i live in brooklyn so the subtitle immediately piqued my interest. I would say i'm a drag appreciator but not a huge fan -- boy did this book radicalize me! it was so fun and so eye opening. highly recommend the audiobook, it's so fun. highly recommend for drag fans and folks like me who are just curious.

This was an excellent piece of reporting and recording a burgeoning moment in history. It's a super fun look at an almost mainstream but marginalized piece of our culture and it's socioeconomic impacts.

I really like how the author decided to tell this story through the perspectives of some select drag queens rather than providing a dry, history book like examination of drag culture in New York, which is often what winds up happening in history books such as these. I am also very happy to see that the author did not shy away from their critique of Ru Paul, as he has been an incredibly damaging figure that the queer community often does not want to criticize due to how much he has formed the drag scene. The one downfall is that I did not feel like this book really brought anything new to the conversation or the scene.

This book gives an overview of the Brooklyn drag scene, from the Brooklyn clubs to the stages of Drag Race and back again. There's a lot of great content in here, pulled from interviews with a lot of queens. I loved how it helped me get to know some great queens better like Aja and Sasha Valour.

However, I thought this was pretty hard to read. The writing is kind of scattered - jumping back and forth between people and contexts. One chapter kept jumping between the 21st century drag scene and 1920 Prohibition era drag-type performances and I struggled to even know which time certain sentences were talking about. I think that this is just missing the kind of transitions and commentary that guide the reader through.

I think there's a great story here about how the Brooklyn drag scene is distinct; about how Drag Race and Ru-empire have changed the world of drag; and the new interconnections between Ru's empire and the Brooklyn scene. However, I think a lot of this storytelling gets lots -- the author is so far into the weeds providing details of certain moments that the bigger picture is hard to sort through.

This book tackles important issues like trans and gender inclusivity in drag through Sasha and Aja's stories; about the commodification of drag and pressure of continuing to produce new things to sell after being on drag race; about the overly edited nature of Drag Race and who is being selected and who is being excluded, etc. etc. However, I think there are also some questionable choices of included comment (e.g. quoting a racist statement by Thorgy Thor instead of just acknowledging that she made a racist slur).

Overall, there were gems in this book, but it was really hard to read as a whole. I'd love to have seen a more edited version of this released to really hone in on that readability and storytelling power that's here.

2.5 ⭐️

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the e-ARC! How You Get Famous is a historical account of Brooklyn drag within the past 10 years. The first half was fascinating, touching on origins of now popular drag queens and the beginning of the impactful RuPaul’s Drag Race era. It was interesting to learn about how a lot of these popular drag artists were intertwined in their scenes and how the accessibility of Drag Race put a lot of drag queens on the map. While I really enjoyed the first half of the book, the second half felt a little dragged out (pun not intended). Part two had some overly descriptive recaps of performances and events from the Drag Race show that were a bit redundant. One thing I was glad to see mentioned was the commodification of drag and how commercialized it became due to the Drag Race’s rise to more mainstream media. Overall, this was a pretty solid read perfect for long time drag super fans and newbies alike.

I really enjoyed this book. I am casually familiar with drag, both as a fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, and as an occasional attendee at local drag shows. I did not know much about the Brooklyn drag scene, but I recognized a few key players in Brooklyn drag who are featured in this book, such as Thorgy Thor, the former Haus of Aja, and Sasha Velour, as they were contestants on Drag Race. I enjoyed gaining a better picture of how this constellation of queens and other nightlife legends fit together through this account of the history of Brooklyn's gritty and glamorous drag scene. How You Get Famous follows the origins of contemporary Brooklyn drag as a scrappy subculture to a major force both in the drag scene and in the wider culture. This story--and this scene--are edgy, dramatic, a little messy, and joyful.

This was mostly entertaining but also kind of a mess. It jumped around pretty indiscriminately and aimed to tell too many individual stories. I would have preferred a focus on maybe 2-3 of the protagonists. It also drags quite a bit when it's describing performances; I don't care how exciting a lip sync is, reading about every moment of it is a bore.

Even though this book started strong and ended with a bit of a fizzle, Pasulka still managed to keep my eyes glued to the pages.
As a retelling of the rebirth of drag in underground Brooklyn, it made me realize I had no clue that drag ever really went dormant.
Following a group of performers, as they tried to find their unique versions of stardom, I was pulled in quickly to each storyline that was woven seamlessly together. But with a bit of skepticism as I thought the original intent of the book veered off course, it all made sense in the end.
The recapturing of events, from the energetic performances and lurid nightlife, let me experience the original grittiness of the now overly-televised world that drag has become and how different I believed it to still be.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

How You Get Famous was an insightful look into the drag world- both televised and not. It detailed the journey of multiple drag queens like Aja, Thorgy Thor, Sasha Velour and Merrie Cherry as they tried, some more successfully than others, to make it on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Pasulka’s in depth look into their lives showed the influence the show had on the drag world from its beginnings. It was almost heartbreaking to read about how much getting cast on Drag Race means to drag queens, as they value it their “golden ticket” into fame. Pasulka’s account for each drag queen was thorough and personal , the multiple years of research done truly showed through the novel. The layout was questionable at times, bouncing back and forth between drag queens before ultimately settling on Merrie Cherry for the last quarter of the book. This is a great read for those who want an inside look into the world of drag!