Josh Alan Friedman, author of Tales of Times Square had this to say about *My American Dream*:
“My American Dream, Going Down in Gotham” highlights an era of New York prostitution, where the dark nooks and crannies of Man at his Worst are illuminated beyond the reach of mere psychologists. Zoe Hansen emerged from this netherworld of subterfuge, a gifted writer bearing witness.”
Josh Alan Friedman, author of Tales of Times Square
Danny Fields had this to say about *My American Dream*:
Zoe Hansen’s ‘My American Dream, Going Down in Gotham’ reveals a sensibility that is loving, brutal, touchingly and glamorously human, and savagely female. We are in a very modern survival mode, and there is never a titanium-steel slicing instrument far from Hansen’s hand, nor a happy/helpful hug. She sees the “Top” and “Bottom” sides of the sex industry, and sails into, through and above the many manifestations thereof. The legitimacy of The Industry, by the way, in never annoyingly questioned; anyone who doubts its amazing reach, in these days, must be living in the caves where Iranians are building atomic bombs.
Her narrative is dense and swift, the quicksand of sex on pages that will be turned with appetite aroused, and the reader’s eyebrows rising higher than you ever thought possible. Sex and the city of New York, together at last!
Danny Fields, author of “Linda McCartney: A Portrait.”
From the New York Times review: Hos Hookers Call girls & Rent boys’ Anthology
An eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection of prose and poetry by all kinds of sex workers.
…actual bios for the contributors make for provocative reading and can leave one feeling like an unadventurous slacker. Zoe Hansen “achieved stability through methadone maintenance and felt it was time to open her own brothel, Sterling Ladies, which was on Park Avenue and 21st Street.”
It was the first of five brothels she opened during the next three years.” (I’m starting to get a brothel-opening feeling myself.)
Jerry Stahl had this to say:
Zoe Hansen writes like a three-day party in hell. She didn’t just walk on the wild side, she got her mail there. My American Dream evokes both the poetry of Kerouac and the low-life transcendence of Herbert Huncke. Hansen delivers nothing less than a literary speedball of danger and sex and sometimes funny, sometimes brutal beauty that is absolutely her own. It’s hard to say which is the bigger miracle: that the author has written such a fearless, nuanced, dementedly enthralling account of her hard-core life – or that she’s still alive to tell it… If I owned a cheap motel, I’d lose the bibles and put My American Dream in every nightstand. The whole joint would be up all night reading.
Jerry Stahl
