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A review by lilbanne
And Don't F&%k It Up: An Oral History of Rupaul's Drag Race (the First Ten Years) by Maria Elena Fernandez, World of Wonder
3.0
As a fan of Drag Race and someone who has seen every season a dozen or so times over, I had to read And Don't Fuck it Up, an overview of the first ten years of RuPaul's Drag Race. Overall, it was okay. It only added a little extra tea. It was mostly very surface-level. You get more insight into the Drag Race world by listening to Willam and Alaska's podcast Race Chaser. The book is more like an overview of each season, with a few Queens providing some insight.
The book is a collection of interviews from select Queens, producers, and creatives on the show who are still on the "good" side of World of Wonder. Where is the pit crew? Is it a complete collection when you don't include perspectives from all angles? I understand that there are 126 drag contestants on the first ten seasons of Drag Race, and getting 120+ queens to provide quotes would have been daunting, but if you are talking about specific queens and not including their perspectives, it needs to be corrected. For example, Season 4 has a ton about Willam's behaviour and disqualification, but they do not include one comment from her. It feels very shady to speak "truth" about a person without getting them to give their truth. While I understand that Sharon is in hot water, they don't talk about Sharon, the winner of Season 4. The book felt edited to give a specific perspective and paint World of Wonder in an extra shiny light.
Each chapter of the book is one season of Drag Race. Some seasons get more attention than others. It was a fun read but felt more like a 10,000-foot overview than an in-depth book.
The book is a collection of interviews from select Queens, producers, and creatives on the show who are still on the "good" side of World of Wonder. Where is the pit crew? Is it a complete collection when you don't include perspectives from all angles? I understand that there are 126 drag contestants on the first ten seasons of Drag Race, and getting 120+ queens to provide quotes would have been daunting, but if you are talking about specific queens and not including their perspectives, it needs to be corrected. For example, Season 4 has a ton about Willam's behaviour and disqualification, but they do not include one comment from her. It feels very shady to speak "truth" about a person without getting them to give their truth. While I understand that Sharon is in hot water, they don't talk about Sharon, the winner of Season 4. The book felt edited to give a specific perspective and paint World of Wonder in an extra shiny light.
Each chapter of the book is one season of Drag Race. Some seasons get more attention than others. It was a fun read but felt more like a 10,000-foot overview than an in-depth book.