Facing imminent marriage, Burana, a journalist who has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Village Voice
and Spin, decides to make a yearlong "bachelorette odyssey" to revisit her former career as a stripper. She's exorcising some commitment panic, but also trying to reclaim some dignity for this devalued work. The sex trades may be the world's oldest professions, but where's their history, the "floozerati"? Burana wants to know. A self-proclaimed "sex-positive" feminist, she sees stripping as a choice, not just something women do because there's no other way to earn a buck. True, she herself first went to Peepland to make her rent money, but it also provided a "reprieve from rabid self-actualization" (e.g., studying and trying to get decent jobs). In her return to the "tiprail," she rediscovers the out-of-body high that sometimes graces strippers. But what does her fiancé make of all this? And will she be seduced back to this gloriously exhibitionist career? Thankfully, there's a "catcher in the rye": Burana's enormous talents as a writer—she has a good ear, a fine wit and an instinct for storytelling—reveal another option, one that's perhaps not so different from her former métier. Stripping means "reclaiming [her] sexuality in the public arena"—which is exactly what this book does, too. Burana exposes herself with pride, style and a great sense of humor. (Sept.)
Forecast:Hot. No handselling to the Moral Majority, but this will prove seductive to urban hipsters, especially after the planned media blitz: a nine-city tour, "Welcome to Strip City" events in New York and L.A., a national TV satellite tour and first serial in
Talk magazine. (See Q&A, p. 56)
