{"id":255148,"date":"2026-06-04T12:57:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255148\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T12:57:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:57:56","slug":"literary-hub-nine-fabulous-books-by-drag-performers-who-were-never-featured-on-rupauls-drag-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/255148\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Hub \u00bb Nine Fabulous Books by Drag Performers Who Were Never Featured on RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some dazzling books by drag queens who have risen to stardom, either through social media like TikTok or reality shows like RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race. Of course I attended Bob the Drag Queen\u2019s book tour of Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert. I eagerly scooped up Kim Chi Eats the World: 75 Recipes Fit for a (Drag) Queen before realizing I can\u2019t really cook. But when my interest in drag was first piqued at age nineteen after seeing my first drag king, or when it blossomed in my twenties and I realized I wanted to do drag myself, it wasn\u2019t the Ru girls\u2019 narratives I turned to.<\/p>\n

As I learned to paint my face and bind my chest for performances, I inhaled a diverse list of drag books. When people in my life learned about my obsession with drag, they sometimes suggested books that featured main characters or narrators who were assigned female at birth like me, or performers who were not from the coasts. It was important for me to see underrepresented parts of drag in the spotlight, or gritty stories that highlighted why we were so attracted to performing in the first place.<\/p>\n

When it came to genre, I was, and still am, indiscriminate. Give me YA, give me adult fiction or nonfiction, give me a drag queen\u2019s \u201cdiary,\u201d or a whole book in verse. I knew when I picked up my first book on drag that it would be a lens to the realities of racism, houselessness, transphobia, gun violence, and other darknesses ever-present in our world, but I hoped it would also mirror back slices of queer joy, drag families, the kind of affirmation that can be lifesaving. These are nine books by and about drag performers who are not RuPaul stars that show what it\u2019s like to inhabit the stage through a beautifully intersectional lens.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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The Black Flamingo<\/a> by Dean Atta<\/p>\n

Atta\u2019s The Black Flamingo is a gorgeous novel in verse that originated as poetry. Michael, the protagonist, writes poetry himself and explores themes of otherness in his work\u2014particularly coming of age and his identity as half Cypriot, half Jamaican, or, as his mother corrects: fully human. He prefers Maya Angelou\u2019s poetry to her autobiographies because, he says, he always knows where he is: \u201cThis poem. This page.\u201d It is a quality that is present in his verse and poetry about drag, once he fully inhabits the artform after starting at university. Drag brings Michael, \u201cA little closer to becoming,\u201d which I experienced after reading, too.<\/p>\n

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Faux Queen: A Life in Drag<\/a> by Monique Jenkinson<\/p>\n

In this unique memoir-in-essays, Monique Jenkinson, a cisgender woman who was raised in the suburbs moved to San Francisco and became a pageant winning drag queen. Her book documents the whimsy and joy that can accompany serious art: a counterculture that was, for Monique, buoyed by years of high caliber ballet training. Monique crafted a new persona, \u201cFauxnique,\u201d and learned the ins and outs of drag culture until she finally found her place. It\u2019s feminist, it\u2019s bold, and according to Juli\u00e1n Delgado Lopera, one of Faux Queen\u2019s blurbers, it\u2019s \u201cdazzling, sassy, and philosophical\u201d too.<\/p>\n

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Diary of a Drag Queen<\/a> by Crystal Rasmussen with Tom Rasmussen<\/p>\n

Diary of a Drag Queen teaches you how to read it right from the byline, splitting up Tom Rasmussen from his drag persona, Crystal. The book is split between the two. For instance, each chapter is titled in French, not because Tom knows the language, but because Crystal thinks French is chic. Both Crystal and Tom\u2019s personalities shine through these pages and illuminate the duplicities of drag. This book is wildly honest in its description of everything from off-limits subjects at Christmas (HIV activism, gender, the power of radical sex) to drag terms. Kiki, which is when two queers chat, cannot be confused with kai kai, which is having sex in drag. The diary format and Rasmussen\u2019s colloquial, often hilarious tone make it especially candid.<\/p>\n

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Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between<\/a>\u00a0by Amrou Al-Kadhi<\/p>\n

