When looking at media, few works of literature have achieved the critical success and enduring resonance with the LGBTQ community that “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” has.
From its messages of radical acceptance, home, and belonging, to its subversions of gender norms and its memorable, fluidly gendered characters, “The Wizard of Oz” has remained a queer cultural touchstone more than 125 years after its first publication.
The book itself offered many LGBTQ readers one of their first glimpses of a world that celebrated differences that might otherwise be considered “queer.” The 1939 MGM film adaptation, starring gay icon Judy Garland, further cemented Dorothy—and Oz—into LGBTQ culture, contributing (somewhat debatedly) to the origin of the term “Friend of Dorothy” as a euphemism for LGBTQ individuals and helping to establish rainbows as a queer symbol.
The story also inspired the wildly popular musical “Wicked,” which reimagines the witches of Oz and is rich with LGBTQ subtext.
Given all this, it makes perfect sense that an adult LGBTQ book club would choose to start its journey in the fantastical world L. Frank Baum created with Oz.
Queer Visitors, a book club made for LGBTQIA+ adults and named after a comic strip L. Frank Baum published in 1904 called “Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz,” created by Drag Story Hour—a national non-profit whose goals include “celebrating storytelling through the dynamic art of drag performance”—chose to kick off this new venture with “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
The Washington Blade had the chance to speak with Jonathan Hamilt, co-founder of Drag Queen Story Hour, about what the LGBTQ adult book club will entail, why now, and why Oz.
When asked what spurred the choice to start an adult LGBTQ book club, Hamilt explained that the club has been a long time in the making.
“‘Drag Story Hour’ is celebrating 10 years of stories this year. We’ve always served families and children reading public books… but we really wanted to expand our programming for an adult-focused book club that was basically a drag story hour for adults only,” Hamilt said.
For years, the organization has worked to inspire children and promote diversity across the U.S.—and the globe. Now, they are venturing over the rainbow into adult territory.
“It’s like Oprah’s book club, but gay, where we will have a monthly book club… with a virtual experience with the drag artist and a subject matter expert of the book.”
For their first month, Queer Visitors went with drag queen (and face of Queer Visitors) Nana Tuckit from Portland, Ore., and Tori Calamito—a self-described “Oz historian” and LGBTQ ally known as “The Oz Vlog” on social media—to stand alongside the club online.
“Nana Tuckit brings a really fun energy to the space… and Tori is an Oz historian and can tell us all the things about that world,” Hamilt said when explaining their choice to go with Tuckit and Calamito. “I think the two of them will be a really amazing powerhouse chatting about this book.”
Calamito and Tuckit both sat down with the Blade to discuss why they chose to partner with Drag Queen Story Hour and Queer Visitors—both going into detail about why “The Wizard of Oz” is a perfect pick for the first meeting of the book club, explaining that LGBTQ people can see themselves in the story.
“‘The Wizard of Oz’ at its core, is a story about self-actualization and achieving self-actualization alongside your found family,” Tori Calamito told the Blade. “And I think those are themes that the LGBTQIA+ community can really relate to.”
She sees “The Wizard of Oz” as a story that resonates universally: “I think it’s a story everyone knows. So no matter where you’re coming from, in society, where you live in the country, where you hail from, everybody can hear Oz and go, ‘Aha, there’s some sort of association in your memory.’”
“Queer people are just naturally drawn to those stories where the interesting oddball characters are accepted and welcomed and present and they’re celebrated,” Nana Tuckit said. “I feel like it’s important right now to tell people’s stories to understand perspectives that are different… there is such a huge range of lives people are living.”
“’The Wizard of Oz’ is such an interesting cultural capstone… all generations know ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in some capacity… there are so many original books and I think they’re so innately queer if you read between the lines,” Hamilt said. “One way to look at it: it’s just so campy and so colorful and so fun… and this idea of queer diaspora… Dorothy being displaced or in a new land, kind of finding her chosen family… it’s kind of like an allegory for the whole queer experience.”
