Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant . . . and Completely Over It
A debut book from Entertainment Weekly writer and former Out magazine editor Lester Fabian Brathwaite, Rage is a darkly comedic exploration of Blackness, queerness, and the American Dream, at a time when creative anger feels like the best response to inequality.
One romantic hopeful had greeted Lester Fabian Brathwaite on a dating app with this gem: “You into race play?” Being young, queer, gifted, and Black, Lester has found that his best tool for navigating American life is gallows humor. If you don’t laugh, you cry—or, you summon your inner rage. With biting wit, Lester’s book Rage interrogates all the ways that systemic racism and homophobia have shaped our society. All to pose that proverbial question: Can a gurl live?
Rage is one part memoir, one part cultural critique, one part live grenade. He contrasts his tragic-comedic love life with the ideals he had formed from bingeing (straight, white) Hollywood depictions. And he is quick to side-eye the misogyny and internalized homophobia that some people reveal in statements like “masc for masc” on dating profiles. Lester also dives deep into representations of queer life from RuPaul’s Drag Race to The Birdcage (Robin Williams was a snack in Versace), and explores our cultural understanding of Black genius through stories of James Baldwin, Whitney Houston, and Nina Simone.
Lester’s razor-sharp voice, coupled with his searing social commentary on topics such as dating, rejection, racism, sexuality, identity, and more, offer an increasingly divided world an engaging and original read.
One romantic hopeful had greeted Lester Fabian Brathwaite on a dating app with this gem: “You into race play?” Being young, queer, gifted, and Black, Lester has found that his best tool for navigating American life is gallows humor. If you don’t laugh, you cry—or, you summon your inner rage. With biting wit, Lester’s book Rage interrogates all the ways that systemic racism and homophobia have shaped our society. All to pose that proverbial question: Can a gurl live?
Rage is one part memoir, one part cultural critique, one part live grenade. He contrasts his tragic-comedic love life with the ideals he had formed from bingeing (straight, white) Hollywood depictions. And he is quick to side-eye the misogyny and internalized homophobia that some people reveal in statements like “masc for masc” on dating profiles. Lester also dives deep into representations of queer life from RuPaul’s Drag Race to The Birdcage (Robin Williams was a snack in Versace), and explores our cultural understanding of Black genius through stories of James Baldwin, Whitney Houston, and Nina Simone.
Lester’s razor-sharp voice, coupled with his searing social commentary on topics such as dating, rejection, racism, sexuality, identity, and more, offer an increasingly divided world an engaging and original read.
About the Author
Lester Fabian Brathwaite is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly and, for some sadistic reason known only to him and his therapist, has been a professional writer for almost fifteen years. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The Advocate, among other publications, and has also served as senior editor for Out magazine. Rage is his first book.
Praise For…
**An Amazon Best Book of the Month for September**
“No doubt Brathwaite is a great writer, but he’s also a great thinker…any differences between the author and the reader melt away because the heart of what Brathwaite is saying is universal…Rage is anything but demure.”
—Associated Press
“The call — or, in this case, the book — is coming from inside the house! EW's own Lester Fabian Brathwaite has penned an explosive "part cultural critique, part memoir" debut that examines sexual racism, toxic masculinity, body dysmorphia, and so much more. You will be completely into it.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“To have voices emerge with the sharp wit and unapologetic intensity that Lester Fabian Brathwaite possesses is amazing to witness. His debut book… is not just a memoir-in-essays—it is a clarion call, a manifesto wrapped in humor, heartbreak, and searing social commentary. With the precision of a seasoned journalist and the soul of a storyteller, Brathwaite invites readers to grapple with the realities of being a queer Black person in a world that often demands their silence or assimilation.”
—GLAAD
“Biting wit and laugh-out-loud honesty.”
—Queerty
“Blending personal anecdotes with shrewd cultural criticism — about subjects as varied as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the warped significance of Gore Vidal’s seminal 1948 novel The City and the Pillar, and the “unconscious drag” of performative masculinity — Brathwaite’s book is insightful and honest, making for an often funny examination of an American dream deferred.”
—Them, Best of 2024 List
“[H]e’s outRAGEous and hilarious, writing to readers as though he’s holding court in a cafe somewhere and you’d better listen up… Brathwaite’s candor and his blunt talk is fresh and different. This gay man doesn’t pussy-foot around, and getting his opinions without fluff feels good and right. Readers will appreciate that, and they might come away educated.”
—The Bookworm Sez (syndicated column)
“Recently a friend remarked, ‘It is not enough for me to be Black. I have to know everything there is about being white.’ He might well have said the same about being gay. Well, turnabout is overdue and in Rage you will discover that class in glorious, hysterical, heartbreaking session. Watch out! Here comes the truth.”
—Harvey Fierstein, actor, playwright, and New York Times bestselling author of I Was Better Last Night
“Wickedly genius and filled with canonical vengeance, Rage’s viciously heart-open essays will leave you smirking in every waiting room—when they don’t make you laugh so hard you wet your pants. Lester Fabian Braithwaite’s debut collection is the insightful intellectual take on global expatriate queer Americana that the 21st-century needs.”
—Shayla Lawson, author of National Books Critics Circle Award Finalist This is Major and How to Live Free in a Dangerous World
“With a singular sense of humor, Brathwaite demands the necessary space for Blackness and queerness to thrive in a society that refuses to make it. Appropriately critical of the predominantly white spaces that make up the entertainment industry, what's most refreshing is Braithwaite's willingness to self-critique. He demonstrates a critical understanding that it's not enough to simply recognize the problems with how media influences our perceptions of ourselves, we must also interrogate our role as media consumers. Equal parts raw and hilarious, Rage is a timely manifesto for those who are tired of waiting for change and are ready to furiously create it.”
—Hari Ziyad, bestselling author of Black Boy Out of Time
He sprinkles wit and humor in his critique and begs us to laugh with him… he engages in a thought-provoking critical discourse about how perceptions of masculinity are, in part, a product of the media… An honest exploration into Black queer identity.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“Entertainment Weekly reporter Brathwaite turns his sharp eye on race, sexuality, and body image in this passionate debut memoir-in-essays…the heightened tonal register allows Brathwaite to effectively communicate his frustrations with white gay culture while reserving adoration for the people and art he loves. It makes for bracing reading.”
—Publishers Weekly
