Stillness and Survival

"A luminous, powerfully-written homage to the liberating verve of gay culture."- Kirkus ReviewsKirkus verdict: GET ITSome stories don't need exaggeration. Just honesty. Stillness and Survival by Jacob Anthony Rose is a raw memoir about trauma, drag as survival, chosen family, and learning that love was never something to earn. A powerful, deeply human read."A raw, luminous memoir of resilience that transforms pain into power." -Kathryn Dare, San Francisco Book Review"Behind-the-scenes glimpses into the life of a drag performer punctuate the darkness of Rose's trauma with buoyancy and hope." -BookLife ReviewsI was a quiet boy with loud dreams. But dreams don't grow well in a house full of fear.As a gay child in a home where silence meant survival, I learned to vanish. For years, I kept my voice hidden - not just from the world, but from myself.Then came music. Drag. Glitter. Applause.And, for a time, freedom. Onstage, I could be someone bigger than the pain. For twenty years, I sang and performed my way into pieces of joy I never thought I'd know.But trauma has its own rhythm.In the quiet of the covid years, the past came roaring back. I lost my voice again - this time to adulthood pain, depression, and the unhealed echoes of my childhood. Stillness and Survival is a story of silence and expression, queerness and survival, collapse and return. It is about finding your own voice - again and again - even when the world tries to take it away.This is not just a memoir.It's a reclaiming.