Joseph Cassara

A gangbuster start about life for the GLBTQ community of the 1980’s from a latino perspective with a strong focus on transsexuals. We are thrown a bunch of delectable characters with a minimal plot. This felt like the basis for the Ryan Murphy series “Pose”. The novel includes stuff about “Houses”, sex change surgery, and AIDS. Without a compelling story to drive the narrative forward, the reader gets lost. This debut novel by Joseph Cassara runs out of steam heat at the midway point and never recovers.… (altro)

Three and a half stars. Before you read this book, I highly recommend watching the glorious documentary "Paris is Burning." The book is based off of it. The book flap lays this out, as well. I'm so glad the author was upfront about it; I gave a well-deserved one-star, one-sentence review to an author who tried to put a little-known movie into novel form and insist it was her own work. The author's choice hit quite a nerve with me as the movie is my favorite. Hers, too, apparently. No one has called her out professionally yet.
Cassara doesn't do that at all. His deep respect for the "Paris is Burning" documentary, the time period, and gravity of what was going on leaps off of every page. I tried to read the book as a novel for the first hundred pages, and it dragged in parts and meandered in others. I realized fifty pages later that this book is a series of interconnected vignettes and was probably just -marketed- as a novel. It's a heavy book, both in weight and content, as it should be. I thought it would frame the AIDS crisis a little differently, but I do mean that in a small way, and I'm being mildly petty. (NOTE 10/22/18: I have no idea what I was referring to.) I'm so glad this book was written and published.… (altro)

An extravagant look into one particular House from the Harlem Ball Scene of the 1980's, Cassara's debut novel focuses on the royalty that is House Xtravaganza. It was certainly an interesting choice to use names of queer trans ancestors (who can be found in the film Paris is Burning). One review asks if the author is considering paying the House survivors royalties, for the use of their names. A good question, and one I would love an answer to.

My favourite thing about Cassara is the way he writes dialogue. He writes dialogue so, so flawlessly. I can hear their voices, their tone, the back and forth of English and Spanish was just a spectacular combination.

This feels like Ru Paul's Drag Race, except it hasn't been made consumable by white cis hetero audiences. It feels authentic and like a living, breathing thing. Cassara mentions Keith Haring, a famous LGBTQ artist and activist, and I was able to pull up a non-fiction book and find Haring's work right in front of me while I read.

One complaint I read on a review here is that some of the characters are too similar. Maybe they are. Did I really care? Not at all. In fact some of the similarities between the characters helped me to understand that the author really was writing about queer culture.

It took me a long time to read because of how heavy it could be sometimes, so: trigger warnings for ALL the things. Drug use, survival sex, sexual assault, prostitution, child abuse.

I'm trying to articulate how much I love this book but I really am falling short. Cassara took away my words.


I'm still crying from the ending.… (altro)