The House of Hidden Meanings
RuPaul
£22.00
Mr B's review
As soon as we received our signed copies, I snatched one up and absolutely ripped through it. This memoir is full of young ambition and relentless hustle, but it’s equally a self-aware dissection of both the light and dark experiences that fuelled the path to household name. We get to know RuPaul the young, artistic boy growing up in San Diego and navigating a tricky home life. We meet an adolescent, art-school RuPaul who makes a living driving cars cross-country whilst getting a first taste of performing in front of the camera with his friends. Plenty of stormy years follow, with many early iterations and honing of the fantastic creation we now know as RuPaul, drag superstar. A fascinating life lived to the absolute full from the start – there is so much joy here – and a meandering path that reveals the scaffolding behind Drag Race. Less a tell-all than a close, private documenting of a very public persona. Dare I say, a diva. – Laura
Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing to date-a brutally honest and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance and self-acceptance.
A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.
Central to RuPaul’s success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and super mogul.
Yet that adaptability 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 breath taking 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 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 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 chosen family, the importance of harnessing 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.
Find this book on the following lists
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What I’ve Been Reading Recently – Laura (Mar ’24)
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Pride Month ’24
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