It’s Not Just the Story of Drag in Brooklyn, It’s the Story of America
HOW YOU GET FAMOUS: Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn, by Nicole Pasulka Nicole Pasulka’s “How You Get Famous” opens in 2011, with a scene of two teenage queens racing to catch the subway as they embark on their first night in drag in Manhattan.
Aja and Esai are 17 and 14 years old, Black and Latinx, “two Brooklyn teenagers in search of attention, cash and adventure in the big city.” Esai stumbles along in gold shoes Aja bought him with a few dollars earned from reading tarot cards.
Their mission: Get into a gay bar despite being underage, perform in a drag show and win prize money. It isn’t a spoiler to say they are successful getting to, and in, a club.
And while they didn’t win any contests that night, Aja made an impression strong enough to begin opening the doors that led her all the way to “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” twice, making and discarding names along the way, emerging at last as Aja LaBeija, a rapper who no longer identifies as a drag performer.
