{"id":51561,"date":"2025-07-09T14:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T14:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/51561\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T14:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T14:06:12","slug":"kyle-casey-chu-talks-drag-and-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/51561\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Casey Chu talks drag and new book"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KyleKyle Casey Chu, author of \u201cThe Queen Bees of Tybee County.\u201d (Photo by Gabriela Hasbun)<\/p>\n

As if being a drag performer and filmmaker didn\u2019t already consume so much of her time, Kyle Casey Chu (aka Panda Dulce) can now call herself an author.<\/p>\n

Chu\u2019s YA novel, \u201cThe Queen Bees of Tybee County,\u201d is set in Atlanta and deals with a teenager\u2019s self-discovery and eventual self-acceptance. Derrick Chan is a Chinese American seventh grade basketball star and the jewel in the crown of his team at\u00a0 Bayard Middle School. One summer, thinking he is going to basketball camp, he winds up at his grandmother Claudia\u2019s house in rural Georgia. There, he discovers she volunteers for a local junior pageant, and his love for the world of drag begins to grow.<\/p>\n

The book released April, and according to a press release\u00a0has been optioned\u00a0by Lambur Productions for a UK\u00a0television show.<\/p>\n

Chu has wanted to write a novel for some time now. She came out in the seventh grade, which is also when she began diving into books and film. That was also the year she wrote her first book.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was me processing being queer and having feelings for my best friend, which is such a queer trope,\u201d Chu said. \u201cIt made sense for me to begin writing since it was such a significant time in my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since a young age, Chu has been interested in performance and drag. She started doing drag for fun in high school, and later became one of the founding queens of Drag Story Hour, a nationwide program where drag queens read stories to children in libraries. Drag Story Hour<\/a> was created by lesbian author Michelle Tea in 2015 in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she had a kid she realized there was a dearth of places for queer families and queer kids so her idea was \u2013 why not bring drag queens to youth spaces, as they are fierce and fabulous storytellers, to lead readings for kids,\u201d Chu said about the creation of Drag Story Hour. \u201cIt was a hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t always fun and games. In 2022, far right extremists stormed into one of Chu\u2019s events<\/a> to try and silence her. The incident was investigated, but no arrests were made.<\/p>\n

The incident made Chu want to continue to tell gay stories, such as \u201cThe Queen Bees of Tybee County.\u201d Her goal with the book was to write about a Chinese American kid balancing different aspects of his life in sports as well as his burgeoning passion for drag.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy editor and I thought the pageant was such a good structure for storytelling and coming to one\u2019s own identity, because it\u2019s about expressing who you are and putting it at full volume,\u201d Chu said. \u201cIt\u2019s also a fish out of water story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Derrick\u2019s grandmother Claudia begins as a mysterious figure in the novel, someone who Derrick only sees for requisite family holidays and birthdays. Yet over the summer, he uncovers more of her layers.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Claudia] was forced to blaze her own trail and embrace her own identity and courage as a person by vying for the queen bee pageant\u2019s title herself,\u201d Chu said. \u201cAs Derrick is learning more about himself, she is there to facilitate the process and give him what he needs. As he discovers he is queer and has always had a passion for fashion and drag and performance, he gets to uncover that in the freedom of a town away from home.\u201d<\/p>\n

To do research for the novel, Chu visited Atlanta and talked to a lot of queer and trans Asian Americans who are from the area. She talked to people who grew up in rural Georgia and moved to the city, as well as queer and trans middle schoolers to get the full scope of the experience for her book. She also attended a pageant and drag shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although Chu has spent most of her life in San Francisco, one of her first roommates was from Atlanta. In writing the book, Chu wanted to honor the legacy of pageants and drag in the city. She feels what sets Atlanta drag apart from other areas is the fanfare and the aesthetic of it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Coastal regions where I come from, a lot of it is more experimental and focuses on performance. It means smaller hair leotards and numbers that are jaw droppers,\u201d Chu said. \u201cIn Atlanta what I have seen is taller hair and floor length gowns. There is so much time and care put into the spectacle of it all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chu said she thinks it\u2019s an injustice when people give Southern queens flack for not doing flips and other showy maneuvers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw my first drag performance in Atlanta, it was Neon Moon,\u201d she said. \u201cThis woman knew how to command a stage without movement and without so much effort and sweat, committing to a part, making eye contact and fully believing in it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyle Casey Chu, author of \u201cThe Queen Bees of Tybee County.\u201d (Photo by Gabriela Hasbun) As if being…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":51562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,38631,38632,171,38633,38634,38635,38636,38637,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-51561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-derrick-chan","10":"tag-drag-story-hour","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-kyle-casey-chu","13":"tag-lamur-productions","14":"tag-michelle-tea","15":"tag-panda-dulce","16":"tag-the-queen-bees-of-tybee-county","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114823665101485847","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}