I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A former stripper, Burana (Strip City) married a major in the U.S. Army and records, in this heartfelt though long-winded confessional, her attempts to render their two very different worlds compatible. Burana enjoyed a decidedly checkered past, from accidental teenage communist to peep-show girl and stripper in New York and San Francisco (she fondly recalls her Playboy shoot), before meeting Major Mike at a ceremony in a Brooklyn cemetery in 2000. She was attracted by his sense of order and honor, even charmed by his military jargon, while he admired her rebelliousness, though these same qualities would challenge their relationship over time. Living together in a condo near Fort Meade, Fla., where Mike was stationed, segued into a quick marriage (she called herself a War on Terror bride), before he was deployed to Iraq for six months in 2003, creating for her a painful personal trial of waiting and self-discipline. Their move to West Point underscored her new role as military wife, and she embarked on a gloomy, unstable period of psychological turmoil requiring therapy and medication for her own brand of post-traumatic stress disorder. Marriage counseling worked for them, bucking the high divorce rate within the armed forces, and Burana concludes her memoir on a positive note, having made peace with the army's fallibility and found her own place in it. (Apr.)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Kate Tuttle Although it may sound like a case of opposites attracting -- punky anarchist marries career soldier -- Lily Burana makes clear that she and her husband are really birds of a feather, even if they come from different flocks. When Burana, who made her name with an earlier memoir about working as a stripper, met Mike, an Army officer, she couldn't imagine what they could share, beyond "mutual curiosity." Yet both were smart, funny, driven and idealistic, and, as they grew closer, they found even more in common, including wounds from traumas both military (his) and domestic (hers). Burana can be hilarious, especially when she skewers the Stepford-style advice once given to Army wives. Upon reading a 1940s book declaring that "Army men like feminine frippery . . . furs, snow-white gloves, and high-heeled slippers," Burana retorts, "But what should I wear?" Still, the book shifts easily into more emotional territory as she navigates loneliness and worry when her husband is deployed to the Middle East. "War is hell and waiting is hell and war is waiting," she writes. Even worse can be the marital aftershocks when soldiers return home. As both these spouses battle their demons, it becomes clear that this Army wife matches her husband in grit and persistence, even if she expresses it with more sass than brass.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Weinstein Books (April 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602860831
• ISBN-13: 978-1602860834
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #117,139 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and funny, April 8, 2009

By	K. Woodruff - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Having read other books by Lily Burana, I knew "I Love A Man in Uniform" would be sharp, entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny - which it is. What I didn't know was how tremendously moving it would be. The author presents an honest warts-and-all examination of both the Army's role in the world and an independent woman's role in marriage.

This is a book that combines a self-fellating walrus and a stripper with hemorrhoids with a serious exploration of mental health issues and an Army insider's admission of why Abu Ghraib is a disaster for America and the world. Burana tackles every subject with a fresh, sassy voice backed by a serious sense of honor. The result is a surprising, touching tribute to both marriage and the Army, compelling even to an old anti-military-establishment cynic like me.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A LIKEABLE TALE OF PERSONAL TRIUMPH, August 29, 2009

By	Bill Brent "writer, editor, publisher" (HI and CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From the very first paragraph of her memoir, ex-stripper Burana is battling the ghosts of perfectionism, those prudish voices that would have her believe that a woman with a past has no future. In time she learns that the way to a bright future IS by coming to terms with her past.

She also sees that the military wives she rubs elbows with are more than Stepford Wives devoted to children, kitchen, and church. Her willingness to admit to her erroneous assumptions about others, especially where her stereotyping of them is concerned, makes Burana a sympathetic self-reporter.

I can relate to much of Burana's dilemma, having witnessed at close range my mother's challenges in the absence of a husband who was "on-again, off-again" for a great deal of their marriage, due to his military deployments. This dynamic is hell on any marriage; to keep marching on at times, it takes true grit, which Burana has in spades.

Burana describes her personal challenges in straightforward if sometimes talky prose. At times, I felt as if she were musing to fill up page count. I have read Burana's first two books, and I enjoyed them both more than UNIFORM. However, she is a highly skilled raconteuse. She is at her best here when she relates quick stories that make a sharp point, such as her reunion with porn goddess Nina Hartley and Hartley's producer-director husband. In such settings, her descriptions of people, places, and objects are punchy and perceptive.

For me, her memoir really takes flight on page 198, with the phrase, "I can clearly identify the moment I started going nuts." For the next hundred pages, Burana's story is gripping as she and her husband struggle to come to terms with a marriage on the verge of collapse. While anyone bright can poke fun at her own self-seriousness, it takes tenacity and a generous spirit to find a way out of the traps it creates.

This is most apparent in the memoir's meta-theme, which concerns Burana's marriage not only to the man who captured her heart, but to the military institution within which he has built his career. In the process, Burana bites off more than she bargained for. Yet in the end, her spirit grows for the trouble. When her writing is at its strongest, Burana's spirit of compromise is a pretty amazing feat to behold.

--Bill Brent [29 August 2009]

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars funny and moving, May 25, 2009

By	marjorie ingall - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm adding this review on Memorial Day, which seems fitting. I never thought about this holiday except as a good opportunity to buy linens. Now, after reading Lily's book, I'm acutely attuned to the sacrifices of military members and their families. Even though my own father was in the Navy, I had reductive ideas about who "the real military" was -- my dad was a thoughtful, irreverent Democrat for whom the military was a way to pay for med school, but I imagined that for people who actually wanted to be part of this club, independent thinking was a no-no. In my head, they were all hard-right, sexist, lock-step followers. But Lily's portrait of her husband Mike, and of the military in general, educated me. I Love a Man in Uniform offers a nuanced, sometimes hilarious, often moving picture of a subculture many of us liberals know nothing about. So on this holiday, I say thanks to military families for their sacrifices. And thanks to this book for teaching me.