Yesterday, Bob the Drag Queen added “author” to her already long list of achievements on stage and screen with the release of her new novel, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert. Immersive and insightful with rapid-fire pacing, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is a work of speculative fiction that imagines a world in the not-too-distant future where historical figures have returned to live in the present. Harriet Tubman is among them, and she wants to record a hip-hop album with her band and produce with it a live show. She’s teamed with once-lauded producer Darnell Williams, the book’s narrator, and together they reckon with the multitudes of their pasts and the nature of freedom.

The book actually began as a play, Bob said, and liner notes for songs appear in the back–they were also recorded for the audiobook. But ultimately, as a longtime lover of reading and historical fiction, she wrote a book she wanted to read. “I thought to myself, ‘I would love to write a book,’ and I didn’t want to be a ‘wish-I-had’ my whole life,” she said. “Instead of trying to ask for space, I just walk in and just take it up…I just invite myself to the party, I pull myself up a chair to the table, and I just start eating.” With Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert, she’s invited us along to the banquet.

I spoke to Bob the Drag Queen about novels vs. standup, liberation, shame, and of course, Harriet Tubman.

Elyssa: Where did your desire to write a novel come from?

Bob: To be honest, I was writing a play first, and then I got a book deal. They asked if I wanted to write a memoir or autobiography. I was like, no, because quite frankly, I would never read that book so I wouldn’t want to write it. I thought about a way to write my play into the form of a book, and thus was born Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert. I looked at writing a book the way I did comedy–this is gonna sound so pretentious, but I always thought to myself, I’d be good at that [laughs]. That’s how I got into drag, I saw someone else do it and I said, I could do that. It turns out I could do it, and quite well. I hope I’m on the same journey with writing books.

Elyssa: What was the experience of writing the book in comparison to creating your other work?

Bob: When you write standup comedy, you get a chance to write it, then do it, and then get an immediate reaction. You get to shift it based on how the audience reacts. There’s no back and forth when you write a book, it’s just out there–either they like it or they don’t, and it is what it is. That’s pretty scary to me, to be honest. It’s new. I’m sure if Gregory Maguire tried stand up that’d be scary to him maybe because it’s also new. Getting that immediate feedback, shifting and adjusting what you’re writing makes it easier for me. With a book, you have an editor and you get feedback, but the editor is really not changing your perspective, they’re trying to help you structure your book and whatnot.

Elyssa: What drew you to focus the book on Harriet Tubman?

Bob: I find Harriet Tubman to be quite possibly the most remarkable person who’s ever lived. Her story is just unbelievable. If someone wrote it down, you wouldn’t believe it if there were not accounts to tell how true it was, yet there are historians there to back it up. It’s all true. I read several biographies about Harriet Tubman and the abolitionist John Brown is referenced in my book as well. Some of Harriet Tubman’s biographies, they’re just information, information, information, but there’s not a whole lot of narrative outside of the actual narrative of her life, whereas I’m trying to weave Harriet into a different story here. I read the book The Good Lord Bird, a historical fiction piece about John Brown. I liked how you can know people one way, and then you can also create a narrative for them. I find it really fun and interesting to read, especially if you’re interested in the character, because their stories are so over the top. Then you get to write these absurd scenarios that make them even more fun and interesting to listen to or read.

Elyssa: In the book, Darnell has many personal revelations about himself and his relationship to the world as a queer, Black person. How did you decide how you wanted to explore those ideas?

Bob: I would say there’s some of myself in both Darnell and Harriet, the way she’s depicted in the book. Darnell is probably a little nicer, more sheepish than I am. I’m probably a little more bold than Darnell. But I did put a lot of my own trauma, experiences, and humor into Darnell and into these characters. Darnell’s fear of disappointing Harriet Tubman is based on experiences I’ve had disappointing older Black people. Essentially, one time I had an instance where I was filming an episode of [HBO show] We’re Here. We were filming episodes in Selma, Alabama, and I was with actual foot soldiers who were on Edmund Pettus Bridge during Bloody Sunday. There was shame I had about being here with these remarkable people who worked for my liberation and just last week I was on stage telling jokes about sucking dick. I think there’s nothing wrong with telling jokes like that, doing things like that, but there was this shame that I had around doing something so goofy with someone who had done something so poignant. That’s kind of how Darnell is ashamed that Harriet has found out about his discography and stuff he’d done in the past. He had this shame around not always taking everything so seriously when someone has fought so hard for you to have a life. The truth is people who fight for you to have liberty, they fight for you to be a goofy bitch, too. They fight for you to be serious. They fight for your entire freedom, not just the parts people think should be dignified.

