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.
