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A review by aaronj21
Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen
4.0
My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.
Harriet Tubman is back and she wants to speak to a new generation of Americans. She decides the best way to do this is to enlist the help of Darnell Williams, a gay music producer, and create a bestselling hip hop album.
This book isn’t just funny, it’s First Page Funny. Do you know how hard that is? To set up something and have it land successfully on the very first page of a new book? It’s a tall order. And it’s one this book delivers on from the very beginning and then consistently lives up to throughout. I had high hopes for this novel (with the premise and the author how could I not?) and those hopes were more than fulfilled.
In addition to the razor sharp, intelligent, humor we’ve come to expect from Bob The Drag Queen, this book is also a poignant, nuanced exploration of race in our nation's history and present. The novel delves into the unique and often uniquely difficult experience of being Black and Queer in America today. Like onions and ogres, this book has some serious layers going on. There’s humor of course, but also drama, vibrant and messy characters and a surprisingly effective didactic through line. I learned so much about music, history, and queer culture from this book. I’d never even heard of William Dorsey Swann or Ellen Craft before reading this.
Including original songs in any book is a risky prospect, a literary double edged sword. Their inclusion can be a wonderful addition and add to the immersion of the reading experience. But when it doesn’t work it REALLY doesn’t work and can break that immersion entirely. I’m looking at you Anne Rice. I liked Queen of the Damned as much as the next guy but I do not believe audiences in that or any universe went wild for lyrics like “In my dreams, I hold her still / Angel, lover, Mother. / And in my dreams, I kiss her lips / Mistress, Muse, Daughter”. All that being said, Harriet Tubman Live in Concert pretty much sets the gold standard for original song lyrics in fiction. This book wouldn’t be as good or make much sense without the songs being present in some way, they add to and in some ways are the story. And they slap severely. I can hear them in my mind. They flow and cohere. They’re clever and catchy and powerful. I can imagine them playing them on an app, adding them to a playlist. And I desperately WANT them to be fully produced, real songs I could listen to, they’re just that good!
If I had to critique a few things, I’d mention the pacing and a few world building details. The first and second parts of the book were excellently paced and progressed in a way that felt natural. The last third felt a little rushed perhaps and I would have liked more resolution on Darnell’s backstory. In terms of world building, in this universe people from the past have suddenly appeared in modern day and are called The Returned. Initially the author doesn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of how or why this happened and I think it was the right call. Instead we just the relevant details, Cleopatra is an Insta model and Harriet Tubman is here and wants to make a hip hop album, great stuff. I was hoping for a little more exploration of this phenomenon later in the story but it never came. These small critiques are only missed opportunities though and don’t drag the book down in any way. They may possibly have made the novel better but their absence did not make it worse, a crucial distinction.
Overall this was a wonderful debut and a great book to start the new year on. I’ve seldom seen such a promising, exceptional foray into fiction from someone who isn’t famous (yet) for their writing. I’m not saying Bob the Drag Queen should hang up the lace front wigs for a while and give us another novel like this. But I am saying I would wait in lines and fight off crowds to get my hands on a copy if she did.
Harriet Tubman is back and she wants to speak to a new generation of Americans. She decides the best way to do this is to enlist the help of Darnell Williams, a gay music producer, and create a bestselling hip hop album.
This book isn’t just funny, it’s First Page Funny. Do you know how hard that is? To set up something and have it land successfully on the very first page of a new book? It’s a tall order. And it’s one this book delivers on from the very beginning and then consistently lives up to throughout. I had high hopes for this novel (with the premise and the author how could I not?) and those hopes were more than fulfilled.
In addition to the razor sharp, intelligent, humor we’ve come to expect from Bob The Drag Queen, this book is also a poignant, nuanced exploration of race in our nation's history and present. The novel delves into the unique and often uniquely difficult experience of being Black and Queer in America today. Like onions and ogres, this book has some serious layers going on. There’s humor of course, but also drama, vibrant and messy characters and a surprisingly effective didactic through line. I learned so much about music, history, and queer culture from this book. I’d never even heard of William Dorsey Swann or Ellen Craft before reading this.
Including original songs in any book is a risky prospect, a literary double edged sword. Their inclusion can be a wonderful addition and add to the immersion of the reading experience. But when it doesn’t work it REALLY doesn’t work and can break that immersion entirely. I’m looking at you Anne Rice. I liked Queen of the Damned as much as the next guy but I do not believe audiences in that or any universe went wild for lyrics like “In my dreams, I hold her still / Angel, lover, Mother. / And in my dreams, I kiss her lips / Mistress, Muse, Daughter”. All that being said, Harriet Tubman Live in Concert pretty much sets the gold standard for original song lyrics in fiction. This book wouldn’t be as good or make much sense without the songs being present in some way, they add to and in some ways are the story. And they slap severely. I can hear them in my mind. They flow and cohere. They’re clever and catchy and powerful. I can imagine them playing them on an app, adding them to a playlist. And I desperately WANT them to be fully produced, real songs I could listen to, they’re just that good!
If I had to critique a few things, I’d mention the pacing and a few world building details. The first and second parts of the book were excellently paced and progressed in a way that felt natural. The last third felt a little rushed perhaps and I would have liked more resolution on Darnell’s backstory. In terms of world building, in this universe people from the past have suddenly appeared in modern day and are called The Returned. Initially the author doesn’t get bogged down in the minutiae of how or why this happened and I think it was the right call. Instead we just the relevant details, Cleopatra is an Insta model and Harriet Tubman is here and wants to make a hip hop album, great stuff. I was hoping for a little more exploration of this phenomenon later in the story but it never came. These small critiques are only missed opportunities though and don’t drag the book down in any way. They may possibly have made the novel better but their absence did not make it worse, a crucial distinction.
Overall this was a wonderful debut and a great book to start the new year on. I’ve seldom seen such a promising, exceptional foray into fiction from someone who isn’t famous (yet) for their writing. I’m not saying Bob the Drag Queen should hang up the lace front wigs for a while and give us another novel like this. But I am saying I would wait in lines and fight off crowds to get my hands on a copy if she did.