Nine Fabulous Books by Drag Performers Who Were Never Featured on RuPaul’s Drag Race

There are some dazzling books by drag queens who have risen to stardom, either through social media like TikTok or reality shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. Of course I attended Bob the Drag Queen’s 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’t 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’t the Ru girls’ narratives I turned to.

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.

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’s “diary,” 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’s like to inhabit the stage through a beautifully intersectional lens.

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

Atta’s 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—particularly coming of age and his identity as half Cypriot, half Jamaican, or, as his mother corrects: fully human. He prefers Maya Angelou’s poetry to her autobiographies because, he says, he always knows where he is: “This poem. This page.” 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, “A little closer to becoming,” which I experienced after reading, too.

Faux Queen: A Life in Drag by Monique Jenkinson

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, “Fauxnique,” and learned the ins and outs of drag culture until she finally found her place. It’s feminist, it’s bold, and according to Julián Delgado Lopera, one of Faux Queen’s blurbers, it’s “dazzling, sassy, and philosophical” too.

Diary of a Drag Queen by Crystal Rasmussen with Tom Rasmussen

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’s 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’s colloquial, often hilarious tone make it especially candid.

Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between by Amrou Al-Kadhi

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’s 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—as hilarious as it is devastating. It also provides one of the most arresting accounts of meeting oneself in drag that I have ever encountered—despite the layers of caked on makeup, Amrou describes it as the most familiar feeling in the world.

Gaysians by Michael Curato

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 “Boy Luck Club,” a nod to Amy Tan’s 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.

Dragman by Steven Appleby

One thing I love about Steven Appleby’s Dragman is that it holds nothing back—its truth-telling capability is truly its superpower. “You’re a freak with a gift,” one character calls the protagonist, August, or Dragman, the name he has been given by the media but resists. Often there is conflation—by the media and the government—between transness, crossdressing, and drag, and this book addresses that issue. We’re often told who and what we are by outside forces, and August deals with that directly when he is called “Dragman.” 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.

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

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’s “Girrrl,” dated 1980 and onward. “It’s 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!—because she didn’t need to be a woman as much as she needed to have the air of a woman.”

Drag King Dreams by Leslie Feinberg

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’s 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.

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens by Tanya Boteju

Boteju’s 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’t 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’t realize was already within her.

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