Seventeen year old JT Barnett is gay, but that’s not how he defines himself. He’s known from a young age that he likes boys and hasn’t really had any problems coming to terms with it; it’s just a part of who he is. No, for JT, his main struggle in life is with his own confidence. JT has a great best friend, Heather, and a loving boyfriend, Seth, but he’s plagued by doubts about his uninterested parents and his above average body weight. JT has love and support, but he’s looking for a way out. There’s no way that he’s going to end up working at his parent’s gas station after graduation. JT is going to get out of Florida and have a better life.
The problem with this plan is that JT doesn’t have the money to leave the state for college. Unlike Seth, whose athletic ability provides him with scholarships, JT isn’t involved in any extra-curricular activities that can help. He likes to sing and perform in drag, but both of those passions are hindered by his stage fright and either way, it’s not like they’ll help him get money, right?
When Seth finds the Miss Drag Teen Scholarship Pageant, he and Heather work to convince JT that he has the talent to win. This could be his chance, and after much debate, JT decides that he’s going to take it. The three teenagers set off on a road trip to New York City for the pageant and along the way, JT learns that he’s not the only one of them with deep-rooted insecurities. “At the end of the day, we’re all just a bunch of freaks trying to pass for normal. And I reckon, it turns out, there is no such thing” (128). After a series of mistakes and breakdowns, both emotionally and mechanically, the friends make it to New York and JT meets his fellow drag teen competitors. Despite his anxieties, JT decides that he’s going to make the best of his few days in the pageant and finally allows himself to think that maybe he could win the scholarship after all.
As Jeffery Self’s first Young Adult novel, Drag Teen shows that everyone is complicated and struggling with their own inner doubts. Strong and uplifting, the novel creates memorable characters and dozens of laugh out loud quotes. Self deals with the difficult topics of self-confidence and identity, but he still manages to include humor through JT’s inner dialogue. When Seth and Heather team up to convince JT to do the competition, he thinks that they’re “drinking the Kool-Aid of this idea way too fast – and it wasn’t kool, and it didn’t particularly aid me” (37).
Packed with pop culture references, sarcasm, and road trip cliché’s, Drag Teen is a refreshing LGBTQ novel that doesn’t focus on a boy’s struggle to accept his sexuality, or even the complications of finding love as a gay teen. Instead, the novel showcases a boy struggling with his anxiety and hoping that there is room in the world for quirky, overweight singers like him. If Drag Teen is any indication of how the world is today, JT will have no problem finding where he belongs.
- Posted by Abriana