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The House of Impossible Beauties

Joseph Cassara (Goodreads Author)

3.85 · Rating details · 3,181 ratings · 604 reviews

It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with H ...more

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ebook, 416 pages

Published February 6th 2018 by Ecco (first published February 1st 2018)

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· 3,181 ratings · 604 reviews

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Jan 14, 2018 Paromjit rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, netgalley, literary-fiction

Joseph Cassara has written a heart wrenching paean to the LGBT community, a blend of fact and fiction based on the critically acclaimed documentary on the House of Xtravaganza in the 1980s and 1990s, Paris Is Burning. Set in New York, it tells of young gay and transgender characters, facing the trauma and rejection of their actual families and their efforts to set up their own chosen close knit and supportive 'family' circle that faces up to the challenges of identity, murder, abuse, brutality, Joseph Cassara has written a heart wrenching paean to the LGBT community, a blend of fact and fiction based on the critically acclaimed documentary on the House of Xtravaganza in the 1980s and 1990s, Paris Is Burning. Set in New York, it tells of young gay and transgender characters, facing the trauma and rejection of their actual families and their efforts to set up their own chosen close knit and supportive 'family' circle that faces up to the challenges of identity, murder, abuse, brutality, the horrors of the Aids crisis, hatred, prejudice and tragedy. The character driven story unfolds with verve, humour, wit, anger, and colour as it follows its inevitable trajectory with the complications of life in this era in LGBT New York. It does not shirk from the grittiness of life as a sex worker, the perils of addiction and in its depiction of the never ending abuse.

17 year old Angel, has been traumatised by the way her family has treated her. She is transfixed by the glamour and vitality of the drag scene, and hones in on the legendary drag queen, Dorian. She meets and falls for Hector, a professional dancer, but yearns to create a form of family and home for others, who like her, now have none that they can fall back on. With this in mind, Angel and Hector set up the first ever latino House of Xtravanganza within the Harlem Ball circle. Tragedy beckons as Hector faces serious health issues. Angel brings in Venus who searches for the rich man to protect and look after her, the introvert transgender Juanita who obsesses over design and fabrics and Daniel. You cannot help falling for this cast of characters and their unflinching determination to be there for each other against all that the world throws at them.

I loved the humanity and courage portrayed in a lyrical narrative bursting with fizz and life affirming energy. This is a novel that is destined to leave a trail of tears and heartbreak in its wake. A wonderfully ambitious book that evokes an era, a place, a community and its history. Many thanks to Oneworld publications for an ARC. ...more

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Apr 17, 2019 Michael rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019

Set in the eighties amidst the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, The House of Impossible Beauties brings to life the daily struggles of the members of the House of Xtravaganza, the first all-Latinx house in the Harlem ball circuit. The sprawling story follows a small cast of characters—Angel, Venus, Hector, Dorian, Juanito, and Daniel—as they come of age while navigating the many trials of love, sex work, financial instability, addiction, and ball culture. Incredibly fast paced, the novel lacks any ...more

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Oct 05, 2017 Tammy rated it really liked it

The House of Impossible Beauties follows four transgender kids through the heyday of the Harlem ball culture which was ground zero for the AIDS crisis. The places and characters are real but it is a fictionalized account of House Xtravaganza. I don't see the comparisons to A Little Life which is much more nuanced but this fierce, gritty novel will ultimately break your heart. ...more

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Jul 01, 2019 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, lgbt-themes

Update.... Audible Daily special $5.95 .... or maybe the library has it...
I thought it was an engaging book in audiobook format!

Audiobook... read by Christian Barillas...( excellent reader)

I didn’t know anything about the Ball culture, (drag-ball culture), of the ‘80’s in NYC, until this novel which is inspired by true events.

The story starts out strong. We get a clear look into the queer and trans Latin-American community- as well as a strong sense of time and place.

The main characters are:
A ...more

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Feb 22, 2018 Ann Marie (Lit·Wit·Wine·Dine) marked it as dnf

DNF'ing this one at page 129.

The deal-breaking issue I have with this book is pacing. It's moving too slowly for me. If anyone had told me I would have found a book set in 1980's NYC and written about the drag world and ball culture scene to be boring I would have laughed at them. Sadly, this is the case. I like the characters well enough but the story feels like it's going nowhere fast. I know that if I'm not drawn in at this point, I will likely never be invested fully enough to justify the t ...more

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Feb 03, 2019 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read2019, reviewcopy, ala-otr

I was a member of the American Library Association's Over the Rainbow Booklist Committee for 2018, and this book made our top ten list for fiction and non-fiction books for adults.

I am going to go ahead and borrow the committee's annotation for a brief description:
“For fans of the FX show Pose or the documentary Paris Is Burning, Cassara lovingly documents the NYC ball scene of the 1980s when queer people of color were able to compete in a vicious and loving environment of fierce queens with eve ...more

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Mar 21, 2019 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, adult-fiction, lgbtq

A powerful novel set in 1980s New York City that centers a cast of queer and trans characters of color. While the burgeoning Harlem ball scene occurs in the periphery of the story, most of the narration sheds light on each of the character's backgrounds and what brings them together. Joseph Cassara describes immense suffering in these pages, ranging from transphobic abusive parents to the lethal HIV virus to drug abuse. As a queer person of color who sometimes distances himself from the queer co ...more

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Mar 23, 2018 shady boots rated it really liked it

Shelves: the-gay-agenda, i-just-have-a-lot-of-feelings, 2018-faves, yas-queen, read-in-2018

Before I share my thoughts on this book, if you enjoyed it or if you're interested to know more about ball culture, I STRONGLY IMPLORE you to watch the documentary Paris Is Burning if you haven't already. It gives a more in-depth look at the ballroom scene of 80's New York, and also introduces you to the real people behind the characters of this book, as well as many other legendary queer pioneers. It's available on YouTube here.

