“Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the ‘feminine’ that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to say when the idealized notion of the female/feminine is really a sexist idealization of white womanhood.A timeless collection of philosophies from renaissance performer and the world's most famous shape-shifter RuPaul, whose sage outlook has created an unprecedented career for more than thirty-five years. It also includes a chapter in which hooks criticizes the racial politics of the classic film Paris is Burning. “Gender bending and blending on the part of black males has always been a critique of phallo-centric masculinity in traditional black experience,” she writes. One important text among many by hooks (and one that continues to be relevant despite its age), this book investigates representations of blackness in American culture. Joseph Cassara, The House of Impossible BeautiesĬassara’s visceral debut novel (whose book cover required quite a journey), is set in Harlem’s underground ballroom scene of the 1980s, and tells a fictionalized version of the origins of the all-Latinx House of Extravaganza, in which there is beauty, excitement, belonging-and lots of tragedy. If you don’t at least know the bare bones of Butler’s argument, you’re missing half of the subtext here. What to do? The answer is to turn off your television and read something, of course-but if you’re jonesing, you may as well read something drag-related. To that end, below is a starter reading list for Drag Race fans, from foundational theoretical texts on gender to great recent fabulist novels. After all, as we all know, say it with me: reading is fundamental.ĭespite the fact that it was published almost 30 years ago, Butler’s Gender Trouble is still an essential text when it comes to understanding gender-and particularly gender as performance, which is at the very heart of drag.

In recent months, RuPaul and Drag Race have been getting more popular than ever, so I’d imagine that there are many who, like me, immediately watch the new episode every week and then feel bereft. We’re officially past the halfway point of season ten of RuPaul’s Drag Race, so obviously, I have begun to dread the end-and I’m sure, morbid as I am, I’m not alone.

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