Book by Canada’s Drag Race competitor combines both math and drag

Sharing a love of math and drag A Kitchener, Ont. drag queen talks about her art and how it’s breaking down math stereotypes. Stefanie Davis has that story.

A drag queen from Kitchener, Ont. has combined her love for math and drag in her first book.

Kyne Santos started dabbling in drag while completing a math degree at the University of Waterloo, for which she had a full ride scholarship.

“I started watching Rupaul’s Drag Race and, before that, I guess I didn’t really have the best opinion of drag queens,” she said. “I didn’t really know what they were because I wasn’t going to drag clubs here in Kitchener – there weren’t that many. But seeing Drag Race and seeing drag queens sort of be humanized and be able to tell their story really let me relate to them.”

Kyne started posting drag videos on TikTok during the pandemic, which eventually evolved to include math content. She later went on to compete on the first season of Canada’s Drag Race.

“I thought it would just be funny and camp, but I got loads of comments right away from people saying that they loved learning math through this fun, colourful, creative lens,” Kyne explained.

Those videos racked up millions of views.

One person who stumbled upon them was Tiffany Gasbarrini, a senior acquisitions editor for STEM books at Johns Hopkins University Press.

She said the creativity of Kyne’s content caught her eye, so Gasbarrini reached out about turning her content into a book.

“I’ve never seen someone before take these two seemingly disparate areas of artistry – because that’s really what math is, even though we don’t often think about it that way – and join them together in such a way that would attract people to math who generally are even a little bit scared of it,” Gasbarrini said.

Kyne decided to accept the offer, even though she had never considered it before.

“I was shocked. I didn’t think I could be an author. I was like: ‘I just make silly little videos dressing up, what do I know about writing a book?’” she said.

Then she got to work, initially focusing more on math and less on drag.

“I thought it would be revolutionary enough to have a drag queen writing a math book,” Kyne explained. “My publisher and all the reviewers were saying: ‘We want more shine, we want more drag.’ I thought that would kind of make the book less serious, but I guess that was that limited perception of myself kicking in and thinking that the drag made it less serious.”

Kyne went back and added more flair to the book, which was released this month.

“It’s part math book, part memoir,” she explained. “Every chapter teaches a different subject of math, from geometry to probability to statistics, but I teach it through anecdotes from my own life and from the history of drag.”

Gasbarrini said it was all about striking the perfect balance between being a credible, informative book that also offered insight into 2SLGBTQI+ issues and community.

“Those kinds of issues really come through on Kyne’s social media as well – that sort of flamboyance in terms of looks and personality – so it made sense to incorporate that into the manuscript,” she explained. “We want the audience to be very broad, and so [the book] has been constructed in such a way that it can appeal to everybody from high school students all the way up to eminent scholars in the field who can look at things from a different perspective. So I think it is very approachable.”

Part of the book also touches on Kyne's journey as a queer person in the STEM field.

“I used to think that in order to be a scientist or a mathematician and to be taken seriously, I had to be straight and have a wife and wear a suit and tie. And that nobody would take me seriously if I was gay or if I was really flamboyant,” Kyne added. “I just want to show people that you don’t have to conform to a specific, rigid stereotype to be a math person.”

The book can be purchased wherever books are sold, including Words Worth Books in Waterloo, Ont.

Co-owner David Worsley said it was a no-brainer to add the “great story” to his shelves.

“Anything local will always work and it always has,” he said. “This book in particular, I mean, Math in Drag – why not? Everybody has a horror story about math.”

Kyne said it’s been special seeing the local support, in addition to its world wide success.

“I went to a Catholic high school here in Kitchener and people were really accepting and people just treated me the same as everybody else. So I’m really proud to be part of this community.”

Kyne is now heading out on a Canadian book tour, with a stop in Kitchener’s Registry Theatre on April 5.

“It’s the show I’m doing in collaboration with one of my high school math teachers,” she explained. “He’s a jazz musician so it’s going to be math and jazz and drag.”