Elyssa: What was the experience of having to revisit those feelings as you were writing?

Bob: I thought it was somewhat cathartic and liberating. It was harder to read it back than it was to write it the first time. When I was writing it, I was getting it off my chest, but when I read it back, that’s when I really felt confronted. Reading it out loud [for the audio book] was really a mind fuck. It was so emotional. I think I was also emotional because when I finally finished the audio book, it was like I had actually finished the book. There’s a combination of me feeling emotional about the process itself, and emotional about the content matter. When I was writing it, I thought the book would be goofier than it is. Then as my fingers were typing it, this is just what came out. Maybe it’s the reverence I have for Harriet Tubman and for what my ancestors went through so I could write a book this absurd.

Elyssa: And when you talk about feeling emotional about the content, I know that you mentioned that you read these biographies of Harriet Tubman, and the book also has many meditations on the state of being queer and Black in the modern era. What was it like to sit with these truths about America?

Bob: I don’t know what Black History Month is like everywhere else, but in the South, especially–I grew up in Atlanta–we are taught Black history all year long. I went to a Black high school, Black middle school, and a lot of my teachers were Black. And it’s so interesting to have the information given to you, and it’s just cold, hard facts. There’s not always a ton of emotion. I was saying how interesting it is for certain demographics, specifically Black people, and Jewish people experience this too, where you open up textbooks and you see the most brutal depictions of your ancestors and it’s just presented as fact. It is fact, but my God, to see it written in a book, and then just have the teacher talk about what these enslaved people went through, and having it given to you so cold and hard–I can’t speak to everyone, but it kind of hardened me to the point where I got used to hearing it, to opening up a book and there’s a chapter where a person’s been hanged. In writing, I was trying to get it onto the page, and then somehow in reading it, I was able to actually think more about it. Maybe because I felt less goal-oriented at that point, I was just trying to enjoy the literature, and it definitely had more of an effect reading it than writing it.

Elyssa: What are your hopes for the book now that it’s out?

Bob: Someone once told me when you make stuff, you just gotta let it go. It’s out there in the world now. I hope people can enjoy the humor in it, but appreciate the reverence as well. Obviously, I hope they’ll like it, but I hope that maybe it will…I don’t know that my goal is to inspire anyone to do anything because, do your own thing, right? But I certainly hope people learn more about Harriet Tubman. We know a little bit about Harriet Tubman. And I think if everyone knew how truly remarkable this woman is and how unheard of her story is, I think we would all have our mouths agape nonstop at the things she was able to accomplish with what little resources she had. I also want people to know that the book is not an SNL sketch. I think it is a wonderful take on Blackness and queerness, the space we take up in the world, and what freedom actually means. When are you free? When do you get to define your own freedom? Do we ever actually get to be free? I talk a lot about religion in almost all of my work, because I am a religiously traumatized person—I grew up Baptist in the south, and I’m gay, so obviously I’m going to be a skosh traumatized by religion, but I try not to be.

Elyssa: Do you have any other writing projects on the horizon?

Bob: Well, right now, I am currently working on writing the play, and I do like the idea of expanding on the story of The Returning and historical figures coming back. I’ve already kind of teased this, but the next book I’d like to write would be Jesus Christ for President–Jesus Christ comes back, and he runs for President of the United States of America, and then a lot of people are shocked by his politics, which, I don’t know why they’d be shocked, because they’re pretty much written down plain as day in the book, but they’re kind of gagged that he’s low-key a communist.

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is now available.

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