Ricky Tucker - And the Category Is...: Inside New Yorks Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community

ADVANCE PRAISE FDR AND THE CATEGORY IS...

With its vivid and riveting thick description of the social, spiritual, and creative genius of Ballroom culture, Tuckers book is an essential read for those who want to gain deeper knowledge and appreciation for these Black and Latinx LGBTQ communities.

MARLON M . BAILEY , author of Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit

A powerful debut that captures the soul of New Yorks vogue, house, and Ballroom community while serving as a historical archive of the Black queer and trans narrative in the United States. An instant classic that deftly champions and solidifies vogue, house, and ball culture as radical activism, art, freedom, and refuge for Black trans women and others. Tucker enlightens with sharp critical analysis and a vulnerability that is compelling and full of love. This is a must-read of the utmost urgency.

KEISHA BUSH , author of No Heaven for Good Boys

And the Category Is... is a deep dive into the beauty of Ballroom culture and a chronicle of Ricky Tuckers life as a queer North Carolina native. Its that last part that makes this book so wonderful. Tuckers observations are reverent and always careful. He shows us the many ways in which ball culture is a space of care and healing, of mutual aid and familial bonds. Hes dazzled by the glamor of Ballroom but willing to explore the politics and difficulties that come with creating art in a highly gendered and racialized space. Tucker helps us understand the work that goes into producing balls and protecting ball culture, as well as the performances of race, class, gender, and sexuality that hold the scene together. This is a beautiful celebration of embodiment and an original, timely contribution to the study of one of NYCs most vibrant queer scenes.

DIANA CAGE , author of the Lambda Awardwinning Lesbian Sex Bible

This book honors the legacy of Ballroom culture and its members without deifying either; yet the reader gets remarkable insight into the real-life struggles of Black and brown queer folk who undergird the fierce and extravagant beauty that is Ballroomwhere a Ballroom member can symbolically and literally snatch their freedom. Through prose that pops, dips, and kicks off the page and with an analysis that reads the children for filth who commodify queerness and Blackness, Ricky Tuckers And the Category Is... is snatched for the gods! Tens across the board!

E . PATRICK JOHNSON , author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women

The Reading Room is open, And the Category Is... is a must-read for anyone interested in pop culture. Ricky Tucker explores how Ballrooms language, fashion, and family structure have permeated pop culture for decades. He takes us beyond the watered-down, sanitized version we see in corporate ad campaigns and on TV shows to give us the history, the Black, queer, often marginalized origins of our culture. From the 1930s Harlem Ballroom scenes, with prizes less than $50, to the international balls of today, held across the globe with thousands of dollars at stake, this is the definitive book on Ballrooms legacy. Once you read this, the category is closed.

BEVY SMITH , media personality and author of Bevelations: Lessons from a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie

And the Category Is... is an electrifying book about ball culture. Through interviews, archival research, personal narration, and cultural criticism, Tucker offers another glimpse into a well-known but often misunderstood community. Readers will come away with a sense of the amazing lives, which are led even under considerable constraint, as the ball reveals itself to be a space to make relationships, politics, and freedom in performance. In And the Category Is... , Tucker shows us how the ball can teach us how to live more fabulous Black, brown, queer, and trans lives!

C. RILEY SNORTON , author of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

With mainstream interest in Ballroom culture at an all-time high, Ricky Tuckers And the Category Is... is a treasure trove of insider perspectivedeeply respectful, full of critique and celebration, oral history and personal narrative. A little bit academic, a lot of wisdom, and glamour, yes, of course, and context. This work is, like Ballroom itself, a crucial piece of queer history and contemporary queer culture.

MICHELLE TEA , author of Against Memoir and Black Wave

A long overdue exploration of a community that reveals the humanity, challenges, and significance of a scene that has been both marginalized and mainstreamed throughout history but never included in our libraries. Our histories are worth remembering, and this is an important read for the preservation of our culture and the legacy of those who paved the way. I give this book my tens for capturing the spirit of Ballroom and keeping it grounded with love as the message.

EMANUEL XAVIER , activist and author of Christ Like

For those pushed to the margins who delight in the pushback.

And to Heidi. Told you so.

EQUAL PARTS SUGAR AND SHADE

A s far back as I can remember, Ballroom has been in my periphery. Without even having to really search for it, its cultural touchpoints lay out before me over the years like a giant constellation, waiting for me to play connect the dots. Its been one of my greatest joys.

From the moment Madonnas hit song Vogue was released, to the wig-snatching revelation of Paris Is Burning, to the world-changing finality of that mouse click that registered me for the first Vogueology course taught at the New School, I was academically, personally, and professionally bolstered by every engagement with this smart, innovative, loving, and funny community and century-old culture that today is still, to me, like no other in the world.

After our course had ended in fall 2011, I kept up with my newfound Ballroom family, which now included an array of some of our countrys most agile and fierce dancers, activists, scholars, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, united under one cause: freedom. Unfortunately, only being an amateur dancer, whose most prominent talents are writing and teaching, I had never been quite sure how to contribute to the community that nurtured me for the greater part of a decade. At thirty years old, when I came into contact with Ballroom, I was a little over the hill to start walking balls. Id never even joined a house, though I may have been able to vie for honorary membership by way of our co-instructor Michael Roberson, then father of the House of Garon. I could even argue that my cohort of fellow students that made up the first Vogueology class are our own house of co-conspirators dedicated to upholding the fidelity of this rich arts community. In fact, I am arguing that. We are a family.

Still, after attending a decade of balls, workshops, and protocols on ball culture, showing up to every lecture, panel, and exhibition I could, and even teaching a few voguing workshops myself, I continued to be at a loss as to how such a great debt could ever be paid. It was an awkward waltz I performed in my mind over and over again, praying I wasnt appropriating the culture, and not shallowly leaning on my being the right demographicBlack and gayas an automatic ticket to entry. In spite of those doubts, I continued to show up with only the greatest of intentions, to be of service wherever and in whatever way I could.