How Bob The Drag Queen’s New Book, ‘Harriet Tubman: Live In Concert,’ Channels The Revolutionary Black History Icon

By Monique Jones, Blavity

Bob the Drag Queen has brought Harriet Tubman back to life with urgency and humor in their new book, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert.

Bob spoke with Blavity ahead of the book’s March 25 release about how they came up with the ingenious idea of a world in which America’s historical figures have come back to life, leading the book’s main character Darnell, a hip-hop producer on a career downturn, to come face to face with the woman called Moses. Even stranger is that Tubman wants his help to create a rap album about her life.

They said that they came up with the idea for the story when they were part of the 2018 Berkeley Repertory Theatre production of Angels in America.

“It just kind of came to me. I thought to myself, I would love to hear Harriet Tubman’s album, which I know sounds crazy, right?” they said. “I mean, I would not call myself a history buff, but I do have an obsession with Harriet Tubman and her story because it doesn’t even sound believable, like when you hear all the stuff that she actually did, it doesn’t even sound real, this woman’s life, right? So I began having this obsession with her and listening to every biography about her, seeing every depiction.”

“I also became really intrigued by the fact that she had only been depicted in one major motion picture [at the time], and that was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. And then after that, she was depicted in the film with Cynthia Erivo and she was also depicted in The Good Lord Bird on Showtime with Ethan Hawke and Daveed Diggs,” they added. “So there’s been a lot of Harriet Tubman buzz since then, but I’ve always been obsessed with Harriet Tubman. When we were younger and we’d all have to do our Black History Month reports, I would always do Harriet Tubman every single time because the more you learn about her, you’re like, ‘My God, this is so unreal.’”

Discover what makes this idea work.

Learn about Tubman’s legacy in New York.

More Black history and entertainment news.