The future of Black, queer, and trans liberation explored by a
legendary transgender elder and activist
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall
Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who
has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the
HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. She has
shared tips with other sex workers in the nascent drag ball scene of
the late 1960s, and helped found one of America’s first needle
exchange clinics from the back of her van.
Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life–told
with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity-and a roadmap for the
challenges black, brown, queer and trans youth will face on the path
to liberation today.
Her incredible story of a life lived and a world survived becomes a
conduit for larger questions about the riddle of collective
liberation. For a younger generation, she warns about the traps of
‘representation,’ the politics of ‘self-care,’ and the
frequent dead-ends of non-profit organizing; for all of us, she is a
strike against those who would erase these histories of struggle.
Miss Major offers something that cannot be found elsewhere: an
affirmation that our vision for freedom can and must be more
expansive than those on offer by mainstream institutions.