Paris is Burning (1990) is a documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston, produced about drag queens and transgender women in New York City’s drag ball scene during the 1980s. Darnell mentions it multiple times and is surprised when members of Harriet’s band seem familiar with it. Although it plays a small role in this novel, it is an important piece of the author’s exploration of the erasure of African American history and his interrogation of the tension between awareness-raising and exploitative social change movements.

Drag balls are a subculture that feature elaborate, staged runway competitions in which contestants vie for trophies in a variety of categories, including face, walk, dance, and costume. Contestants are divided into “houses,” whose names are often a nod to famous designers, labels, or iconic drag queens in history. These houses are more than just “teams” for competition. They are support systems, often dubbed “queer family” for participants rejected by their biological families and marginalized by society.

Paris is Burning brought this subculture to the attention of the mainstream, chronicling the lives of queer, Black, and Latinx individuals active in the ball scene. It featured prominent women and men such as Angie Xtravaganza, Pepper LBeija, and Willi Ninja, giving audiences an insider’s look at what life was like in a world that was markedly different from “normative” American culture. It highlighted not only the work that went into performing and competing in balls, but also the struggles of the women and men it depicted.

Released during the height of the AIDS crisis, HIV looms large in the film, as do violence against transgender women, racism, discrimination against trans and gay people, the risks of sex work, and substance use disorders. One of the women, Venus Xtravaganza, was murdered during the production of the film, and her death becomes one of its key focal points. At the time of its release, it spotlighted a portion of the population stigmatized by many people and confined to the margins of American society. It popularized ball culture and led to greater acceptance of transgender women.

In the years since its release, the film has become more controversial. The women and men featured in the film were not adequately compensated, and, to an increasing degree, the film itself has begun to be seen as exploitive: Feminist writer bell hooks criticized it for turning a legitimate art form into “spectacle” for mainstream consumers to gawk at. New generations of trans women have expressed concern with the fact that the stories of marginalized Black and brown voices were filtered through the project of a white filmmaker without substantial ties to the community her film depicted.

Bob the Drag Queen, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert’s author, is active in the drag world, but they include Paris is Burning in this book as more than just a nod to their own place within African American history. The way that the film both worked to raise awareness for the struggles Black and transgender women of color faced during the 1980s, and yet exploited the very voices it used in service of that goal, echoes Harriet Tubman’s experiences within the abolitionist movement. Paris is Burning’s inclusion in this book is meant to demonstrate the enduring legacy of racism in America: Both during Harriet Tubman’s lifetime and in the present day, mistreatment and exploitation are common even in social change movements.