THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN MEANINGS, Rupaul

THE HOUSE OF HIDDEN MEANINGS

• Author : Rupaul

• Publisher : HarperAudio

• Released : 05 March 2024

• Page count : 7 h 7 m

• Format : Audiobook

• Narrator : Rupaul

• Genre : memoir. Queer Topics non fiction

• Content warnings :

• Source : Everand

• Representation : LGBTQIA**+**

• Part of a Series : No

★★★★☆ — I really liked this book

Quote from the book:

“Sometimes the thing we are not able to let go of isn't benevolent. Sometimes we hang on to past hurts and old ideas. We refuse to let those die, that old darkness. But we have to let go - both of the things we despise and, often, the things that we love. Every ascended master will tell you the same thing: It's the ego that grips, and nonattachment is the path to freedom. But it never stops being difficult to let go - to say goodbye.”

Summary :

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, 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 supermogul. 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.

In The House of Hidden Meanings, 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. 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 life-story, 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.

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. “I've always loved to view the world with analytical eyes, examining what lies beneath the surface. Here, the focus is on my own life—as RuPaul Andre Charles,” says RuPaul.

If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.

My Thoughts on this Book :

An honest, funny, but also heartbreaking autobiography written and read by RuPaul. It doesn't cover all their life but the early discovery of themselves before celebrity really kicked. It's straightforward, honest and transparent for the bad and good moments of their life. Its also funny and full of family and love dramas. A good view of what being gay, black and on the effeminate side of the queer spectrum was at this period with a gay community either closeted or following a toxic masculinity model to fit the more possible with straight norms.

Freedom, travel, love, discovery of sexuality and understanding that as much as queer people feel the need for community due to the biased hetero norms of the society and the feeling to be out of place, looking for meaningful friendship in the queer community isn't totally reachable as it is searching for people only based on sexuality instead of focusing of what people are outside labels. As mama Ru said : "my need for community wasn't fulfilling as the only thing I had in common with other gays is loving dicks".

I really liked the psychology part of what Ru explained in this book. And the social approach of the queer community linked to events that actually happened to RuPaul. They are pretty much aware of how they were seen even inside the queer circle and more often than not, hated for what they were (still are). As queer myself, I can understand what Rupaul said about the need for representation even if I tend to just use queer as umbrella term as I don't feel the need to put more labels than society does on myself further. The feeling I always had and more with everything happening now in and against the queer community, and I found resonance of that in Ru's words, is that labelisation is at the end just a way to try to fit in cishetero norms and society instead of finding out our own way outside of it. A lesbian should be ..., you are not aromantic if ..., am I asexual if... This need to over label everything and everyone doesn't mean that you fit better. And it causes harm more often than not and psychological struggles. At the end the queer community can be as exclusive, intolerant and harmful than every cishet bigot you can meet everywhere in the world, in it needs to be seen by the rest of the cishet white people with hypocrite "bonne moeurs" and biases as proper member of the society. As Ru said in this book, as a black effeminate gay in USA he wasn't at all as privileged and accepted as the white "proper" gay men looking male, male as what white cishet male considered the definition of male (looks, behaviour, stereotype, acts,...). And even rejected by those gays because he was the "flamenco dancer disrupting their closeted toxic masc gay dance". And it is the same when the Trans aren't accepted in the queer community, or the bisexual designed as closeted gay/lesbian and so on.

Links :

• About the author

• My Storygraph Review