The “reading is fundamental” jokes write themselves with this story.
RuPaul has shared a lot about his life and his philosophies in interviews, on TV, and even in past books, but now he’s getting ready to put it all out there in even greater detail.
The Emmy and Tony winner has announced his definitive memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, slated to drop early next year.
The TV star took to Instagram to announce the book, revealing the exciting project via a video that sees him speaking to the camera without any makeup or fantasy lighting, perhaps mimicking how raw he’ll be in the tell-all.
“After two and a half years, it’s finally here: My memoir,” the host stated in the short clip, adding that he is both “so excited and so anxious at the same time, because I really reveal so much of myself. You know, this world today. It feels so hostile and such a scary place to be vulnerable in. But I did it, so get ready.”
RuPaul had some fun talking about the memoir in the video’s caption. “Writing this book left me gooped, gagged and stripped raw,” he wrote.
The queen of all drag queens also opined that “I’ve learned that vulnerability is strength, but so far, all I feel is nervous as hell, yet super excited to share it with y’all. When all is said and done, it’s just me, Ru.”
“RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography,” reads a synopsis of the book. “From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.”
One very important topic is missing from that description: the TV show that catapulted him to superstardom, taking him from the gay world to the main stage at the Emmys and beyond.
Apparently, The House of Hidden Meanings only focuses on the first several decades of RuPaul’s life and career, and it stops before he launches RuPaul’s Drag Race. This is an odd choice, and one that fans buying a copy should be aware of.
The House of Hidden Meanings is expected to be released on March 4, 2024 through HarperCollins.
The title will be RuPaul’s fourth book, following Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography; Workin’ It! RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style; and GuRu.
Things were looking rough when the queens of We're Here rode into the town that canceled Pride. It was summer 2023, a few short months since the Tennessee state legislature had passed the nation's first drag ban.
A U.S. District Court judge blocked the statewide implementation of the vaguely defined Tennessee Adult Entertainment Act, on the basis of First Amendment concerns. But that didn't stop the town council of Murfreesboro from passing a city indecency ordinance that likewise banned "male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest."
"It can be really difficult to navigate through the space and be heard," Anderson Wells says of JR.'s Bar & Grill. The storied 17th Street fixture, one of the oldest gay bars in D.C., isn't known as a harbinger of live theater or of the performing arts in general.
And yet, since 2019, JR.'s has presented occasional "live drag musicals" from Highball Productions, the drag theater troupe that Wells -- also known as drag queen Vagenesis -- co-founded with several other locals, including AJ Williamson, better known as Citrine.
"How is running up and down those stairs in heels? Are your fishnets going to get caught on the stage?" According to Wells, those are two crucial concerns that drag actors face as they go about rehearsing Highball shows at JR.'s. This month, the troupe will perform its ninth production, a Chicago-inspired spoof of a show they've titled Shecago as directed by Wells, whose day job is managing director of Constellation Theatre Company.
Kyle Griffin’s first foray into the world of news was serving as the anchor for his high school’s morning announcements program. But the then-teenager quickly realized that being an on-air personality was not for him.
“I saw at my local NBC affiliate that while the anchors and reporters were great, they were reading someone else’s words, and I wanted to be the person who wrote those words,” says Griffin. “I wanted to write the news.”
Griffin got his wish. A veteran of Seven Network Limited, NBC News Yahoo!, and the Albany, New York-based NBC affiliate WNYT, he’s currently the executive producer of MSNBC’s The Weekend, the network’s Saturday and Sunday morning news show, which launched earlier this year.
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