“No matter what they say,” Miss Major Griffin-Gracy tells me, “the bearded, old, white, grey-haired, sickly, fucking bastards that run the country are always out to get us.”
Major is best known for her participation in the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, but to refer to her only as a Stonewall veteran does a disservice to her decades as a legendary trans community organiser, spanning everything from AIDS activism to prison abolition. Even at the age of 82 (although she archly insists: “I’m only 21!”) Major is still active, providing a much-needed place of refuge in the House of GG, a retreat and educational centre that she founded for trans women of colour in Little Rock, Arkansas.
She is speaking to me to mark the release of her book, ‘Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary’, formatted as a series of conversations between Major and her personal assistant, journalist Toshio Meronek. Major’s personality shines through unfiltered even in the table of contents, with chapter headings such as ‘Fuck a Butterfly. Embrace the Caterpillar’ and ‘Nobody’s Token Black Bitch’.
