Publishers Weekly
11/07/2022
Cultural critic Seligman (Sontag and Kael) delivers an illuminating history of drag performance through the life of drag queen Doris Fish. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in Sydney, Australia, in 1952, Fish (real name: Philip Mills) became a queer legend in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Drawing on candid and often hilarious interviews with Fish’s family and friends, Seligman recounts his emergence as a performer in Sylvia and the Synthetics, a “psycho troupe” of drag queens in Sydney, and his move to San Francisco in the 1970s, where he blossomed as a sex worker and performer in the drag shows Sluts a Go-Go and Nightclub of the Living Dead and the sci-fi drag film Vegas in Space. Fish’s “enormous libido” and wicked wit—after being diagnosed with AIDS, he held a tribute for himself called “Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?”—are on full display, and Seligman weaves in enlightening histories of the AIDS pandemic, Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign, and more, while making a strong case for drag shows as political theater that “accomplish satire’s deepest dream: not just to rail against society, but to change it.” This smart, funny, and sexy queer history is a smash. Photos. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
A life well worth examining….confidently written, wistful and quite personal….had me scrawling exclamation points in the margins.”—Alexandra Jacobs, the New York Times
“This smart, funny, and sexy queer history is a smash.”—Publishers Weekly
“An intimate feel to a lively read. Drag culture and camp humor hit it big…”—Kirkus
“What Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? ultimately does is remind queers, and young drag artists especially, that they have a cultural lineage. Years before RuPaul dared put a drag competition on television, Fish dared be a queen of all media.”—Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
“A wonderfully constructed portrait of not only an important player in queer and drag history, but a document of an era that allowed for a more radical—anti-capitalist, anti-assimilationist, pro-freak—way of living for queer artists. This book filled me with longing and excitement, for both a lost past and the wild possibilities of our future.”—Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up and Against Memoir
“An entertaining look at the life of drag entertainer Doris Fish… who inadvertently shaped the fight for queer liberation. Campy, fabulous, and informative, Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? is more necessary than ever.”—Buzzfeed
“A perceptive portrait of [a] fascinating person… This honest and compassionate depiction of someone who was true to their passions will inspire readers.”—Library Journal
“[A] fantastic, immersive history of drag… mandatory reading for drag fans and queens of a certain age.”—EDGE Media Network
“Seligman spares his readers none of the horrors of AIDS… And rightly so, for it’s wrong to only remember the glamour of drag queens past—and not the deaths that have made them something we can only remember in the first place.” —The Baffler
"Illuminating." —The Washington Blade
Library Journal
01/01/2023
Philip Mills, born in Australia in 1952, became known as the drag performer Doris Fish in Sydney's evolving gay community of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1975, the performer moved to San Francisco. Seligman (Sontag and Kael) has written a perceptive portrait of this fascinating person who, in addition to leading the Sluts-a-Go-Go drag troupe, was a visual artist, a model for a line of humorous greeting cards, a gifted makeup stylist, and a beloved member of a large family, both biological and found. Interviews with friends and family, letters, and personal recollections of Philip/Doris and the milieu of the 1970s and 1980s in San Francisco and Sydney bring them to life on the page. Interwoven throughout is the history of drag and Doris's role in its acceptance into the mainstream. The frightening and tragic impact of AIDS in the late 1980s is explored, as the subject of this gripping biography died of complications of AIDS in 1991. VERDICT This honest and compassionate depiction of someone who was true to their passions will inspire readers, especially those interested in LGBTQIA+ history.—Laurie Unger Skinner
Kirkus Reviews
2022-11-29
The life story of iconic drag queen Doris Fish (1952-1991) and a broader examination of post-Stonewall gay life.
Philip Clargo Mills, born in Manly Vale, a suburb of Sydney, grew up as a “placid young introvert,” and “when he came out to the family, at around eighteen, no one was remotely surprised.” By that time, writes Seligman, author of Sontag and Kael, he had already discovered Sydney's drag scene. Nightclub fame with his group Sylvia & the Synthetics brought him to San Francisco, which became his second home. Good looks and a voracious sexual appetite made him a “natural” prostitute, which gave him the funds and freedom to fully become Doris. Sporting a distinctive look—“beehive, short, thick lashes, and very pale mod-style lips—Doris led a trio called Sluts-A-Go-Go, which helped make her a star of the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras. Her métier was makeup ("I'd paint my eyeballs if I could!"), and the raison d'être of her shows was their costume changes. Extravaganzas such as the "Nightclub of the Living Dead" and the film Vegas in Space featured plots that were "just a rack to hang the drag on.” Ultimately, writes the author, Doris' "bad-girl drag" and "aggressive glamour" helped to define an era in which drag queens were evolving "from social lepers to culture heroes” and the world was reeling from the AIDS epidemic. By the time of Doris' death from AIDS in 1991, drag had transformed from insider entertainment into popular culture, “homosexuality went from being regarded as disgraceful and revolting to not a big deal.” The book benefits from the author's friendships and frank interviews with many of its principal players. Many scenes from Doris' later life read like compiled oral histories, which results is an intimate feel to a lively read.
Drag culture and camp humor hit it big in the life of Doris Fish.
