Now, in her new memoirMy Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska?
Excerpt from My Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska?
I wasn’t scared of losing.
Jinkx Monsoon and Alaska from ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ season 5.Santiago Felipe
I was scared of missing out on all the fun stuff we got to do.
What if I got sent home before Snatch Game?
What if I didn’t get to perform in the Rusical?
Alaska models her new book ‘My Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska?'.Magnus Hastings
I was having so much fun being there.
My experience with her was never like that.
Even when the cameras were down, she was chatting with the girls and making jokes.
The cover of ‘My Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska?'.Chronicle Books
There was definitely a mutual respect between the contestants and the host.
The respect went both ways.
PENNY TRATION:
The first queen eliminated.
She helped me into my plastic dress for the first challenge.
She stapled me into it.
I was shocked she went home first.
We shot the show promos the day after her elimination, so she had to stick around for them.
She was a good sport.
She continues to do Drag and is a total class act.
MONICA BEVERLY HILLZ:
Monica came out as a trans woman on theDrag Racerunway.
Or at least it was very unlikely you’d get on.
Every single one of us from season five had previously worked with trans Drag queens.
We all loved Monica and supported her.
The fact she even had to come out was perplexing to me.
Arbitrary restrictions like these are not only discriminatory, but they can be dangerous, too.
There have been stories of other queens who competed onDrag Racewho stopped taking their hormones when they got cast.
BOY DRAG:
I got in trouble on episode three for my Farmer Ed/Peewee Herman boy Drag.
“You’re born naked and the rest is Drag.”
To me, my character was one of the best in the bunch.
And I was wearing eyelashes!
ALYSSA EDWARDS AND COCO MONTRESE:
This rivalry was so exhausting.
They kept talking about it: “We have a history.
We have drama with one another.
We’ll talk about it later.”
It felt like a carefully crafted ploy for television drama.
It made for good TV, but damn it was a relief when they finally let it all out.
SNATCH GAME:
One of the best episodes to watch but one of the most boring to film.
It was so f—ing boring.
You don’t have a live audience.
It’s like performing in a vacuum.
There was no way to know if you were doing well or not.
I came in with the vague idea to do Lady Bunny.
I’d never done her before, and I didn’t prepare.
LIP-SYNCS:
The most exciting part of the show.
They turn the music up so loud in the room, and there’s so much energy.
We all knew who the winner would be, every single time.
RED, FOR FILTH:
I sometimes have a tendency to flat-out steal lines from other people.
In the case of my perfume commercial, I stole directly from RuPaul herself.
“R U ready, for me?”
That was an old RuPaul saying from theRed Hotera.
That might have been the reason why she liked my commercial so much.
JINKX MONSOON:
Jinkx was unassuming because she was nice, and her look was rough around the edges.
None of us saw her as a threat, only as a nice person.
All that had mattered in my life was getting on the show.
But now that winning was within reach, I was so close to having it all.
There were only two messages.
Okay, whatever that was about.
Next message, from Sharon: “Alaska, bad news.
Veruca burnt the house down and the cat’s missing.
Welcome home, baby.”
