Library Takes Pride In Drag Queen Story Hour

Sparkle Diamond and her young readers. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Just off Harrison Street, universes were opening page by page. In one, Jacob twirled through the dress-up corner of his classroom, shimmying into a sparkly pink gown and matching tiara. In another, Sparkle A. Diamond was walking the aisles of IKEA with her mom, on the way to buy the first sewing machine she would ever own. 

“Jacob is wearing girl clothes!” insisted a character in the book, and Diamond sat up a little straighter with the hint of a scowl. Their teacher Ms. Wilson shook her head. “The dress-up corner is where we come to use our imaginations,” she said. “You can be a dinosaur, a princess, a farmer—anything!” 

That story unfolded Wednesday afternoon, as the New Haven Pride Center and New Haven Free Public Library teamed up for a drag queen story hour just in time for Pride Month. Held at the library’s Mitchell Branch in Westville, it celebrated the depth and diversity of the LGBTQ+ community, including the freedom of children to make their own choices around gender identity and gender expression. 

It came amidst local pushback to the library’s work with the Pride Center, in the form of a letter urging the public library to stop hosting drag queen story hours. The letter marks the latest in a years-long handful of proposed book bans protests, and threats of violence aimed exclusively at LGBTQ+ people in Connecticut. More on that below. 

“I grew up in the Caribbean, in a place that was hugely homophobic, and I wish I had a book called Sparkle Boy that I could refer back to,” said Diamond, rocking a belted A-line dress patterned with black-and-white newsprint. "A book to really help me find myself, you know? I think a lot of times, it's really helping people to clarify who they are.”

“These events, the drag artist story hours, bring so much representation to not only LGBTQ+ parents, but LGBTQ+ youth,” said Laura Boccadoro, communications coordinator and co-producer of New Haven Pride at the Pride Center. “The books that Sparkle read were very different books, but at the end of the day, they had very similar messages. ‘You are you. Dress who you want. Be who you want. Identify how you want.’”

Those words came to life again and again Wednesday, as kids and parents filled Mitchell's program room just past 4 p.m. Some, fresh off the second week of school, made a beeline for handheld rainbow flags and stickers. Others scooted forward on a rug that has become a beloved fixture of Stay N’ Play at Mitchell, now so popular that it happens twice on Tuesday mornings.

Taking a seat at the front of the room, Diamond lifted up a copy of Lesléa Newman’s Sparkle Boy, which tells the story of a little boy named Casey who loves his sister’s swishing skirts, dazzling nail polish and sparkling bracelets. Newman, who published the book in 2017, wrote it as a nod to a real-life Casey in her own friend circle. 

As she opened the book, Diamond transported young readers to the home of Jessie and Casey, two siblings with a love for each other—and for sparkly things. On the page, Casey admired his older sister’s dress, watching in awe as it glittered and spun in their living room. “Shimmery shimmery!” Diamond exclaimed in her best guess at Casey’s small, sweet voice, and the room seemed to lean in. 

“Sounds like me as a kid!” Diamond beamed. In Casey’s world, which did not seem so different from New Haven, the sparkles multiplied. There were sparkly nails to be painted after Jessie returned from a sleepover, sparkly bracelets to be worn after they shone on abuelita’s wrist, sparkly skirts to be played with during story time at the library.

When Jessie questioned whether a boy should wear sparkles, her parents put her qualms to rest. So did she, when a fellow boy teased her brother during storytime. In a program room where kids arrived wearing all make and manner of clothes, the story didn’t seem so far away at all. 

Diamond took a beat as listeners clapped their hands, a few bobbing up and down with rainbow flags. Then she made an exciting announcement: she would need help picking the next book. On a table nearby, library staff had set up titles from Vanessa and Gerald Ford’s Calvin to Theresa Thorn’s It Feels So Good To Be Yourself, all waiting for young hands to pick them up and explore. 

“Who is going to help me?” she asked. Half a dozen hands went up. Diamond scanned the space, and her eyes rested on 8-year-old Gabriela Diaz, sitting alongside their sister, Magdalena, and mom, Jenny Heikkila Diaz or JHD. Gabriela approached the table thoughtfully, their hand hovering over Jacob’s New Dress before selecting it from the group. 

In the book, written by Sarah and Ian Hoffman in 2014, Jacob is a little boy who loves wearing dresses—so much that he wants to wear one to school. Initially, his parents hesitate—largely because they don’t have a precedent, and are worried about what will happen to their son if he defies gendered expectations. They ultimately agree, trusting a choice that makes him feel more comfortable in his own skin. 

As it came to Mitchell, Diamond shape-shifted between characters, taking on different voices for Jacob, his friend Emily, the no-nonsense teacher Ms. Wilson and her student Christopher, a pint-sized square of a child who didn’t believe that boys and dresses belonged in the same breath. She added pauses and velvety, sweet depth when she was voicing Jacob’s mother, changing the pitch when she took on his father just pages later.  

 Top: Gabriela and Diamond. Bottom: Illa Hiller and her daughter, Hypatia Hughes.

When Christopher announced that he simply wanted to be “a boy” during dress up, Diamond scoffed and added an edge to her voice, to show the character’s exasperation. When Jacob told Emily that a pseudo-toga he’d made out of a towel was a “dress thing,” Diamond emphasized the last word until the room erupted in giggles from both kids and parents. 