In this exquisite memoir, Amrou Al-Kadhi describes discovering drag at the University of Cambridge after growing up in Bahrain and Dubai to a strict Muslim family. Amrou\u2019s fear of Allah is ever-present as they try to connect with their family, particularly their mother. One Brokeback Mountain movie ticket can mean family rejection or eternal damnation. The writing in this book is breathtaking\u2014as hilarious as it is devastating. It also provides one of the most arresting accounts of meeting oneself in drag that I have ever encountered\u2014despite the layers of caked on makeup, Amrou describes it as the most familiar feeling in the world.<\/p>\n

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Gaysians<\/a> by Michael Curato<\/p>\n

Gaysains is a masterpiece of an adult graphic novel that centers four Asian Americans in Seattle. AJ, who has recently come out as gay and moved to Seattle from New York to start his own life, finds three friends that make up the \u201cBoy Luck Club,\u201d a nod to Amy Tan\u2019s The Joy Luck Club. One of the four friends, K, is a drag queen and activist, and she serves as the mother of the chosen family. This book does an incredible job scaffolding the reality of trauma with pleasure and joy. It is also unique in that it is split into parts, but changing scenes are often indicated by different, monochromatic panels.<\/p>\n

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Dragman<\/a> by Steven Appleby<\/p>\n

One thing I love about Steven Appleby\u2019s Dragman is that it holds nothing back\u2014its truth-telling capability is truly its superpower. \u201cYou\u2019re a freak with a gift,\u201d one character calls the protagonist, August, or Dragman, the name he has been given by the media but resists. Often there is conflation\u2014by the media and the government\u2014between transness, crossdressing, and drag, and this book addresses that issue. We\u2019re often told who and what we are by outside forces, and August deals with that directly when he is called \u201cDragman.\u201d The use of color against black and white panels in this book is also brilliant to map various storylines or highlight the most important things readers should note.<\/p>\n

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The House of Impossible Beauties<\/a> by Joseph Cassara<\/p>\n

The House of Impossible Beauties is fiction, but it was inspired by actual events, some depicted in Paris is Burning, a documentary that was released in 1990 and was filmed between 1985-1989. Specifically, this book spends luxurious amounts of time with members of the House of Xtravaganza and other accounts of the ballroom scene, each with their own, unique voice that vibrate with different frequencies. Voice is what I return to in this work, especially Angel\u2019s \u201cGirrrl,\u201d dated 1980 and onward. \u201cIt\u2019s not that she felt trapped in her boy body. She felt as libre as a paloma on a humid summer night, flying up and around the project buildings of Da Boogie Down. How good it felt to say she!\u2014because she didn\u2019t need to be a woman as much as she needed to have the air of a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Drag King Dreams<\/a> by\u00a0Leslie Feinberg<\/p>\n

Leslie Feinberg, the author of Stone Butch Blues is back with Drag King Dreams. The book takes place in New York City following 9\/11, but in many ways, feels like reading a novel set in today\u2019s landscape. Feinberg shows those on the margins clearly being repressed and Max has to figure out who they want to be in an increasingly dangerous society both for them and others. It is a story about the places we carve out for ourselves and our communities (a drag bar, for instance, where there are drag kings performing weekly) and also a tale about the personal journeys we go through that can include our own gender and how we show up for others.<\/p>\n

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Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens<\/a> by Tanya Boteju<\/p>\n

Boteju\u2019s poignant YA novel tells the story of a queer, biracial teenager living with her father after her mother abruptly left. The experiences she depicts have the unique quality of being entirely specific to the smalltown protagonist, Nima Kumara-Clark, but somehow universal too: she pines for girls who don\u2019t reciprocate her feelings, she endures high school humiliations that feel utterly earth-shattering, and she also discovers about a queer world beyond your own high school microcosm that opens up entirely new possibilities. For Nima, one of those major discoveries is drag, and a pair of leather pants coupled with a full lipstick beard unlocks a part of her she didn\u2019t realize was already within her.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

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Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors<\/a> by Gabe Montesanti is available from Arsenal Pulp Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are some dazzling books by drag queens who have risen to stardom, either through social media like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-255148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}