diablo’s book is also jam-packed with strong metaphors and adjectives. It's like she has sat down with a thesaurus and tried to cram in as many impressive words as possible.

Throughout this memoir there are tiny elements of a non-fiction book. These include: “The Ten Best Songs to Strip to, The Ten Worst Songs to Strip to, The Ten Worst Stripper Names and “Activity Korner”. Although these elements are more suited to a non-fiction book, they are quirky, fun and help to break up the text. However, some people may view these visual aids as being out of place in a memoir and simply crutches for more inexperienced writers.

Diablo has kept the reader updated through the entire book on her ambitions, career, relationships and life outside of stripping. However, an unusual feature of Diablo’s book is her childhood is not revealed until one of the last chapters. It feels like she added it as an afterthought and it’s out of place in this location. If her childhood was explained at the start, it could have deepened the reader’s empathy and understanding of Diablo’s character while the book progressed. Instead the book feels disjointed and incomplete. One of her statements in this chapter “I was never molested as a child, probably because I wasn’t very attractive” belittles and offends sexual abuse survivors.

The last 2 pages of the book belong to a chapter called ‘Coda’ where she says she believes stripping is “puddle-shallow and symbolically molecular”. This is only one example of the slightly arrogant tone in Diablo’s writing. There is no explanation about how she could have changed on a psychological level.

I wouldn't recommend this book if you are considering a career in the stripping industry because it fails to underline the serious issues that stripper's face.

This book is a real page turner. I would recommend it to people who want entertainment value.

Book Review
by Lana Knight