P.S. Burn This Letter Please
On sale
15th August 2023
Price: £24.99
With an introduction from RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Sasha Velour
Their greatest act of resistance was simply existing
In the 1950s, as now, queer people were attracted to the Big Apple because they were able to find work as drag performers and female impersonators in a small number of Lower East Side clubs.
Decades before Stonewall, they occupied the margins of society, determined to live as they pleased, despite of the attentions of the police. Sometimes reduced to stealing to get their costumes, these girls were unstoppable, fearless and fabulous.
When a cache of their letters were discovered, these individuals were given a voice where they had traditionally been silenced. The letters they wrote bear witness to a time when gay community was hard to find.
Blending social, political and cultural history with memoir, this book is an unforgettable and deeply moving encounter with a generation of incredible survivors and a necessary account of how modern drag culture was born.
A note on our narrator: Tony Casey – The Established, Shanda Leer – takes inspiration from queer icons like Oscar Wilde, Lily Savage, and Carol Burnett, and has developed his career and artistry thanks to the paths laid out by queer people and performers as those captured in these powerful letters.
Their greatest act of resistance was simply existing
In the 1950s, as now, queer people were attracted to the Big Apple because they were able to find work as drag performers and female impersonators in a small number of Lower East Side clubs.
Decades before Stonewall, they occupied the margins of society, determined to live as they pleased, despite of the attentions of the police. Sometimes reduced to stealing to get their costumes, these girls were unstoppable, fearless and fabulous.
When a cache of their letters were discovered, these individuals were given a voice where they had traditionally been silenced. The letters they wrote bear witness to a time when gay community was hard to find.
Blending social, political and cultural history with memoir, this book is an unforgettable and deeply moving encounter with a generation of incredible survivors and a necessary account of how modern drag culture was born.
A note on our narrator: Tony Casey – The Established, Shanda Leer – takes inspiration from queer icons like Oscar Wilde, Lily Savage, and Carol Burnett, and has developed his career and artistry thanks to the paths laid out by queer people and performers as those captured in these powerful letters.
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Reviews
There are vital, vibrant stories crying out to be told from the history of the drag scene, especially now that it faces a resurgence of bigotry and hostility
A delightful collection of newly discovered letters between a fabulous coterie of drag queens who resided in New York City during the 1950s and '60s . . . This charming account combines the poignancy of a coming-of-age narrative, the mordant humor of a gossip column, and the rigor of an archival investigation. It's an essential window into a long-hidden history
P.S. Burn This Letter Please reveals a fascinating world of personal triumph and tragedy
The letters make you want to laugh one minute, cry the next, and then take to the streets and protest because in 2023, history is repeating itself . . . A fascinating book . . . P.S. Burn This Letter Please is a must read about fabulous fashion trailblazers, who dared to defy, who HAD to defy, despite the consequences
Written in a distinctive coded language, the letters in P.S Burn This Letter Please are gossipy in tone and full of catty humour but also coloured by the constant fear of exposure, violence or arrest