Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant... and Completely Over It

By: Lester Fabian Brathwaite

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 was 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?

His book 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 binging (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 Ru Paul’s Drag Race to The Birdcage (Robin Williams was a snack in Versace), and explores our cultural understanding of Black genius through stories of Lauryn Hill 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, offers an increasingly divided world an engaging and original read.

Story Locale:New York City, Poughkeepsie, Los Angeles, Provincetown