The House Of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul
Oct. 28th, 2024 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
From international drag queen superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul comes his most revealing and personal work to date - a brutally honest and deeply intimate memoir.
From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s chameleonic nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and super mogul. It is this adaptability that has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.
Stripping away all artifice, RuPaul recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental other, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes in Atlanta and New York and finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.
Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living - a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of a chosen family, the importance of harassing what makes you different and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.
If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.
RuPaul Charles is a drag icon, actor, podcaster and the host and producer of an international drag show competition franchise. Although this memoir intends to reveal the real RuPaul and he talks a lot about a traumatic childhood through to the beginnings of his drag career and how he met his husband Georges LeBar, there’s a therapy filter at play here, which creates a sense of distance so I came away feeling like I hadn’t seen the real RuPaul.
I picked this up because I am genuinely a big admirer of RuPaul. His Drag Race franchise helped me get through the COVID lockdowns (and remain one of my favourite shows) and I really admire his work ethic and his hustle. When I learned that he was releasing a memoir I was really excited to learn more about his life and what drove him and maybe get some good anecdotes. This book was not what I was expecting.
RuPaul has clearly had some intensive therapy and worked through what has happened in his life and I respect that. But that does come through a lot in the way he recounts incidents in his life. For example he clearly had a very complicated relationship with his parents who themselves had a complicated relationship but the way he talks about it is very much in the way of someone looking back in a dispassionate way - there isn’t any sense of how he felt at the time as a child or what effect that had on him.
It’s difficult because on the one hand RuPaul absolutely has the right to tell his own story as he wants but as a reader, it’s frustrating because I was left wondering to what extent it had an impact on his later behaviour, including his drug use and the way he was quick to get into fights. In fact, given that RuPaul has been very open about his drug addiction, the lack of reflection about that and the way he glosses over the impact on his career surprised me. This is especially because when he recounts his husband Georges’ battle with addiction in the last chapters of the book, which is mainly discussed in terms of its impact on RuPaul.
I have to confess that I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of information on his early drag days - especially his friendship with Lady Bunny and the other queens on the New York circuit - and how he developed his act and connections. It’s a real shame as well that Michele Visage doesn’t merit a mention given they met in the club scene and although he does mention meeting the men who would eventually become his co-producers on Drag Race, there is no real detail on their relationship, or how it developed. This is all made more disappointing because there are time gaps that length in the final quarter of the book as RuPaul skips over bits, which makes it difficult to keep track.
On the flip side, I did enjoy learning about RuPaul’s time spent helping his brother in law run a car trading business which left him with a knowledge of car. I also found RuPaul’s discussions about his sexuality quite moving and wanted more of it as he talks about his feelings and his identity.
The way the book ends made me wonder if there’s intended to be a sequel or follow-up. If there was, then I would probably read it, but my expectations would be tempered based on the approach in this book. That’s not to say that I disliked this memoir, but I think that the marketing doesn’t help it - it’s billed as being intimate and detailed but that’s not the sense that I ended up being left with.
The Verdict:
RuPaul Charles is a drag icon, actor, podcaster and the host and producer of an international drag show competition franchise. Although this memoir intends to reveal the real RuPaul and he talks a lot about a traumatic childhood through to the beginnings of his drag career and how he met his husband Georges LeBar, there’s a therapy filter at play here, which creates a sense of distance so I came away feeling like I hadn’t seen the real RuPaul.
From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s chameleonic nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and super mogul. It is this adaptability that has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.
Stripping away all artifice, RuPaul recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental other, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes in Atlanta and New York and finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.
Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living - a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of a chosen family, the importance of harassing what makes you different and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.
If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.
RuPaul Charles is a drag icon, actor, podcaster and the host and producer of an international drag show competition franchise. Although this memoir intends to reveal the real RuPaul and he talks a lot about a traumatic childhood through to the beginnings of his drag career and how he met his husband Georges LeBar, there’s a therapy filter at play here, which creates a sense of distance so I came away feeling like I hadn’t seen the real RuPaul.
I picked this up because I am genuinely a big admirer of RuPaul. His Drag Race franchise helped me get through the COVID lockdowns (and remain one of my favourite shows) and I really admire his work ethic and his hustle. When I learned that he was releasing a memoir I was really excited to learn more about his life and what drove him and maybe get some good anecdotes. This book was not what I was expecting.
RuPaul has clearly had some intensive therapy and worked through what has happened in his life and I respect that. But that does come through a lot in the way he recounts incidents in his life. For example he clearly had a very complicated relationship with his parents who themselves had a complicated relationship but the way he talks about it is very much in the way of someone looking back in a dispassionate way - there isn’t any sense of how he felt at the time as a child or what effect that had on him.
It’s difficult because on the one hand RuPaul absolutely has the right to tell his own story as he wants but as a reader, it’s frustrating because I was left wondering to what extent it had an impact on his later behaviour, including his drug use and the way he was quick to get into fights. In fact, given that RuPaul has been very open about his drug addiction, the lack of reflection about that and the way he glosses over the impact on his career surprised me. This is especially because when he recounts his husband Georges’ battle with addiction in the last chapters of the book, which is mainly discussed in terms of its impact on RuPaul.
I have to confess that I was also a bit disappointed by the lack of information on his early drag days - especially his friendship with Lady Bunny and the other queens on the New York circuit - and how he developed his act and connections. It’s a real shame as well that Michele Visage doesn’t merit a mention given they met in the club scene and although he does mention meeting the men who would eventually become his co-producers on Drag Race, there is no real detail on their relationship, or how it developed. This is all made more disappointing because there are time gaps that length in the final quarter of the book as RuPaul skips over bits, which makes it difficult to keep track.
On the flip side, I did enjoy learning about RuPaul’s time spent helping his brother in law run a car trading business which left him with a knowledge of car. I also found RuPaul’s discussions about his sexuality quite moving and wanted more of it as he talks about his feelings and his identity.
The way the book ends made me wonder if there’s intended to be a sequel or follow-up. If there was, then I would probably read it, but my expectations would be tempered based on the approach in this book. That’s not to say that I disliked this memoir, but I think that the marketing doesn’t help it - it’s billed as being intimate and detailed but that’s not the sense that I ended up being left with.
The Verdict:
RuPaul Charles is a drag icon, actor, podcaster and the host and producer of an international drag show competition franchise. Although this memoir intends to reveal the real RuPaul and he talks a lot about a traumatic childhood through to the beginnings of his drag career and how he met his husband Georges LeBar, there’s a therapy filter at play here, which creates a sense of distance so I came away feeling like I hadn’t seen the real RuPaul.
