Entry · catalog no. 1275
reading is fundamental
/ ˈriːdɪŋ ɪz ˌfʌndəˈmɛntəl /REE-ding iz fun-duh-MEN-tuhl
interjection · Harlem and Manhattan ballroom scene, New York · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
A deadpan declaration that reading — the art of taking a person apart out loud, precisely and wittily, in front of an audience — is a core skill rather than an optional one. Said before or after delivering a read, or to license one. The joke is lifting a children''s literacy slogan and using it for verbal evisceration.
“You came in here with last season''s shoes and a fresh attitude. Reading is fundamental, baby.”
Origin & Attribution
Black and Latino LGBTQ ballroom culture in New York. Reading as a form is older and documented outside the balls — Green's Dictionary of Slang records read meaning to reprimand as US Black slang by 1952, and Bruce Rodgers' The Queens' Vernacular documented the gay-slang senses in 1972. Dorian Corey lays out the form on camera in Paris Is Burning in 1990, calling reading the real art of the insult and naming shade as what grows out of it. The pun is on the literacy nonprofit Reading Is Fundamental, founded 1966 — that organization is the source of the wordplay, not of the meaning. RuPaul's Drag Race made the phrase national in 2010 with a challenge of that name, and the show itself credits the ball scene; filing the phrase under drag generally, or under Drag Race, launders out the fact that it is specifically Black and Latino ballroom speech.
1990
Paris Is Burning documents Dorian Corey explaining reading as the art form behind shade
2010
RuPaul's Drag Race runs its first Reading Challenge under this name, Season 2
2021
Namwali Serpell's "Notes on Shade" traces the lineage from The Queen (1968) through Paris Is Burning
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Northeast
Harlem and Manhattan ballroom scene, New York · 1990s
Spoken by
Black and Latino ballroom and Black queer speakers
$READINThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady36 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
72/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1990
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@bxgriot
The Bronx, NY
@phillyanne
Philadelphia, PA
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Citations & Sources
■
Paris Is Burning, dir. Jennie Livingston — documentary film · 1990
submitted
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RuPaul's Drag Race S2E7, "Once Upon a Queen," Logo — television · 2010
submitted
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+ Cite a sourceNamwali Serpell, "Notes on Shade," Post45 — essay · 2021
submitted
See also