It is important to remember this particular era in LGBTQ+ history b ...more

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Sep 15, 2017 Blair rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: first-novels, netgalley, historical, sex-and-sexuality, 2018-release, read-on-kindle

With The House of Impossible Beauties, debut author Joseph Cassara has created a fictionalised account of the House of Xtravaganza, immortalised in the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning. From the backstory of key figures to the initial formation of Xtravaganza – the first all-Latinx house on the Harlem ball circuit – and beyond, we follow a cast of gay and trans performers as they fight to get off the streets, find and lose each other, and deal with the development and devastating impact of the With The House of Impossible Beauties, debut author Joseph Cassara has created a fictionalised account of the House of Xtravaganza, immortalised in the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning. From the backstory of key figures to the initial formation of Xtravaganza – the first all-Latinx house on the Harlem ball circuit – and beyond, we follow a cast of gay and trans performers as they fight to get off the streets, find and lose each other, and deal with the development and devastating impact of the AIDS crisis. Some of the characters are recognisable – with probably the best-known being Venus Xtravaganza – and some seem to have been reimagined to a greater degree, e.g. Angel/Angie (without doing extensive background research, it's difficult to gauge how closely or loosely any of them resemble their inspirations).

The beginning of the book is stunning, positively singing with energy and potential. We meet Angel as a young teen, just starting to understand that she's trans, and trying to figure out what that means for her relationship with her mother and brother. She fights to get herself taken under the wing of legendary drag queen Dorian, and when she meets and falls in love with Hector, a dancer, the groundwork for the House of Xtravaganza is laid. There's a bit of a lull in the middle – not because the characters are uninteresting, but because the more quotidian scenes of their lives don't feel quite as original as the rest; they follow a similiar pattern to many other stories about people struggling to make ends meet. Occasionally, the narrative threatens to slip into misery-lit territory. Those familiar with Paris is Burning will know there is an unavoidable tragic development concerning one character. Thankfully, Cassara handles this difficult subject matter compassionately, and doesn't try to dramatise the event itself.

The structure can feel a little random, and there's sometimes a sense that large chunks of detail that might be important to the story have been left out. Ultimately The House of Impossible Beauties is not a plot-driven novel, nor does it focus much on the ball scene itself: as much as it's a work of fiction, it's also a piece of queer history; Cassara's primary concern is the characters, what they mean to one another, and how they become family. Here, violence – whether in the form of abuse and murder, or the destruction wrought by AIDS – is part of the senseless cruelty of existence, not a mystery to be solved or a wrong to be dramatically avenged.

Fierce and tender, The House of Impossible Beauties works as both novel and biography; it brims with life and tells heartbreaking stories. I'm glad this was my first book of 2018.

I received an advance review copy of The House of Impossible Beauties from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr ...more

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Jan 02, 2018 Paula Bardell-Hedley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Paula by: NetGalley

Shelves: lgbtq-fiction, historical-novels, netgalley

New York's underground drag ball scene flourished in the early 1980s. These glitzy, elaborately-themed events rose with meteoric intensity from the Harlem district, bringing with them an immense euphoria and camaraderie among the area's prominent LGBT population.

The House of Impossible Beauties follows the often complicated lives of several homogeneous characters from their confused, abused, traumatic childhoods to the magnificent heydays of their in-your-face draggery and wild expressionis New York's underground drag ball scene flourished in the early 1980s. These glitzy, elaborately-themed events rose with meteoric intensity from the Harlem district, bringing with them an immense euphoria and camaraderie among the area's prominent LGBT population.

The House of Impossible Beauties follows the often complicated lives of several homogeneous characters from their confused, abused, traumatic childhoods to the magnificent heydays of their in-your-face draggery and wild expressionism.

New Jersey born author, Joseph Cassara, readily acknowledges that several of his novel's characters are based on historical figures (Venus Xtravaganza, Pepper LaBeija and Dorian Corey may be familiar to some readers), and locations in which much of his narrative is set, such as Christopher Street Pier - a once vibrant cruising spot, which is still a popular gathering place for young gay people - are now legendary landmarks.

The House of Xtravaganza is one of the most famous and enduring 'houses' (a sort of surrogate family for individuals of mixed gender identities), brought to prominence in the groundbreaking 1990 film documentary, Paris is Burning. Cassara's protagonist, Angel – the founding member and 'Mother' of this all-Latino collective – is quite obviously based on Angie Xtravaganza, the very real transgender star of the Harlem ball scene. Her drag daughter, Venus, and other members of the group are adopted 'house children', a close-knit coterie who engage in sex work in order to survive. They strive to defend, dignify and elevate one another, but are heartbreakingly vulnerable and can do nothing to protect their beloved hermanas from a mysterious sickness, often referred to by the predominantly unsympathetic and scaremongering media as a 'gay plague'.

Cassara's Hispanic trans-women and butch queens are sassy, charismatic and brave, and his exceptional debut novel is a humane microhistory of their uninhibited but precarious lives on the drag circuit of a bygone era.

Many thanks to Oneworld Publications for supplying an advance review copy of this title. ...more

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May 25, 2020 Katie Lumsden rated it really liked it

This was a fantastic novel, though very sad and hard-hitting in places. The writing style is brilliant, and the examination of this particular point in the 1980s/90s and the book's exploration of gender and sexuality was just fantastic. ...more

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May 03, 2018 Sara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, arc

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Cassara has managed to capture a snapshot of hedonistic 80s culture, richly steeped in beautiful creatures and intricate backstories that interweave to create a wonderful story about an underground community that many of us knew nothing, and still know, little about. The characters have been carefully crafted with obvious love and attention to detail in order to recreate a tale full of wit and sadness in equal measure.

The story is ...more

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Jan 10, 2018 Emily May rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, 2018

“We dance for the memories of things we dread to remember,” Katya said as the rest of the class went into position, raising their legs up, then beyond the head. “We dance for the things we wish to forget.”

3 1/2 stars. The House of Impossible Beauties is almost amazing. Cassara has created several memorable characters, drawn scenes with luminous writing, whilst also introducing many readers to a relatively unknown area of modern history: the House of Xtravaganza, gay subculture in the 1980s, and New York City's underground ballroom scene.

There's a lot to praise here, but this book does fall into a number of traps common among debut novelists. A hundred pages could easily have been cut without losing anything from the story and sometimes I would read whole chapters that seemed superfluous. Some more or better editing should have picked up on this.

The occasional Spanish word in an otherwise English language novel was probably supposed to add some Latin authenticity, but it made many parts read awkwardly. It felt out of place and gimmicky.

I usually give a short overview of the plot when reviewing, but that's difficult here seeing as The House of Impossible Beauties is essentially plotless. It contains a series of episodic - albeit entertaining - chapters delving into the gay/trans/drag experience of the lead characters. They dress up, dance, have lovers, and dabble in prostitution, all while the specter of AIDs lurks in the background, but there's no overarching story or question driving the book.

In terms of characters, Angel and Venus sparkled. These two fierce Latinx drag queens are sassy as hell and through taking shit from anyone. Angel is based on real-life house member, Angie Xtravaganza, and I love how the author weaved historical fact with his fiction as much as possible. Unfortunately, Daniel and Juanito's stories interested me less and, truth be told, no other characters could compete with Angel and Venus, and I found myself waiting to return to their chapters.

But it's an impressive debut in many ways. Cassara’s writing has moments of sheer brilliance and he has created two extremely memorable characters. It is loud and bright and fun, but also dark and sad, as much of the 1980s was for New York's LGBTQ+ community. I look forward to what the author writes next.

TW: transphobia; rape; abuse.

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube ...more

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Jan 20, 2018 Eric Anderson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

RuPaul's Drag Race has found a global audience in recent years and I've been a huge follower of it since the third season. It's still one of the highlights of my life hearing RuPaul praise my blog on his podcast. (You can listen to the audio of this at the bottom of my intro page here.) The widespread fandom of this show has popularised drag as an art form again so it seems like the right time to look back at some of the most significant drag movements of recent history. The documentary 'Paris i ...more

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Dec 04, 2020 Alexis Hall added it

Shelves: queer, srs-fiction, now-i-am-rather-sad

This is a sad queer book, centred on latinx queer and trans people in New York during the 1980s. It touches upon the AIDs crisis and the ballroom scene, is clearly heavily inspired by Paris is Burning, potentially the most recent Pose, and the still-extant House of Xtravaganza and … I am super, super aware I am, like, way out of my lane.

I know I write non-sad queer books as a kind of act of defiance against the idea that our stories are inevitably or necessary sad. That doesn’t mean, however, th This is a sad queer book, centred on latinx queer and trans people in New York during the 1980s. It touches upon the AIDs crisis and the ballroom scene, is clearly heavily inspired by Paris is Burning, potentially the most recent Pose, and the still-extant House of Xtravaganza and … I am super, super aware I am, like, way out of my lane.

I know I write non-sad queer books as a kind of act of defiance against the idea that our stories are inevitably or necessary sad. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t see the value of queer tragedy: it just means I’m aware that sense of that value is hugely subjective. Especially when it comes to people and characters marginalised along different axes to you.

So I will say that for me personally—without this meaning to make any broader statements about the book as whole or its meaning to people who are not me—I occasionally found myself questioning the value of the tragedies The House of Impossible Beauties presents us with. I mean, apart from making me feel fucking sad. And I think where it got troublesome for me, tragedy-wise, is the intersection of fiction and reality. Because at least three of four main characters the book focuses on seem to be based very explicitly on real people: Angie Xtravaganza, Venus Xtravaganza, and Danni Xtravaganza. And their deaths, if not their lives, seem to map pretty closely to what actually happened to their nameakes: Angie/Angel died of AIDS-related complications at the age of 28, Venus Xtravaganza was actually murdered and the culprit never found, and Danni/Daniel was appointed mother of the house of Xtravaganza by Angie before her death in the early 90s.

