Memoir Is a Form of Drag

English Summary In this Electric Literature conversation, Gabe Montesanti, author of Drag Thing: A Memoir of Mania and Mirrors, speaks with Eileen G'Sell, author of Lipstick, about the connections between memoir, drag, makeup, performance, and self presentation. Montesanti’s new memoir explores bipolar disorder, the body, art, and her entry into drag, where identity becomes something performed, reshaped, and continually in motion. G'Sell’s Lipstick looks at lipstick not simply as a cosmetic object, but as a cultural sign that can reflect gender norms while also opening space for play, pleasure, transformation, and self expression. The title Memoir Is a Form of Drag points to the idea that memoir, like drag, is a way of constructing and performing the self. A memoirist does not merely report the past. They build a stage, choose a version of the self to present, and shape scattered experience into something visible and readable. The conversation between Montesanti and G'Sell shows how makeup, costume, the body, voice, and writing can all become ways of asking how we make ourselves, how we are seen, and how we resist ready made stories about gender and identity.

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