The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir

RuPaul's memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, is a brutally honest, poignant, and intimate exploration of his life, relationships, and identity. It reveals his journey from a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance, and offers a personal philosophy for living.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 05 March 2024
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

From the international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance.

A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

Central to RuPaul's success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world's largest television franchises, RuPaul's ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and super mogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.

Stripping away all artifice, RuPaul recounts the story of his life with breath-taking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul's singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living—a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

If we're all born naked and alone, it's up to us to build our own families, find our own tribes, and create our own sense of belonging. RuPaul's memoir is a testament to the power of love, resilience, and self-discovery, and a reminder that we all have the capacity to transform our lives and the world around us.

Weight: 448g
Dimension: 244 x 165 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008614942