A review by reading__queerly
The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.25

The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta is a coming-of-age story about a young, gay, and mixed-race boy living in the United Kingdom. From childhood to his teenage years and finally as a young adult in university, Dean Atta tells of his main character’s becoming in beautiful prose both on the page and through his own narration of the audiobook. 

This story is bold and marvelous. Truly, it is about finding yourself and figuring out what you want to say. This theme, while present throughout the book, hit the hardest for me in the later chapters where the main character explores and comes to find himself in drag. The poem How to Do Drag, despite the title, was really a consideration of the why of drag. What is the reason? What do you want to say to the audience? What does drag mean to you? To the main character, it is freedom. And in the poem What It’s Like to be a Black Drag Artist, he further explores the intersection of drag with his racial identity. First, there is fear, but the poem ends with rebirth, stepping into the spotlight, and accepting both a shared past and a shared future. In these poems and by the ending in general, I came to appreciate the focus on loving yourself, both the version that you show to the world and the more private one that you keep to your friends, to your family, or even just to yourself. The final poem, How to Come Out as Gay, placed emphasis on accepting yourself regardless of whether you are in the closet or outside of it, encompassing the journey of the character in the book and encouraging those reading – especially those that are queer – to reflect on their own experiences as well as continue on their own journeys towards self-love. 

I had the opportunity to listen to both the audiobook and checkout the book from my local library, and I really enjoyed both of the formats. Told with the author’s own voice, I could hear the inflection and emotion that I simply may have been reading too fast to notice in the written version. As someone who often struggles through audiobooks, I thought that this one shined in the audio format, and solidified my desire to listen to more audiobooks, especially those that are narrated by the author themselves.