The Big Reveal

An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag

Sasha Velour

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780358508083
• eBook ISBN: 9780358525875
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History of Art
• Index: Social Sciences

“Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us—the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived.”

–Sasha Velour

This book is a quilt, piecing together memoir, history, and theory into a living portrait of an artist and an art. Within these pages, illustrated throughout with photos and original artwork, Sasha Velour illuminates drag as a unique form of expression with a rich history and a revolutionary spirit.

Each chapter strips off a new layer, removing one tantalizing glove and then another, to reveal all the twists and turns in the life of a queen. As Sasha recalls her own journey, from the women who raised her, to learning the craft of an artist, to success, disaster, and more, she also uncovers the history of queer life around the world that made it all possible.

From shamans to “fairies balls,” empresses to RuPaul’s Drag Race (and beyond), The Big Reveal chronicles and celebrates our shared queer pasts. “If we want to be seen as legendary,” writes Sasha, “we have to weave ourselves into history.”

From an iconoclastic drag queen comes an equally singular, thought-provoking manifesto that brings necessary and sparkling substance to our understanding of drag, queerness, beauty, and liberation!

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• “No Big Deal”
• Ritual
• Drama
• Costume
• Queen
• Revolution
• Camp
• Art
• Key
• “The Little Reveal”
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher