The book's central theme is that eunuchs are portrayed as villains excessively so in fiction and this portrayal is: 1) unjust and 2) a harbinger of discrimination against those who are conspicuously gender variant. And it is a personal account because Lieberman identifies himself as a transsexual. Painting Dragons touches upon issues ranging from the history of Chinese dynasties to contemporary politics and discrimination against transsexuals. Those reviews provide the core data Lieberman’s uses to support his thesis that eunuchs are too commonly and consistently presented as uni-dimensional villains in fiction.

Lieberman’s writing range comes through in this book, which is first and foremost a series of book reviews. Lieberman can be both deeply analytical in assessing the writing of others, and a master of imagery and symbolism in the poems he produces. He is also artistic in many other ways and has published rich essays on ethics and politics, and a couple of collection of poems. He is a profound reader and has published a multitude of book reviews. Tucker Lieberman is first and foremost a man of letters, with great literary breadth. It was an easy read because Lieberman is a master wordsmith.

The book is both scholarly and accessible.

I just read Tucker Lieberman's book Painting Dragons, on the characterization of eunuchs in fiction. He and his husband, the science fiction writer Arturo Serrano, live in Bogotá, Colombia. He studied philosophy at Brown University and journalism at Boston University. With other gay men, he trained as a life coach at the Easton Mountain retreat center in New York in 2016. His essays are in anthologies including It Came From the Closet (2022), the 2021 Lambda finalist Trans-Galactic Bike Ride, the 2012 Lambda finalist Letters for my Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect, and the 2011 Lambda winner Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community. His bilingual poetry book, Enkidu is Dead and Not Dead / Enkidu está muerto y no lo está (2021), inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh, was a finalist in the 2020 Grayson Books poetry contest and nominated for a 2022 SFPA Elgin Award. He also wrote Ten Past Noon: Focus and Fate at Forty (2020), Painting Dragons: What Storytellers Need to Know About Writing Eunuch Villains (2018), Bad Fire: A Memoir of Disruption (2019, revised 2021). Tucker Lieberman is the author of the novel Most Famous Short Film of All Time (tRaum Books, September 20, 2022).

Painting Dragons by Tucker Lieberman