Reviews for The House Of Hidden Meanings
by RuPaul
Library Journal
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RuPaul's memoir is the polar opposite of his breezy 1995 autobiography, Letting It All Hang Out. In this book, the drag superstar, Tony Award winner and 12-time Emmy winner, bares his soul about his dysfunctional family and the battles he has fought. He eloquently excavates old memories of growing up in San Diego with three sisters and a flinty and hot-tempered mother. Although he learned independence and self-sufficiency from his mother, she often told him (even when he was as young as five) that he was too sensitive and pensive. When his father left the family, his mother was bedridden for years. At 15, he moved in with one of his older sisters and her husband in Atlanta. By age 21, he had found supportive friends and experimented with non-glamorous, thrift-store drag items that were more punk than disco. After several attempts to live in New York City (often couch surfing or sleeping in parks), RuPaul reinvented himself and found success with the 1993 single "Supermodel (You Better Work)." VERDICT A probing, emotionally raw memoir that's an introspective examination of RuPaul's family and the issues he confronted before embracing self-love.—Kevin Howell
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Drag queen RuPaul (GuRu) excavates his childhood, early romances, and rise to fame in this unvarnished personal history. He begins in 1960s San Diego, where he lived with his fiery mother, self-absorbed father, and three sisters until his parents divorced. At 15, he moved with his sister, Renetta, and her husband to Atlanta, where he eventually dropped out of high school and fell in with the city’s bohemian art scene. The memoir luxuriates in this period, recounting the author’s tumultuous affairs, early dabblings with drag, and eventual move to New York City, where he and his former Atlanta BFF Lady Bunny rose to rule the downtown scene. Unlike the performer’s featherweight previous autobiographies (including 1995’s Lettin’ It All Hang Out), the tone here is intimate, almost conspiratorial, which both helps and hurts. On the one hand, he discusses his substance abuse and lifelong sexual insecurity with sometimes-stunning candor; on the other, he offers up some alarming pop psychology pablum, including the assertion that his father’s provincial family were “still slaves” who were “afraid of everything.” Fans looking for dishy Drag Race drama will be disappointed—the volume ends well before the show’s premiere—but readers eager for a peek behind RuPaul’s glamorous persona will get just what they came for. Agent: Cait Hoyt, CAA. (Mar.)
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
The trailblazing “mother” of all drag queens unpacks the baggage of his childhood, broken family, and adventuresome adulthood. RuPaul (b. 1960), the pioneering creator of RuPaul’s Drag Race, writes eloquently about his early decades. While his fearless mother taught him independence and self-sufficiency, his father offered largely indifference and disappointment. “My inheritance from my father was a stage presence,” writes the author, which has served him well across a dazzling career of iconic performances and appearances. As he recounts, he was 12 when his “secret girl” awakened, spurred by the film Cleopatra Jones, and in his early teen years, he took inspiration from Anne Francis, Cher, and Diana Ross, among other significant cultural figures. In the progressive Atlanta of the 1970s and ’80s, RuPaul studied performing arts and experimented with drugs before acknowledging that “the promise of New York was irresistible.” In NYC, he writes, “I was finally getting sexual attention, but it was by disguising myself. I was only doing drag as a joke. But suddenly it seemed like the joke was on me. Back then, my drag wasn’t yet refined in the way it would become.” Despite being “treated with disdain” by many of the “cool kids of the downtown scene,” RuPaul persevered for years, eventually finding massive success. The author writes poignantly about meeting the love of his life, Georges LeBar, on a Manhattan dance floor, as well as the bittersweet evolution of their relationship. While RuPaul punctuates his life story with knowledgeable opinions on issues like systemic oppression, Black victimization, and the queer community, he occasionally dampens the intensity of the narrative with saccharine platitudes about inner magic and strength, or how “it’s the ego that grips, and nonattachment is the path to freedom.” Nonetheless, RuPaul fans will undoubtedly devour this meticulously recollected, heartfelt excavation of his life’s highs and lows. A highly candid, empowering celebrity self-portrait. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
As the family prophecy goes, RuPaul was destined to be famous: a fortune-teller told his mom so while he was in the womb. He recounts his confident determination to make that prophecy come true in this soul-baring memoir. Readers follow RuPaul through his beginnings in the family home in San Diego, a fraught but loving place; through stints living in Atlanta, getting paid to drive incredible cars cross-country, making public-access TV with a group of like-minded "Bohemian scallywags," and, finally, achieving jet-setting success as a drag performer in his trademark style: "two spoonfuls of Diana Ross, a pinch of Cher, a shake of Dolly Parton, all sealed with Walt Disney’s family-friendliness." RuPaul writes with a maturity that readers can sense he earned early in life and a memory that brings alive moments both outrageous (getting a look of "cold fury" from a newly famous Madonna) and transcendent (the opportunity to see how far he'd come through the eyes of a younger protégé). RuPaul shares black-and-white photos between chapters and relates scenes boldly colored by music, fashion, and emotion. Touching also on belonging, love, and sobriety, this vibrant and multifaceted celebrity memoir will have readers rapt.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The multi-hyphenate superstar's many fans will delight in these stories of the artist's beginnings.
