Review: RuPaul’s memoir proves he should stick to drag, queen

By Hugo Gerbich-Pais     3/19/24 10:27pm

Review: ★½

RuPaul is a celebrated singer, entertainer and undeniably the most famous drag queen of all time. However, with his recently released memoir “The House of Hidden Meanings,” he demonstrates that he is an author in name only. The work is painful to read, and its content is full of glaring contradictions and hypocrisy. 

The memoir, released March 5, follows his life from early childhood to middle age, ending before his most successful venture starts — “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

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“The House of Hidden Meanings” begins in Atlanta, as a current-day RuPaul searches and then brings back his tapes from the American Music Show, which was his first time performing for the public. Atlanta was where RuPaul spent much of his adolescence and time as a young artist — to his credit, he paints a vivid picture of the queer and Black community there during the early late ’70s and early  ’80s. The same can be said for his vibrant depiction of San Diego, where he lived until he was 15.

However, he constantly tries his best to jolt readers out of this imagery. He unceasingly adds his current day perspective to these moments, using them as a launchpad to tell us about inspirational lessons he learned. At times, every other paragraph seems to end with a Pinterest-worthy quote.

He seems to have forgotten one of the first rules we learn as writers — show, don’t tell. Every single memory is sandwiched between weird self-help-esque sentences that ruin it. There were also several vignettes, like a particularly egregious one that concerns picnics, that felt like they had been ripped out of a mediocre Common App essay. 

RuPaul writes insightful and profound commentary that pierces gay culture’s entanglement with toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia. Just chapters later, though, he demonstrates the exact attitudes he was able to critique so well. This is just one example from the many times that RuPaul rails against the erasure of radical queerness in our culture, while being guilty of the same crime. 

He discusses how he was able to become a mainstream performer, rather than an artist on the fringe. Attempting to step beyond the New York club scene, RuPaul writes about how making his drag more palatable — or, in other words, de-queering it by removing the radical aspects of his performance and costuming. 

He wrote that he would be most successful if he pushed the gender binaries less, and therefore decided to present himself as more womanly. I have no doubt that RuPaul made this decision out of necessity, as mainstream America was not ready for such a transgressive entertainer. However, it was frustrating because RuPaul doesn’t even spend one sentence examining the choice he made. It felt incredibly ironic, given what a good job he does in other sections of the book exploring the very same issues. 

Throughout the book, RuPaul  claims that from the day he was born, he was meant to be a superstar — a theme that, while meant to be inspirational, comes across as simply hypocritical. He denounces people with big egos, just after unironically telling readers he was fated to be famous, all while trying to stay relatable.

I would not recommend “The House of Hidden Meanings” to anyone, unless you think you can handle 200 pages of RuPaul writing catchy quotes instead of telling a story. The book does have a few redeeming passages, particularly at the end, but is overall overshadowed by an obnoxious narrative voice that is the book’s worst enemy. 

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