Part history lesson, part appreciation for the LGBTQ movement and a show that continues to thrive because of it.
How the reality TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race both draws on and influences ideas and inspiration from the LGBTQ community at large.
The LGBTQ community has come a long way, write married bloggers Fitzgerald and Marquez (Everyone Wants To Be Me or Do Me, 2014). It is no longer bound by outdated laws restricting men’s clothing choices or being declared mentally ill. Here, the authors focus on a unique, historically defiant subculture of gay life: drag queens. They spotlight liberators and “street queens” like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who, when faced with the “attempted social genocide” of their demographic, openly confronted and defied designated societal norms and demanded their rights. Elsewhere, the authors celebrate the pivotal personalities who have impacted LGBTQ life through outreach, activism, or within their own personal devotion to drag culture—e.g., Charles Pierce, Jim Bailey, Divine, Leigh Bowery, Lypsinka, and José Sarria, among many others. The authors consistently cross-reference a host of LGBTQ cultural touchstones (“Herstory” lessons) with Drag Race and how it continues to represent queer culture. Fitzgerald and Marquez are generous with show references, sketch and lip-syncing challenge analyses, and how contestants on the show have drawn either acclaim or derision (or both) through their on-air interactions. A description of the show’s Speedo-clad “Pit Crew” dovetails with a discussion on desire and male physique, and the authors compare queens mastering the “art of shade” with the “reading” performers in the 1991 drag documentary Paris Is Burning. Informative, entertaining, melodramatic in its obsessiveness, and written with equal amounts of insight and wit, the book serves as a commemorative archive of drag in American life. Younger LGBTQ readers and RuPaul devotees will most appreciate the authors’ dedication to accurately chronicling the movement, detailing how race and gender blend harmoniously within the drag culture, and the minute details of a colorful and often controversial show that continues to mature.
Part history lesson, part appreciation for the LGBTQ movement and a show that continues to thrive because of it.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313462-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.
A firsthand account of how the Navajo language was used to help defeat the Japanese in World War II.
At the age of 17, Nez (an English name assigned to him in kindergarten) volunteered for the Marines just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Growing up in a traditional Navajo community, he became fluent in English, his second language, in government-run boarding schools. The author writes that he wanted to serve his country and explore “the possibilities and opportunities offered out there in the larger world.” Because he was bilingual, he was one of the original 29 “code talkers” selected to develop a secret, unbreakable code based on the Navajo language, which was to be used for battlefield military communications on the Pacific front. Because the Navajo language is tonal and unwritten, it is extremely difficult for a non-native speaker to learn. The code created an alphabet based on English words such as ant for “A,” which were then translated into its Navajo equivalent. On the battlefield, Navajo code talkers would use voice transmissions over the radio, spoken in Navajo to convey secret information. Nez writes movingly about the hard-fought battles waged by the Marines to recapture Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and others, in which he and his fellow code talkers played a crucial role. He situates his wartime experiences in the context of his life before the war, growing up on a sheep farm, and after when he worked for the VA and raised a family in New Mexico. Although he had hoped to make his family proud of his wartime role, until 1968 the code was classified and he was sworn to silence. He sums up his life “as better than he could ever have expected,” and looks back with pride on the part he played in “a new, triumphant oral and written [Navajo] tradition,” his culture's contribution to victory.
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-425-24423-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her...
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow.
The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother’s health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete’s mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author’s best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts’ family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. “[I]f there’s one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious…disease will teach you,” she writes, “it’s that time is not to be wasted.”
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother’s passing.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7845-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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