If you thought the biggest reveal pulled off by Sasha Velour would be the rose petals hidden underneath her wig during the season nine finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race, you are sadly mistaken.
The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, written by Velour, is a gorgeous, brilliant, and incredibly ambitious book about the origins of drag, the survival of LGBTQ+ people, and her very own experiences as a queer artist.
“It’s kind of my fantasy of what a queer history should be like,” Velour tells Out. “There’s no official story of drag, so we have to talk about how we pieced it together, how I did my research, why I’m connecting certain things and drawing the line about others. I felt like I couldn’t tell a history without my personal story, but I also couldn’t tell my personal story as a drag artist without shouting out this incredible history that’s there.”
But over the three years that it took Velour to write The Big Reveal, never could she have anticipated that this book would be released during such a tumultuous political time when conservative pundits are actively pushing anti-drag and anti-trans bills all over the country.
“As each kind of new wrinkle in this current manufactured anti-drag, anti-trans crisis came about, I kept trying to adjust my argument a little bit to speak to people who aren’t just like me,” she explains. “I’m lucky I’m in a community of people who love drag, who understand that it’s art, who believe that trans people deserve every equal right and opportunity. But this book needed to be able to speak to an even broader audience. Sometimes a little hate can fuel some inspiration, so I tried to channel it into writing what I believe in.”
Speaking of reveals, one major revelation comes up in the interview that will probably have Drag Race fans gagging. When asked if she’d ever compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race again, Velour spills, “Absolutely. I mean, it is not only a fun TV show. It is currently the best platform for sharing drag with the world. And I’ve learned from the legends before me: you take pop culture as it is and you make it work for you. And that is what I did on Drag Race once before. I have been prepared the entire time to go back and do it again.”
So Velour could potentially return to compete in a future all-winners season?
“Let’s see,” she muses with her signature smile. “Let’s see if they call me up.”
Watch Out’s full interview with Sasha Velour below – and make sure to purchase a copy of The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag, which is now available everywhere books are sold.
