One of the best memoirs I've read in a long while.
If you are a fan of RuPaul, this is required reading you will love. If you don't know who RuPaul is, you will relate to his central message: Love yourself.
You may already know that RuPaul Charles is the highly celebrated TV host winning 14 Emmy awards, a Tony award, with multiple best selling books, whom Forbes magazine calls "easily the world's most famous drag queen."
He is in fact, the Queen of Drag.
This is his self-portrait leading up to the success of RuPaul's Drag Race (an entire worldwide media industry in itself). This takes Ru from his early days in San Diego with his older sister Renetta and two dysfunctional parents in a performance of a 'family', realizing they didn't just dislike each other, they f***ing hated each other. He could see there was a truth each person was covering up with a performance - such as 'father' (although his was mostly drunk). He knew then he had to create his own life and develop his own magic out of necessity. We all have magic within us, and Ru had the ability to turn something meaningless into something special.
He learned early on who was acceptable in society and who was not. Being called a sissy as a child he chose not to play that game. If you think I'm a sissy, then I am going to be the biggest sissy I can be. He learned to subvert the duality of things, the ridiculousness of choosing a gender at all.
When he moved out to Atlanta, the center of black culture at the time, he saw through the fervent Southern Christian devotion as a form of superficial drag covering their double lives, the bigger the morality the greater the repressed desires.
In his youth he spent many years delivering luxury cars across the country, started many punk bands, and found a place on public access TV. He tried his hand at New York, playing and partying at Pyramid, Mud Club, Danceteria - all the nightlife I read about in Interview magazine or Michel Musto's Village Voice. Being almost the same age, I felt a connection with Ru. We both partied all night and started the day with a snickers for breakfast, I had my share of outrageous outfits (it was the 80's) and pushing boundaries, and remember those days of free flying, looking for the future. We both spent days wandering the city sidewalks feeling lonely.
He did find his people, lifelong friends like Lady Bunny and Fenton/Bailey whom he still works with today, and continued to dream of creating an entire world for him and his people. He has changed the way the world looks at drag, delved deeper into the necessity for it, and encouraged millions to live an authentic life.
This is a memoir you can feel the heart of. It is brave, honest, and open, with a central message - we cover ourselves in a role or costume, and life is brighter and better when we can become authentic. Love Yourself. Because if you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna to love somebody else?
RuPaul has been in a relationship with his husband Georges leBar since 1994.
Review of interest:
2024 / Hardcover / 239 pages
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