Calamito echoed Hamilt’s points and said her LGBTQ followers—more than 375,000 combined on Instagram and TikTok—helped show her that.
“You know, when I first read the L. Frank Baum original series of Oz books, I didn’t pick up on the very queer, coded themes and the gender fluid themes because reading it through the lens of a straight cis woman—just those things didn’t hit me,” she said. “But interacting with other folks in the broader [Oz] fandom opened my eyes to how obvious those themes are.”
“When we hear stories about those kinds of people [queer], and they aren’t the villains of the story—they aren’t the people who are being scrutinized and condemned or picked apart for those aspects of themselves—I think that’s what gets people so excited,” Tuckit told the Blade. “We need to create some worlds that are super fun for queer people to experience, because we need to know that we can be the main character, the hero, the savior. We can be all of the good things, the magical things.”
Hamilt also noted that the childlike wonder the Oz books and story have been able to provide to people for over a century reflects the need to heal their internal child selves.
“Queer adults have to do a lot of inner child healing… getting back to the magic of books where the excitement maybe first happened for you… it brings a lot of joy at face value with this book club that makes you feel like a kid at heart,” Hamilt said.
Tuckit went on to emphasize how the feeling of community—which has been life-saving for LGBTQ people when families have, and continue to, shun them for coming out—is present throughout the book.
“Even at the end of the book, The Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman all become the king of their own… the people have chosen you to be this figure for them, because they know you’re going to be supportive of them and looking out for them,” Tuckit said.
That community, she explained, can help the reader find what Dorothy was searching for when her house landed in Oz.
“If I think about what feels like home for me, it’s definitely not necessarily the physical place, but it is about who I’m with and the people that I’ve created my community with.”
Hamilt also saw the opportunity for book club members to create real-world connections using the club as a goal.
“It’s really easy as an adult to get sucked into your phone or social media… my hope is that this book club gets a physical book in your hands… gets you to meet other people that are excited about a really dorky topic… bring back this idea of real community.”
The act of drag has long been a community- and family-maker in the LGBTQ world. From ballroom families to the unique feeling of love one can get when watching a truly moving piece of drag, the art form has community woven into its history that adds an additional layer to the complexities of LGBTQ relationships.
“Drag is starting to represent just more of a wide range of people and experiences, just reflecting what we are as people… it’s all the same,” Tuckit said. “Drag artists are just expressing that something inside them that they want to get out and show the rest of the world.”
“I love Drag Story Hour. I take my own daughter, we go to drag brunch. We love drag queens in this household. And it harkens back to classic theater and pantomime in the days of Shakespeare,” the Oz historian said, highlighting that drag has been around for centuries, despite what anti-LGBTQ conservatives say.
“The opposition to Drag Story Hour isn’t new. We’ve been around for 10 years, and there’s always been an ebb and flow,” Hamilt explained. “One common comment we hear from people who are homophobic or transphobic is, ‘Why do you only read to kids? Why don’t you read to adults?’ And the truth is, we do! We read to elderly people, we go into hospitals—we read to a wide variety of audiences. So, if the issue really is age, we’ve even started side projects just for adults. Will there be protests? Opposition? Pushback when it’s only adult-focused programming? Absolutely. Because it’s never really been about children. It’s about control, hatred, and trying to erase the queer experience altogether.”
When asked what she hopes Queer Visitors brings to all fans of Oz, LGBTQ members, or allies, Calamito said she hopes it helps create good feelings during difficult times for members of the LGBTQ community.
“I hope this fosters a safe space for people to have good community outreach,” she said. “I hope this becomes a place where we can dispel fear.”
For Hamilt, the goal is both playful and proud: “Stories are for everybody… the goal is to celebrate self-expression and imagination through glamorous, playful, proud, queer role models… the more we love and accept the diversity of the world, it makes us more empathetic.”
For more information on joining the book club, where to pick up a copy, and how to get involved, visit www.dragstoryhour.org/queer-visitors.