Drag queens read at library's story hour in Brooklyn

The first time my daughter Maxine saw a drag queen she was three. We were driving through San Francisco and stopped at 16th and Market in the Castro A broad-shouldered, red-wigged, Pucci-patterned, platform-shod six-foot-something flounced across the road in front of our rental car, and I began rehearsing explanations in my head. But Maxine rolled down her window and screamed, “I LOVE YOU, BEAUTIFUL LADY!”

And really, what was there to add?

A block from where that interaction took place is the home of the original Drag Queen Story Hour, at the Harvey Milk Memorial Public Library/Eureka Branch, a regular event created by the LGBTQA literary non-profit RADAR Productions to bring together two audiences with a natural affinity for one another: Kids and drag queens. (Both love dress-up and exuberance and confounding boring people’s expectations.)


Now, RADAR Productions is working with the Feminist Press and the Brooklyn Public Library to bring this bedazzled event to kids on the other side of the country. “Drag Queen Story Hour breaks down our most stifling ideas about gender while lifting up play, fierceness, and femininity for all,” said Jennifer Baumgardner, the Feminist Press’s publisher.

On September 17 at the Park Slope library branch, as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival, Lil Miss Hot Mess will read from Tatterhood: Feminist Folktales from Around the World, a newly republished version of the 1978 bestseller. When I saw a picture of Lil Miss Hot Mess, I promptly thought, “That is a Jewish girl.” So I reached out to the Feminist Press for confirmation, and was promptly emailed a link to a video of Lil Miss Hot Mess performing Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Light One Candle” as a sexy gold light-up human menorah. So yes.

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