This book set off a barrage of calls and complaints to Moon’s library
As book bans and challenges continue to increase in the nation at unprecedented rates, Pittsburgh-area libraries are seemingly the latest target.
At Moon Township Public Library, a barrage of comments and threats hit the library in December 2021 after librarians highlighted the children’s book “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” by Lil Miss Hot Mess, an Arizona-based drag queen.
It was one of at least five challenges at public libraries across Allegheny County in recent months.
Lil Miss Hot Mess — who serves on the board of Drag Queen Story Hour, which has been at the center of protests across the country — sat down for a phone interview with the Post-Gazette to discuss the current political climate around children’s books and challenges facing “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish.”
Q: What was your inspiration behind writing “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish”?
A: The inspiration really came out of doing drag story hours and trying to find new ways to engage children to not just passively listen to books but to really actively join in. It actually started as a song I would sing with kids. I came up with it pretty quickly, like literally on the subway on my way to a reading one day. I was just sort of thinking about how drag often uses parody and satire to draw on elements of pop culture and give them a little bit of a queer twist and I kind of thought that was something aesthetically kids could appreciate and learn from if I did that with children’s music or children’s songs. It kind of all just came to me very quickly. It was fun to think about the ways such a popular children’s song like “Wheels on the Bus” could be rewritten to be about drag queens.
Q: Have you received any pushback to the book?
A: I have. I haven’t done the best job of tracking it but I do know unfortunately it has been challenged in a number of places and appeared on a number of lists. I don’t know if it’s been actually pulled off of shelves or fully banned but I do know that it has received challenges.
Q: Were you surprised the book received pushback?
A: I can’t say I’m surprised just given the political climate and all the attacks we’ve faced with Drag Queen Story Hour. I’d say I’m disappointed. On a basic level I don’t think we should be banning books for any reason. I think it goes against the values of free speech and free expression in our country. And I think that they’re fun. I think they invite kids to take risks and to potentially explore different ways of kind of showing up in the world. It’s a shame that people want to take that away from children.
Q: What was the inspiration for starting Drag Queen Story Hour?
A: I didn’t start them, I just kind of got in at a good time. But they were started in San Francisco in 2015 by an organization called Radar Productions. I think in some ways it was such a wild idea whose time had come. I think that the inspiration was really about seeing the affinities between drag in so much of children’s education programming. I think that drag, it is about LGBT culture and it is about playing with gender norms and other kinds of assumptions or expectations in culture but it is kind of fundamentally about play. It’s about dressing up, it’s about making yourself over and then in doing so imagining how the world could be a more sparkly and fabulous place. So I think that’s something that kids really are primed for and can kind of easily understand and can kind of quickly join in those playful celebrations.
Q: Tell me about the pushback those story hours have received.
A: We’ve received pushback since almost the very beginning of doing story hours including in some of the bigger more seemingly liberal cities as well as smaller towns. It really intensified in the last year. I would say even since spring of 2022 when we started seeing really kind of violent threats and protests with white nationalist militia groups like the Proud Boys. And then also kind of building off of that seeing a lot of conservative politicians starting to introduce legislation at the state level but also at the federal level to try to criminalize drag performances and children’s attendance at drag performances and to classify drag as an adult form of entertainment and restrict where it can take place and things like that. I think at the end of the day it’s fundamentally un-American to try to restrict our creative expression and I also just think it’s sad. I mean drag is all about play, imagination and spreading a sense of joy and love and belonging. Drag tends to be a pretty awesome artform. We’re all about building community and having a good laugh together so it’s always kind of sad to me that people want to try to shut down the party.
Q: Why is it important that children have access to the books and story hours?
A: I think it’s important that kids see the world they live in reflected back to them. LGBT people are in every community whether we’re in drag or not, whether we’re at the library or not and kids deserve to learn about our contributions to our communities, our cultures. I think it’s fun. I think it helps kids learn to express themselves, to stand up for what they believe in and to make the world a little more fabulous.