I Almost Didn’t Write This Book
A peek behind the curtain on Math In Drag
Tomorrow, March 5th 2024, my very first book Math In Drag will hit shelves and I will officially be a published author. WHAT?!
Math In Drag is part math book, part history book, and part memoir. Each chapter teaches you a different branch of math by using metaphors and examples from drag shows, queer history, and my past. It reveals a hidden universe of math which is creative, fun, complex, and dazzling!
But it wasn’t exactly the book I intended to write.
I was approached to write this book in September 2020 by an editor from Johns Hopkins University Press. My TikTok videos had just gone viral a few months ago and by this time I was known by people as the math-teaching drag queen.
At first I was hesitant about writing a book because it seemed like so much work (IT WAS). But it also sounded like an amazing experience so I said why not!
Getting the book deal wasn’t automatic though, because I had to write a proposal to pitch my ideas and prove why it would be a good investment for the publisher to take on.
The proposal included a questionnaire about who my target audience was, what similar books were already out there, and how many words the book was going to be, among other questions. I also had to write a little sample of what the book would be like so they could judge my writing.
The main feedback I got was that my sample chapter had too much math and not enough drag. Which was frustrating to me. Like what?
Look, I set out to write a math book, not a celebrity memoir or queer history book. I wanted people to read it solely based on the merit of the math content! I wanted it to be respectable just like the math books I had on my shelves, from Matt Parker’s Humble Pi, Jordan Ellenberg’s How Not to Be Wrong, or Eugenia Cheng’s How To Bake Pi.
I was suffering under the same limited perception of myself that I’ve had since I was a little boy: thinking that any expressions of girly, flamboyant queerness automatically made the book less serious, less respectable, and less important. I was still thinking of my queer identity as a weakness instead of a strength.
I WAS COMPLETELY WRONG!
I almost didn’t write this book. I nearly wrote a completely different one.
My editor Tiffany really encouraged me to dig deep and tell my story. She wanted more jokes, more levity, and more personality in general. It was hard because I’m naturally a very serious person believe it or not. But as I submitted more sample chapters, me and Tiffany talked about what worked and what didn’t until we found a good balance of math and drag.
As I spent the next two years writing, I started writing in response to what I was witnessing around the world, with drag bans and protests happening in the US, trolls commenting on my videos, and my journey to learn more about my pre-colonial Filipino roots. I weaved together the history of math with the history of queer rebellion and freedom. The book feels way more special to me now and I’m so proud of what I created.
It’s still a math book, but it’s also so much more!
But don’t take my word for it!
“This is a dazzling, joyful, and hard-hitting account of how math—and humans—cannot be confined to rigid boxes no matter how much some people try to box them in. Kyne's irrepressible spirit shines through bravely and fabulously.”
- Eugenia Cheng, author of How To Bake Pi
Eugenia Cheng blurbed my book!! What a full circle moment!
If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this: that thing you think is your weakness--the thing you feel like you need to hide in order to be taken seriously--is actually your greatest strength.
Write the book that only you can write!
Math In Drag is available on March 5th, 2024! Buy it at your local bookstore, or check out onlinekyne.com/mathindrag for links!
Let me know if you have any specific questions about the book or the process, and I’d be happy to answer them in a future newsletter! Xo Kyne