Product Description

Long before films like Boys Don't Cry alerted the world to the challenges--and extreme violence--transgendered people experience, Leslie Feinberg's blockbuster classic, Stone Butch Blues, offered a harrowing window onto transgendered life. Her brutally candid autobiographical novel about a blue-collar butch lesbian coming of age in pre-Stonewall Buffalo, New York electrified readers everywhere, particularly "genderqueers," whose lives up to that point had been marginalized even by lesbians and gay men.

Now Drag King Dreams picks up the conversation begun in Stone Butch Blues. No longer chronicling the past, however, Feinberg shows us where we live today. Max Rabinowitz, a bouncer turned bartender in an East Village drag club, has hit a mid-life crisis. She feels lonely and detached from her circle of activist friends, who are puzzled by her sudden political immobilization. Like many of us living in post-9/11 America, Max is outraged by her government’s actions but overwhelmed by the demands of opposition. Yet when her friend Vickie, a cross-dresser, is murdered, Max taps into her old activist spirit and—in solidarity with the queer community and other forces for progressive change—reclaims her voice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146042 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

From Publishers Weekly
After a harrowing encounter with a bigot on the PATH train, Max Rabinowitz, drag king and bouncer, quarrels with cross-dressing friend Vickie—who is brutally murdered that night. Soon a transgender friend with AIDS is hospitalized, the East Village club where they work closes and a friendly Muslim neighbor disappears after defending his kids from the cops. Loyal, tender and apt to paint apartment walls with Yiddish poems, Max is appealing yet strikingly isolated and quick to get enraged. At the book's beginning, Feinberg, author of the queer classic Stone Butch Blues (1993), only hints at why Max, now hitting midlife, carries pre-Stonewall armor into a post-Stonewall world of polysexuality and queer television. Though seemingly trapped in a world-weary, self-made transgender noir of tough breaks and lassitude, Max is returning to activism by book's end. Max's first person is charged and poignant, and the appealing group of secondary characters makes Max's world as desperately full as it is bleak. Still, readers who don't define themselves by their political protests are likely to want a lot more dancing to join this revolution. (May)
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Customer Reviews

Build community! Organize! Practice Activism!
Building community, organizing, and practicing activism, are three strong currents in Leslie Feinberg's Drag King Dreams.

More specifically, Drag King Dreams traces the journeys of the protagonist, Max Rabinowitz.

Some of these journeys are late night/early morning commutes to and from the bar where Max works. Seemingly innocuous, Feinberg illustrates the way such commutes, which are humdrum for most, are fraught with threats and dangers, often harmful, and sometimes deadly for Max and others like him.

Some of the trips Max takes are virtual ones into a universe where even with created, cyber bodies, we manage to socialize in ways that marginalize those who are perceived as different, but where outsiders pulling from a bank of shared signs still manage to find one another and connect. These virtual worlds are also places where Max learns that though there are rules in place that have determined and constructed the worlds as such, there are other rules and ways to re-construct and build them alternatively.

Then there are the emotional journeys Max takes towards and away from his friends, those he's chosen as his family. At times the bonds of love among Max and his friends are so fierce that it's almost impossible to imagine a tighter knit, more committed, or stronger community. The way in which they pull together to protect, support, and encourage one another is a testament to the deep power of such unselfish love. And yet despite Feinberg's inclusion of this much needed glimpse into an ideal, sometimes utopian love, ze also reflects other elements of hir characters' humanity--their bursts of anger, moments of desire-driven jealousy, they fear-filled recoil from others' touches, etc. Overall, Feinberg paints hir characters in all their marvelous complexities, while never letting go of the conviction that unity is possible. In the end Max's final moves are closer towards his friends, the larger community, and perhaps most significantly towards himself.

It is these interpersonal and intrapersonal journeys throughout Drag King Dreams that showcase Feinberg's ability to tell an important and touching story about the intertwined lives we live, and the need for us to join in struggle with one another, fighting the wars (literal and metaphorical alike) side-by-side until justice is achieved. Ze doesn't make it seem as if such coalitions are easy, but does tell hir story so well that despite the difficulties, we are utterly convinced of the absolute necessity of just complicated, hard work.

(I must make clear here that these are but a minor fraction of the various journeys Feinberg takes readers on in this novel...there are just too many gems in this book to write about them all here--I will say, though, that other journeys of note included lingual journeys through Yiddish chronicling Max's connections to his Jewishness and journeys through addiction, recovery, and the accompanying struggles towards serenity.)

Feinberg's writing is beyond compelling, and anyone who finishes reading this book and isn't moved to action of some kind, well...just isn't awake.

Masterful... Feinberg triumphs as an author
This book is an outstanding piece of writing. Feinberg's controlled prose leads the reader through the twists and turns of the narrative. The characters are sketched deftly. Exactly as in real life, the details are revealing and concealing in equal measure. We tread lightly because the subject matter can be senstitive, and as the reader, I found myself almost forced to read between the lines. Not even aware that I was doing so, I filled in the blanks, made assumptions.

As the narrative unfolds, a dozen little threads emerge. Sometimes its not always obvious how they will come together. But stick with the story, for Feinberg will lead you to a dazzling climax. In the final scene of the book, (SPOILER WARNING!) as the characters' names are called out, I cringed. In that one instant, Feinberg holds a mirror to the hypocrisy of my politically correct, gender-based assumptions. Feinberg humbles us with honesty. Feinberg's triumph is that ze does not tell the reader anything that we don't want to know, ze makes us realize that identity / a sense of self, transcends social stereotypes. In that climactic moment, Max' journey of self-truth and hope resonate with the reader. The book is a tale of hope, aflame with the complexities of contemporary New York and brought to life through Feinberg's brilliant, compassionate writing.

Worth the purchase price
All in all, Drag King Dreams is an entertaining and inspiring novel. The characters are interesting and not at all cliche. It's compelling.
I must say, however, that it's hard to read this without wanting to compare it to the author's first novel, Stone Butch Blues, which was by far a superior work, in my opinion. If you haven't read Stone Butch Blues, I would recommend to read that one instead, or first. If you have read it already, this is still a well written and interesting story and well worth the time and money.