MARSHA

A queen’s legacy.

Drawing on interviews and archival sources, Tourmaline, an artist, Black transgender activist, and Guggenheim Fellow, celebrates trans icon, sex worker, and activist Marsha P. Johnson (1945-92). Born Malcolm, she grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she first tried on her sister’s and mother’s clothing at age 5. In high school, she escaped to New York City on weekends, finding a thriving community of trans people in Times Square and the West Village. She said, “That’s what made me in New York, that’s what made me in New Jersey, that’s what made me in the world: when I became a drag queen, I started to live my life as a woman.” She finally moved to New York in 1963 and changed her name to Marsha. It was a tense time to be queer: Cross-dressing and homosexuality were criminalized, making trans people victims of persecution and violence. In 1969, this oppression erupted in the Stonewall Riots, at which Marsha stood in the forefront of defiance. She joined the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, dedicated to advocating for young trans people. Tourmaline charts Marsha’s transition, which involved hormone replacement therapy, and her successful career as an entertainer. With makeup, beaded jewelry, flowered crown, and glitzy fashion, she cut a memorable figure. Her “groundbreaking commitment to queer glamour and performance,” Tourmaline writes, “paved the way for Black gender-bending, sexually transgressive superstars like Prince and RuPaul.” She was a caring friend, devoting herself “to small, daily acts of beauty,” but she was also troubled: Besides recurring depression, she was HIV positive and suffered from chronic pain from a bullet in her back that could not be removed (a client—a shame-filled taxi driver—shot her after their encounter). Her death at age 47 may have been suicide or murder. In a well-researched biography, Tourmaline makes a persuasive case for remembering her.

A warm homage to a pioneering activist.