A debut book fromEntertainment Weeklywriter and formerOutmagazine editor Lester Fabian Brathwaite,Rageis a darkly comedic exploration of Blackness, queerness, and the American Dream, at a time when creative anger feels like the best response to inequality.
One romantic hopeful had greeted Lester Fabian Brathwaite on a dating app with this gem: “You into race play?” Being young, queer, gifted, and Black, Lester has found that his best tool for navigating American life is gallows humor. If you don’t laugh, you cry—or, you summon your inner rage. With biting wit, Lester’s bookRageinterrogates all the ways that systemic racism and homophobia have shaped our society. All to pose that proverbial question: Can a gurl live?
Rageis one part memoir, one part cultural critique, one part live grenade. He contrasts his tragic-comedic love life with the ideals he had formed from bingeing (straight, white) Hollywood depictions. And he is quick to side-eye the misogyny and internalized homophobia that some people reveal in statements like “masc for masc” on dating profiles. Lester also dives deep into representations of queer life fromRuPaul’s Drag RacetoThe Birdcage(Robin Williams was asnackin Versace), and explores our cultural understanding of Black genius through stories of James Baldwin, Whitney Houston, and Nina Simone.
Lester’s razor-sharp voice, coupled with his searing social commentary on topics such as dating, rejection, racism, sexuality, identity, and more, offer an increasingly divided world an engaging and original read.
