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A review by flowerwineandbooks
Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power by Jennifer Worley
4.0
I was fully immersed in this story! I really enjoyed listening to Jenny's inner monologue about coming to terms with her own ideals of her feminism and whether or not the sex work industry could be a place of power and agency or if it was just a place for the patriarchal exploitation of sex workers. I found the road to unionization of the Lusty Lady so fascinating. Seeing the hard work that went into creating a union and bargaining made me appreciate labor unions in general all the more. It was heartwarming to see other unions show up for these dancers and really rally behind them!
I felt like through listening to this book I really got to know the girls, Grenadine, Velvet, Tori, Honeysuckle, Cinnamon, Lucretia, I just wish there has been more discussion around the racism that was involved in the management of the Lusty Lady and how the union was able to combat this. We just got a small teaser of this part of the story. I also wish that Jenny had either gone into more depth about the history of resistance in sex work that she was able to dig up or provide a "further reading" section at the back of the book. Maybe she did and it wasn't present on the audiobook version.
However, i'm so glad I read this via audio. If I had read this physically, it would have been a 3 star due to the writing style feeling repetitive and the detailed accounts that are obviously paraphrased. The narrator did a fantastic job making this not matter as much in my enjoyment of the story -so that fourth star goes to Eileen Stevens!
I felt like through listening to this book I really got to know the girls, Grenadine, Velvet, Tori, Honeysuckle, Cinnamon, Lucretia, I just wish there has been more discussion around the racism that was involved in the management of the Lusty Lady and how the union was able to combat this. We just got a small teaser of this part of the story. I also wish that Jenny had either gone into more depth about the history of resistance in sex work that she was able to dig up or provide a "further reading" section at the back of the book. Maybe she did and it wasn't present on the audiobook version.
However, i'm so glad I read this via audio. If I had read this physically, it would have been a 3 star due to the writing style feeling repetitive and the detailed accounts that are obviously paraphrased. The narrator did a fantastic job making this not matter as much in my enjoyment of the story -so that fourth star goes to Eileen Stevens!