Broadway to Books - Kinky Boots

SO glad to be finally doing this post. It was super hard! But I really wanted to do one of these posts for ... ::drum roll::

Kinky Boots is an excellent musical about a man who is about to lose his father’s shoe factory and is looking for a new "niche market." He befriends a drag queen who tells him that it’s hard for the ladies at the club to find good shoes that can support their unique needs. Connection and hijinks, including having to deal with some of the more small minded of the factory workers. Cindy Lauper wrote the music and there are two VERY strong, touching songs (like Hold Me in Your Heart) that I listen to ::SING LOUDLY TO:: on repeat. Then there are a bunch of regularly strong songs, including some shake your booty songs like Sex is in the Heel. 

 [awesome gif used to be here. Trust me. You would have loved it.]

There’s only one song I skip on the soundtrack. That’s high praise, y'all! The musical is fun and upbeat, though there are sad parts, and ends on a high note.

Now, none of these books are obvious choices. Obvious choices would be books about drag queens, right? Honestly, I haven't read a lot of books about drag queens, per se. Let’s skip the obvious and look for themes of family and self- acceptance, shall we? We shall:

Annabel by Kathleen Winter:

I read this book back in 2011. It’s about a child who is born as a hermaphrodite into a small hunting town. His family decides to raise him as a boy named Wayne though the women in his family continue to pull for his female side. Annabel is Wayne’s feminine alter- ego. Wayne doesn’t know about any of this until he is older and then he has to start making some choices on his own. This book was touching and sad and awful and beautiful. It’s also over 500 pages long. Note: there is one assault scene that I can recall. It’s described in a very disconnected way, I think to mirror Annabel’s mildly dissociative experience of it.

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon:

This lovely book was a book discussion pick for one of the book groups I was in at the time. It is about a mentally limited girl who is locked away in an asylum and falls in love with a man who also lives there. Now, not only is the man deaf and mute, he’s also Black. They are both being underestimated and see something in each other that other's won't see. I don’t want to give too much away, especially about the man’s back story, but I loved this book when I read it. I read it in the same month as I read Orphan Train by and remember thinking about the two books together as good examples of how families and other systems handled children they couldn’t care for. 

Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan:

I know you’re waiting for me to have a description that makes the title of this book seem ironic or something. But no, a detective is bitten and becomes a werewolf. He's fighting this new side of himself while trying to finish solving a case he's working on. Now, there are some trope-y problems with this book, things are just a bit over- caricatured for some. This is my interpretation after reading some of the other reviews on GR. I don't typically like crime- drama books but I found this one entertaining. Plus: werewolf cop.

Where to Go Next: