From award-winning and best-selling author, Leslie Feinberg, comes Drag King Dreams, the story of Max Rabinowitz, a butch lesbian bartender at an East Village club where drag kings, dykes dressed as men, perform. A veteran of the women's and gay movement of the past 30 years, Max's mid-life crisis hits in the midst of the post-9/11 world. Max is lonely and uncertain about her future—fearful, in fact, of America's future with its War on Terror and War in Iraq—with only a core group of friends to turn to for reassurance. Max is shaken from her crisis, however, by the news that her friend Vickie, a transvestite, has been found murdered on her way home late one night. As the community of cross-dressers, drag queens, lesbian and gay men, and "genderqueers" of all kinds stand up together in the face of this tragedy, Max taps into the activist spirit she thought had long disappeared and for the first time in years discovers hope for her future.
Author
Leslie Feinberg was a transgender activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg was a high ranking member of the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper. Feinberg's writings on LGBT history, "Lavender & Red," frequently appeared in the Workers World newspaper. Feinberg's partner was the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. Feinberg was also involved in Camp Trans and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry for transgender and social justice work. Feinberg's novel Stone Butch Blues, which won the Stonewall Book Award, is a novel based around Jess Goldberg, a transgendered individual growing up in an unaccepting setting. Despite popular belief, the fictional work is not autobiographical. This book is frequently taught at colleges and universities and is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender. Leslie Feinberg was Jewish, and was born female. Feinberg preferred the gender-neutral pronouns "hir" and "ze". Feinberg wrote: "I have shaped myself surgically and hormonally twice in my life, and I reserve the right to do it again."