And I genuinely can’t tell if the book gave voice to stories that, despite the reality of the people involved in them, have partially at least slipped through the cracks of history (the assumption regarding Venus’s murder was that it was sex work gone wrong, potentially related to the fact she was a trans woman). Or if it felt uncomfortably voyeuristic having some of the darkest parts of these people's lives so vividly rendered in part-fictionalisation. I mean, there’s whole chapters of Venus—exhausted, despairing—wandering NYC in a drug-fuelled haze looking for the tiniest morsel of love or happiness before the narrative cuts to news of her body being discovered under the bed in a motel room. We get to see Daniel’s lover slip into drug dependence and a toxic, sexually abusive relationship with an older man. And return, after another narrative jump, to Angie’s last days, as she is dying alone from AIDs-related complications, with her memory fading from encephalitis, her body failing, riding the subway in a Chanel suit just to feel close to people.

And … I dunno? This all feels *more* tragic than the reality. I mean, the book chooses to focus on just four members of the House of Xtravaganza, supported by occasional cameos from other real people from that particular place and time, and while this is totally understandable from a narrative perspective: it does mean that Angel is dying basically alone. When in reality her house was thriving—so it seems equally plausible to she died surrounded by the love of her family? Instead of desperate for the acceptance of strangers? I mean, I don’t know. I just don’t know. It doesn’t feel like my business to speculate.

Anyway, I will say that I found the writing in this book fucking incredible. I loved the sense of place and time. Obviously it gave me emotions. Even if those emotions were complicated. And there are moments of breath-taking tenderness and beauty amongst all the pain, and the quiet connectedness of queer people feels genuinely redemptive.

But I think the biggest misconception they got is with love. It’s always love this, love that. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with love. Isn’t it our love that got us into this whole mess in the first place? The misfortune of being born with too much love for the people that society says we can’t love.

[…]

So they go out into the world thinking that if they find someone who will love them—because their mother couldn’t, because their father couldn’t, because their god couldn’t—if they go out and finally find someone who can, then everything is going to be set right. So they starve so they can look good, and they steal so they can look good, and they don’t realize that all along, it don’t matter who you find to love you, that love isn’t going to make you feel anything more for yourself than you don’t already got.

...more

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Mar 02, 2018 Gabriella rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-reads, queer-stories

Joseph Cassara has written an insular, (relatively) low-glitz, immensely tragic account of queer and trans Latinx youth in 1980-90s New York. I struggle to call it “accurate” or “authentic” because like Cassara, I am not a member of the House of Xtravaganza, the first Latinx house in the Harlem ball circuit, and wasn’t alive during the AIDS epidemic, which snakes its way through this book every time you start to believe in a happy ending for these characters. I can only relate to these people gi Joseph Cassara has written an insular, (relatively) low-glitz, immensely tragic account of queer and trans Latinx youth in 1980-90s New York. I struggle to call it “accurate” or “authentic” because like Cassara, I am not a member of the House of Xtravaganza, the first Latinx house in the Harlem ball circuit, and wasn’t alive during the AIDS epidemic, which snakes its way through this book every time you start to believe in a happy ending for these characters. I can only relate to these people given my queerness, blackness, womanhood, and humanity, but on all these fronts, Hector, Angel, Venus, Juanito, and Daniel feel incredibly legitimate.

I appreciated how Cassara took a story we all thought we’d understand, and inverted the timeline we’d all expect. His focus on the upbringings of the future Xtravaganzas was extremely insightful, as they show the earliest signs of their explorations with gender, love, and loss, but definitely not what you expect him to spend so much time on. Given their very short adult lives, it ultimately seemed apt to account for as much of their prior context as possible. Somewhat implausibly, I didn’t mind that there was only one ball—and a slightly underwhelming one, at that. Cassara's aim, after all, is to highlight the very real life that happens after "the clock strikes midnight,” as his most prescient reimagined character, Dorian Carey, once remarks.

Make no mistake, this book is utterly heartbreaking. I would recommend being in a very positive place in your personal life before you read it, as it will completely gut you and everything you love. Every character you begin to root for, every relationship you hope will last, every dream you think will be realized, inevitably falls apart due to the very real issues these characters are battling—drug abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia, poverty, and of course, AIDS-related complications. It’s intense, but also necessary, as the real people behind these stories often passed away much too soon, and much too tragically.

I think the one aspect I would’ve loved to read more of was the actual creation of the House of Xtravaganza. Much is mentioned about the novelty of having an all-Latinx house, and Joseph Cassara finds many inventive linguistic means of infusing the characters’ Puerto Rican identities elsewhere into their narratives. However, when it came to their lived experiences in the ball scene/queer community, I think he could’ve gone further—why was it so important to create their own ethnic space? What were the all-black houses missing, and what were the Xtravaganzas able to offer each other by sharing a common language and culture? Parts of these answers are made impossible by the lack of substantive black characters, save a few supporting drag queens. I also think it would’ve been easier to make this clear had Hector been present for longer, though I understand why this didn't make sense.

There is a lot to appreciate in The House of Impossible Beauties, but probably also a good deal to critique. As he describes in this really fun interview, Cassara stylistically experiments with the pronouns of his trans characters in ways that one may find either insightful or offensive. His seemingly uncritical embrace of the hallmark documentary by which we know these characters, Paris is Burning, may be an affront to those who had serious problems with the film’s invasive white gaze. Cassara, a gay Puerto Rican man who was inspired by many of the characters, definitely has a more familial and respectful relationship with the Xtravaganzas. However, the fact remains that any novel seeking to posthumously remember folks who weren’t respected (financially, politically, sexually, or artistically) in life will pose some problems.

My hope in and enjoyment of this novel, however, stems from its deep aim to right these societal wrongs, by allowing the Xtravaganzas to live once more. Through his work, Cassara helps us relate to the plights of the past, and also charges us to question how much progress we’ve made. (Throughout the novel, I often found myself thinking about our current struggles to support HIV patients and prevent its spread.) I would recommend this book to anyone seeking to broaden their understanding of queer culture and struggles, both past and present—The House of Impossible Beauties is an unattempted approach to understanding some of our community's dynamic young people. ...more

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Nov 29, 2018 Dennis rated it liked it

Recommended to Dennis by: Dusty Drosche

Shelves: slow-burn, lgbt, historical-fiction

The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of how trans-women of color in the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s handled the stigma that is attached to them by cisgendered society during the AIDS crisis. Wow, that is one heck of a sentence, but it definitely describes this story well. If you ever watched Paris is Burning or Pose, this story will definitely resonate with you. It's a powerful character study of a time period that is often overlooked, and definitely not talked about in schoo ...more

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Apr 13, 2019 Gerhard rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, gay-interest, 2019

This is one of those novels that is equal parts frustration, exasperation, and brilliance. Despite being flawed and often too rough around the edges, the characters are so vividly drawn that the reader cannot help being sucked up into the maelstrom of their lives. And what a maelstrom it is.

This book first popped up on my radar a while ago. Soon thereafter I started watching Ryan Murphy’s Pose on Netflix. Out of curiosity, I finally started reading the Joseph Cassara novel. I was so struck by th This is one of those novels that is equal parts frustration, exasperation, and brilliance. Despite being flawed and often too rough around the edges, the characters are so vividly drawn that the reader cannot help being sucked up into the maelstrom of their lives. And what a maelstrom it is.

This book first popped up on my radar a while ago. Soon thereafter I started watching Ryan Murphy’s Pose on Netflix. Out of curiosity, I finally started reading the Joseph Cassara novel. I was so struck by the similarity between the two, I thought the television serious must have been based on the book. Turns out instead that both drew from the wellspring of Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary ‘Paris Is Burning’, which I have not seen to date. Livingston, in turn, was a consulting producer on Pose.

The novel is freed from the didactic burden of the television series in having to explain its context and milieu, and to find its voice in the fraught state of current gender and identity politics. I think the television series is much more about making a statement and educating modern straight audiences, while Cassara, ironically, has the luxury of a much larger canvas to make his characters really pop.

Gay literary fiction has evolved to the point where sexuality is coincidental, and everything is about identity. Cassara shows extraordinary empathy in bringing his large cast to life. His use of slang and jargon takes a bit of getting used to – I think the book could really have benefited from an index at the end – but the reader quickly picks up on the verbal and behavioural nuances of each character.

Is the story predictable, and does it fall into the trap of condemning its outcast and marginal characters to an unhappy ending? Well, I don’t think you can write about the 1980s drag ball scene and hope to sugar-coat the fates of so many talented and spirited individuals who fell victim to AIDS.

Cassara makes us care so deeply for his characters that, come the inevitable fourth horseman of the runway, it is a fate that shook me to my core, so stunning and visceral is his portrayal. But it is not anger that fuels this book.

It is immense joy and pride in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. There are moments of such tenderness, grace, raw passion, vulgarity, sassiness, and sadness that, for a brief instant in time, I felt like an upstanding member of the House of Xtravaganza myself.

And when Daniel and Juanito move out on their own, I felt like a parent wishing for a fairy-tale ending. Well, that is life. We live, and we love. There really is nothing else. ...more

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Jun 14, 2018 Nat K rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-books, dnf

Sadly I've moved this to my DNF shelf. I'm not saying it will remain there, but I simply don't have the interest in it to continue.

I hate to admit defeat with books! Obviously I start reading them because I want to. And think (or hope) that I will enjoy them. But this one simply didn't retain my interest, and I felt quite indifferent to the characters. It's not a good sign that I read SO many other books well after having started this one. It's a shame, as so many people on GR loved it.

It start ...more

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Feb 22, 2018 Doug rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5, rounded down.

Like most first novels, this suffers from being a tad overwritten and under-edited. It could have easily lost 100 superfluous pages or more, which would have improved the pacing. A couple of other things that bugged me were a lack of any real plot (it just seemed like a bunch of random vignettes from the NY gay/drag scene, ca. 1976-1993, with no real through-line); the constant interjection of random Spanish words and phrases, that might have lent some verisimilitude, but made ...more

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Jan 23, 2018 Laura rated it it was ok

Shelves: queer-reads, fiction

How badly I wanted to love this book. How disappointed I was. I was planning on loving it: a book about queer and trans street kids finding family with each other in the underground ball scene of the 1980s. The novel is based on the real House of Xtravaganza, one of the more famous houses of ballroom culture, founded in 1982 by Hector Xtravaganza. Many of the characters in this novel (including Hector and the house mother, Angel) are based on real people who part of the all-Latino House of Xtrav How badly I wanted to love this book. How disappointed I was. I was planning on loving it: a book about queer and trans street kids finding family with each other in the underground ball scene of the 1980s. The novel is based on the real House of Xtravaganza, one of the more famous houses of ballroom culture, founded in 1982 by Hector Xtravaganza. Many of the characters in this novel (including Hector and the house mother, Angel) are based on real people who part of the all-Latino House of Xtravaganza.

Ball culture is an important part of queer history and culture about which I know little. I’ve always found fiction to be a useful and meaningful medium for telling true stories, and so I was excited to pick up this novel in the hopes that it would do justice to the depth, power, creativity, and resilience of the people who’ve been involved in ball culture.

It did not do that. The whole novel felt as if it existed on the surface–a shiny veneer with nothing underneath. Or, rather, underneath was the true story, the real lives of countless trans and queer warriors, mostly poor, mostly people of color, many of them working the streets, many of them homeless. But the truth and depth of those stories did not come across in these pages.

The characters, for me, fell flat. I finished the book with a sense that I never really got to know them. They were not drawn as whole people with deeply unique stories, histories, desires, fears, and joys. Perhaps Cassara would have been better served using entirely fictional characters, rather than trying to base his story on real people. Because the characters felt so far away, the emotional impact of the book was not personal. I did not feel it in my gut.

Reading this novel was brutal–but because of the horrors it describes, not because of any emotional investment, on my part, in the characters. It was imagining the real people who have gone through the traumas Cassara describes that left me feeling empty and angry and sick. For me, this is a mark of an unsuccessful book: I cared deeply about the subject matter, but the fictional narrative as it was presented failed to move me.

Another thing that irked me was the absence of fierce queer love, of safety, of tenderness. There were scenes in which the characters took care of each other, but they were few and far between. The moments of sisterhood and queer family building felt thin compared to the rest of the book, which was primarily moments of violence and terror.

Violence and terror: it was brutal. There was a rape scene, there was sexual assault, and there was abuse. There were many instances of transphobia, femmephobia, and homophobia, much of it violent. Most of the scenes in this book were deeply painful to read.

I don’t mean to minimize the violence that queer and trans people, especially queer and trans people of color, face. Everything I described above happens, and far too often. But queer and trans people have also built tremendous networks of fierce love and power. Ball culture is an example of that. But ball culture–a community of safety and celebration–was mostly absent from the novel. Despite being a book inspired by ball culture and the real House of Xtravaganza, I never got a sense of that culture. The book did not feel steeped in it, not even a little bit.

To his credit, there was some gorgeous writing, and the few scenes in which the four main characters were all together felt true. There was the occasional line that nailed a certain feeling or a certain moment. But those few moments could not carry the book.

I believe that Cassara was trying to write a book that celebrated that community. I believe he was trying to balance the danger and pain of being poor and queer and of color with the vibrancy of music and dance and drag and being true to yourself, of falling in love and finding home and surviving and thriving. But only the terror came through for me.

In my opinion, that’s a slight on the lives of the real people from which he drew inspiration. It’s only telling half the story. It’s important to write and speak and make art about racism and homophobia and transphobia and violence and the ways all these systems of oppression devastate lives. But it’s just as important to recognize how much beauty exists in those lives. ...more

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Jan 24, 2018 Christopher Alonso rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: latinx, lgbtq

Review forthcoming, but all I'm gonna say is wowowow this hurt me, and I encourage everyone to read it. ...more

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Apr 27, 2019 K.G. Delmar rated it did not like it

This review will contain heavy spoilers.

I went into this book excited, as I am in the LGBT community and love ball culture. I've consumed a lot of the big ball culture-related content that's out there (Paris is Burning, Kiki, My House, POSE, etc.) so this seemed like a natural progression. This is the first one to really disappoint me, and I'm talking on a very serious level.

My problem with this book isn't the writing. If anything, that's the one thing I enjoyed to an extent. But I got the impr This review will contain heavy spoilers.

I went into this book excited, as I am in the LGBT community and love ball culture. I've consumed a lot of the big ball culture-related content that's out there (Paris is Burning, Kiki, My House, POSE, etc.) so this seemed like a natural progression. This is the first one to really disappoint me, and I'm talking on a very serious level.

My problem with this book isn't the writing. If anything, that's the one thing I enjoyed to an extent. But I got the impression that Cassara is a good writer who did not have a good editor. Lots of sentences felt unpolished and unfinished, a lot of words were reused often, sometimes in the same sentence. One example that sticks out to me in my memory is "Angel knew her mother had a son and a daughter (Angel, clearly)." If the reader has been paying attention, they already know that Angel would be the daughter. The book has a lot of redundancy of this nature. But other than that, Cassara is fine in terms of writing.

My big issue with this book was the decisions it made. THIB tells a fictionalized and dramatized portrayal of the House of Xtravaganza, a huge Latine-based ball house in NYC that is still active to this day (currently run by mother Gisele Alicea and father Jose Gutierez). This book centers on portraying some key players in the story: house founders Angie (Angel) and Hector, Venus, Danni (Daniel) and Juan (Juanito). Their expys in the story are all but carbon copies, which struck me as extremely odd, because Cassara seems to pick and choose what truths about that story to put into the book. It feels very voyeuristic, and I kept finding myself frustrated and wondering why he wouldn't just make a fictional house and throw in nods to the PIB stars there (one example of this can be seen in POSE, where character Aphrodite Xtravaganza is a nod to Venus, but not an exact counterpart).

Another big component of my problem with this book is that it feels like a constant parade of sadism. I lost count of how many times I had to sit through a flashback where a character had an absent father, a mother who cared more about herself than her children, and a misfit, tortured child. I know very well that gay and trans people of color in the 80s had plenty of misery to deal with, of course. To say that the story should be a happy cakewalk would be disrespectful. But this book seems to be a nonstop stream of misery and punishment for these characters, even when they're only dealing with each other. There is virtually no plot structure, and it's just a series of miserable side stories end to end.

The coalescence of these issues, and the thing that bothers me the most, is the way this relates to Venus. If you have not seen Paris is Burning, Venus Xtravaganza was a young trans woman featured in the film who was murdered. Her killer was never found. Of all the ways this book plays with the characters' real experiences, this part was left in, in gory detail. They describe it to the very way her body was found. A later section in the book has Danni Xtravaganza angrily describe it as her "being left strangled under a bed like a blowup doll" or something of that nature, which I found highly unnecessary and disrespectful.

Further research shows that Cassara tried to get in contact with active ball families and house members, but no one responded. The fact that he decided to portray real people rather than making his own after this bothers me a lot. Let me stress this: the people being portrayed in this book are not alive to advocate for themselves or even take issue with how they're being shown. Angie, Danni, Venus, Hector and Juanito are all gone as of 2011. Other real-people-turned-characters, such as Pepper Labeija, are also not alive to take potential issue with their portrayal.

The book seems to be unsure with what it's trying to say with regards to this. The synopsis tells the reader it's the story of the Xtravaganzas (in one form), but the book is careful to come out the gate saying that this is not about real people. And yet, it uses their names and significant portions of their stories and personal tragedies as plot points. When it departs, it gets very weird. After Venus's death towards the end, the book swerves into a plot line about Juanito becoming addicted to crystal meth and sex with unsavory men, leading to him getting HIV and committing suicide. Juanito Xtravaganza/Juan Rivera, in reality, was a former lover of Keith Haring who in fact passed away less than a decade ago.

The book puts a lot of humiliation on these characters for ones that are meant to be versions of real people. Venus is frequently abused by men. At the very end of the book, a delirious Angel has a bowel accident and feces is shown dripping down her leg. Danni is left alone and miserable. Juanito's meth habit leads to him becoming a sort of rabid nymphomaniac, leading to a scene where his lover, Daniel (to my knowledge, Juan Rivera and Danni Xtravaganza were not involved in reality) watches him have brutal, morally questionable (at the minimum) sex by his corrupt boss who's decades older and cruelly using him.

There is no end to this. There is no hope and no message. Just that people suffer. The blurb talks about how the book is a testament to the power and love of house families, but the actual course of the book seems to just tell me that even a chosen family won't save you from being left alone and destitute.

I don't think Cassara had bad intentions. I think he legitimately felt captured by the stories of these people and wanted to do them justice and tell their stories. But I do think that he was careless in his work and as a result, the book feels disrespectful and clunky. I really think he fumbled by not just making entirely fictional characters and having the real people be there on the margins, a la the way Pepper Labeija comes in and out.

If you want to give this book a try, then definitely do. I'm just one opinion here, and I'm clearly in the minority from these reviews. But I was very let down by a book I very much wanted to enjoy. ...more

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Dec 05, 2017 Neil rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

First of all, a bit of history and context because I, for one, was not aware when I started this book that it is based on fact. I discovered this after about 50 pages or so when the story encouraged me to Google something and then, an hour later, I was more aware of the historical context. The book is set in New York in the period from the late 1970s through to the early 1990s.

Lifted from Wikipedia:

Composed primarily of African American and Latino LGBTQ men and women, members of the ballroom com ...more

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Mar 20, 2018 Jessica Sullivan rated it liked it

Shelves: 2018-read, literary-fiction, diverse-books, multiple-narrators

I wanted to love this so bad, I really did! It's about the queer ball scene in New York City in the 1980s, as documented in the popular film Paris Is Burning. Wonderful subject matter that had the potential to be so riveting and affecting.

The main problem with this book is that there are too many shifting perspectives and not enough focused character development. With the exception of a few sections that are notably strong, Cassara relies heavily on dialogue, which detracts from the substance.

Th ...more

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Mar 25, 2018 Elizabeth☮ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recent-reads, never-forget

I don't even know where to begin in my review of this one. The world Cassara has created is just mind-blowingly good. This takes place in New York during the 1980's. Our narrators are all boys that have been marginalized in their own homes and find their way to the streets. Each story is unique yet there is a common thread of displacement and misunderstanding.

Once the boys make a home for themselves in the houses that host balls that gave these men a place to express themselves, everything seems ...more

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Sep 05, 2020 Bek MoonyReadsByStarlight rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: tbr-08aug-2020

My head is still reeling from finishing this. Not only did this book completely emotionally break me, it did so while completely immersing me in the atmosphere of the era and in the lives of the characters. This book goes between perspectives, showing the lives of several gay men and trans women as they begin to weave together and fray apart through time. While many parts of the book are peppered with wit, it does not shy away from the dark realities of queer people during the 80's and 90's. The ...more

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Mar 05, 2018 Matthew rated it really liked it

4.5 stars.

Author Virginia Postrel once wrote that “glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration.” Contextually Postrel was unlikely speaking of the halcyon days of glitz and glamour that made up the Harlem ball scene in the 80s and 90s, but she may as well have been. I’d be hard pressed to find a better example of Postrel’s definition of glamour than Joseph Cassara’s triumphant debut The House of 4.5 stars.

Author Virginia Postrel once wrote that “glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration.” Contextually Postrel was unlikely speaking of the halcyon days of glitz and glamour that made up the Harlem ball scene in the 80s and 90s, but she may as well have been. I’d be hard pressed to find a better example of Postrel’s definition of glamour than Joseph Cassara’s triumphant debut The House of Impossible Beauties.

As triumphant it is the novel is also undeniably heart-wrenching, as the glamour Cassara’s ensemble aspires to achieve is not without its hardships. It comes at a cost, both in and out of the control of Cassara’s unforgettable characters. Yet what the novel proves is that this cost is worth it, despite the heartache. After all, who are we as people without dreams to help forge our paths?

That was meant to be a rhetorical question but one could answer that we’d be stuck living in a monochromatic world. If such a milquetoast existence sounds hunky dory to you, I suppose you may wanna consider something other than The House of Impossible Beauties.

Pedantic rant aside THoIB is truly one of those transcendent books that has just about everything, and evokes just about every imaginable emotion. It’s not without its flaws - find me a big, ambitious debut that doesn’t - but that’s part of the appeal. It’s a deeply human novel; flaws should be expected. Nobody’s perfect, even if we spend our entire lives aspiring to live in a world that is.

Cassara’s characters all but achieve this in their own way. New to the NYC drag scene Angel is escaping a tumultuous past, searching for a new family after her very own fails her. She meets Dorian, an aging queen who mentors Angel on the art of glamour. Dorian also introduces Angel to Hector and the pair not only fall in love but dream of starting their own house - the first all-Latino house, in fact - within the Harlem ball circuit. Soon the House of Xtravaganza is more than just a glamorous dream: it’s glamour redefined, fully realized and in the flesh.

Angel soon meets and recruits Venus, a trans girl in search of many of the same familial aspects Angel longs for and hopes to accomplish with her own house. Angel also recruits Daniel and Juanito, the former a muscle-bound butch, the latter a quiet, young artistic boy. This makeshift family learn to make do with what they have, lean on one another to continue living within a world that has all but dismissed them. Their choices may not always be admirable – prostituting themselves, turning to drugs – but you can’t help but root for them to succeed.

And yet in the wake of the AIDS epidemic it seems as though the cards are already stacked against them. Hector is the first to succumb; their community begins to drop like flies as the 80’s whirl on. Cassara navigates us through the whirlwind, amidst each character’s highest of highs and lowest of lows, with a sharp, witty and compassionate prose that’s practically irresistible and altogether authentic. That said, stylistically I had a couple of minor quibbles that were more personal preference than egregious errors on the author’s part: the infusion of Spanish was a bit overdone (it worked far better during dialogue than within the narration), and the shifting of pronouns, while very clever when writing about trans folk, was at times inconsistent.

But like I said, these are just simply quibbles. We live in an imperfect world so tiny little imperfections such as these are not only justifiable they’re welcome; perfection would be boring. If there’s anything THoIB is not, it’s boring. It’s a revelation, really, a spirited celebration of love, humanity, and finding one’s identity in a world seemingly resistant to imagination. In short, it’s throwing shade back on those who threw it in the first place. ...more

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Dec 08, 2017 Joseph Crupper rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I don’t know if I can be the one to give a definitive rating to this book, just since I am such a huge fan of Paris is Burning. I idolize the real life people that Cassara’s characters are based on.
The prose in this novel is tight, and readers who don’t know the real-life fates of Hector and Venus and Angel (Angie) will still enjoy it. Cassara portrays the world and experiences of his characters with the most realistic wonder and social disorganization. It reflects the actual identity politics ...more

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Jun 18, 2019 Anna rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle-scribd-library, historical-fiction, read-in-2019, lgbtqia, 2018-booklist

“Passing is an art form, darling. It’s a craft. And just like any craft, the artistic ideal is always impossible to achieve. We can try and try and try as hard as possible to pass as a woman, but if I’m a biological man, I can only go up to a certain point. The rest is all imagination. But just because it’s impossible doesn’t mean that should stop someone. We shoot to come as close to that perfection as we possibly can. I think Angel and Venus were impossible beauties—anyone could look at them a

...more

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