An honest, funny, but also heartbreaking autobiography written and read by Ru. It doesn't cover all their life but the early discovery of themselves before celebrity really kicked. It's straightforward, honest and transparent for the bad and good moments of their life. Its also funny and full of family and love dramas. A good view of what being gay, black and on the effeminate side was at this period with a gay community either closeted or following a toxic masculinity model to fit the more possible with straight norms. Freedom, travel, love, discovery of sexuality and understanding that as much as queer people feel the need for community due to the biased hetero norms of the society and the feeling to be out of place, looking for meaningfull friendship in the queer community isn't totally reachable as it is searching for people only based on sexuality instead of focusing of what people are outside labels. As mama Ru said : "my need for community wasn't fulfilling as the only thing I had in common with other gays is loving dicks". I really like the psychology part of what Ru explained in this book. And the social approach of the queer community linked to events that actually happened to RuPaul. They are pretty much aware of how they were seen even inside the queer circle and more often than not, hated for what they were (still are) As queer myself, I can understand the need for representation even if I tend to just use queer as umbrella term as I don't feel the need to labelize myself further ; the feeling I always had and more with everything happening now in and against the queer community, and I found resonance of that in Ru's words, is that labelisation is st the end just a way to try to fit in cis hetero norms and society instead of finding out our own way outside of it. A lesbian should be ..., you are not aromantic if ..., am I asexual if... This need to over label everything and everyone doesn't mean that you fit better. And it causes harm more often than not. At the end the queer community can be as exclusive, intolerant and harmful than every cishet bigot you csn meet everywhere in the world, in it needs to be seen by the rest of the cishet white people with hypocrite "bonne moeurs" and biases as proper member of the society. As Ru said in this book, as a black effeminate gay in USA he wasn't at all as privileged and accepted as the white "proper" gay men looking male, male as what white cishet male considered the definition of male (looks, behaviour, stereotype, acts,...). And even rejected by those gays because he was the "flamenco dancer disrupting their closet toxic masc gay dance". And it is the same when the Trans aren't accepted in the queer community, or the bisexual designed as closeted gay/lesbian and so on.