Stripping Down: A Memoir, the latest book by Sheila Hageman of Stratford, is not the prurient tell-all by a former stripper some readers may be looking for.
“I see this as more of a women’s book,” Hageman said. “It’s for women. What modern woman doesn’t have the same struggles of body image. Yes, there are bits about stripping, women always want to know about that. A lot of women are dealing with aging parents, and dealing with children at the same time. I was in a place where I needed help being a new mother, and my mother was not in position to help.”
While she tells about her life stripping in the memoir, 10 years in the making, it also peels back layers of a life story, about body issues, becoming a mother, dealing with a dying parent, and finding new success.
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Shanwaz Nadeem is the protagonist of the novel Hira Mandi not because he is a prostitute’s son. Or because he’s one of Pakistan’s foremost and controversial painters. He is the hero because he has crossed over — he paints the dancers and sex workers of Hira Mandi, Lahore’s notorious red light district, with the dignity that real life denies them.
French author and journalist Claudine Le Tourneur d’Ison’s novel Hira Mandi (translated from French by Roli Books), which released recently, tells the story of a sex-worker’s son who became a renowned painter. And Shanwaz Nadeem isn’t entirely fictional. He is inspired by the real-life story of painter Iqbal Hussain, the son of a sex worker from Hira Mandi, who grew up here and who d’Ison describes as the “key to this neighbourhood”.
With him for company, she entered the backstage of these dancers’ lives and watched as their pains and struggles played out before her. She has etched the politics that keeps dancers “separated” from the rest and how old age becomes a lonely battle for survival.
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