As the story deepened, she kept time with it. When Christopher ripped Jacob’s “dress thing” off of him, Diamond let something catch in her throat in time with Jacob’s crying. From hesitant, Jacob’s mom became resolute, helping him make the dress. Diamond nearly glowed when Jacob’s dad announced “well, it’s not what I would wear, but it looks great.” She burst into a smile when Jacob acknowledged—and then moved beyond—a school bully. 

When at last, Diamond-as-narrator read that “Jacob felt his dress surrounding him like armor. Soft, cottony, magic armor,” the room burst into applause. Diamond took a moment to think of her own mother, Shirley Vanterpool, who bought her a sewing machine so she could make and tailor her own clothes. That includes outfits she wears as a drag queen, from floor-length gowns to puffy-sleeved dresses in layers of cotton and tulle.  

“Miss Sparkle, did you make your fabulous dress?” asked Illa Hiller, who lives in the Annex neighborhood of New Haven. Her daughter, Hypatia Hughes, just started the second grade at Elm City Montessori School, and left with multiple new rainbow flags adorning her outfit. Hiller, who identifies as pansexual, later said that the story hours are “showing that we exist and showing support for people who need it.” 

“I did!” Diamond exclaimed, delighted. Like Jacob, “I have a very supportive mommy as well, and she is amazing.” 

Magdalena, JHD, and Gabriela. 

Across the room, the book was a hit. “I liked it,” Gabriela said later, after the book had been returned to the table and Diamond had danced to Stephanie Mills’ “Home.” “Even though somebody was mean to him and kept taking his things and telling him that boys don’t wear dresses, he still wore it and made a dress for himself.” 

For them, it was a welcome addition to Sparkle Boy, which is already a favorite in the family’s New Haven home. “I like how even though people say he can’t wear things because that’s not what boys wear, he still wears them because he wants to,” they said. They can see part of themselves in both books: they are currently in their close-cropped fresh cut and golf polo era.

“People like to talk about diversity and inclusion, but you have to actually practice it in everything that you do,” added JHD as both kids checked out a small mountain of books. “We’re really fortunate that Connecticut has Pride for so long.” 

“We try to go to as many Pride events across the state, because we’re part of the community, but also because, why would you want to miss out on such an important celebration of everyone being who they are?”

“They’re Storytellers, They’re Artists, & They Understand Magic”

Sarah Quigley, children's librarian at the Mitchell Branch Library. 

Before Wednesday’s story hour, both Quigley and Young Minds & Family Learning Librarian Soma Mitra received a letter opposing the story hours, and asking that the library end its relationship with the New Haven Pride Center immediately. Thirty-seven people signed the letter. While several identified themselves as patrons of the NHFPL, many do not live in New Haven. 

In it, signatories accused the library of trying “to sexualize the youngest of our children,” a phrase that has become a favorite talking point of conservatives across the country (yes, those also supporting candidates who have molested women, Venmoed teenagers for sex and called gun violence in schools part of everyday life). In addition, it compared drag to the use of Blackface, which in the 19th and 20th centuries reinforced harmful and false racial stereotypes as a way to further disenfranchise Black Americans. 

“Just as a person dressed in blackface would not be allowed to lead an event in the NHFPL, if not outright denied access to the space, so too should people dressed in womanface not be allowed to lead events, especially for our children,” it reads. 

It appeared to miss entirely the subversive and biting history of drag, which was created as not just a place for more free and fluid gender expression and informal networks of mutual aid, but also as a critique of the impossible standards to which women were and are held. In this reading, drag is an offering of solidarity from another group that has been consistently marginalized, mocked, misunderstood, and made to feel unsafe in society.  

Mayor Justin Elicker at a block party for the New Haven Pride Center in November 2021. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

Mayor Justin Elicker, who has for years brought his wife and two daughters to Pride celebrations on Orange Street and the New Haven Green, suggested that parents who do not care for drag queens or the story hours can choose not to go. He noted that the events take place in program rooms, which means they are self-contained and completely voluntary.  

“We're [the City of New Haven] really proud of our relationship with the Pride Center because we want to create safe inclusive spaces for everyone,” he said in a phone call Thursday morning. “One thing I really take issue with is comparing the drag storytimes to Blackface. Drag is about embracing people’s identities. I think it's an offensive comparison. No matter how people feel, this is an optional thing for them.”

“We love going to events that express New Haven's diversity,” he added of his family. “Unfortunately a lot of what is driving some people at the national level to push against these types of programs is an unfounded fear that ‘somehow my child will be brainwashed or influenced out of my control.’ I think we have to trust in our children to make choices about who they are and be exposed to environments that embrace our diversity.”

Sarah Quigley, who has served as Mitchell’s children’s librarian since last year, added that the diversity is part of the point. 

"My favorite part was watching the kids, and their faces just full of light and wonder. Like, how can this be real? How can this really be happening? And you know, as a children's librarian, one of my big things is doing story time and trying to make it magical—trying to make kids believe in magic. And then Sparkle walks in and turns it on, and it's like—" 

She snapped her fingers. "Magic! I feel like drag performers were born to be story time leaders. They're storytellers, they're artists, and they understand magic."