It’s always weird when someone tries to use demographic as an emblem, rather than a descriptor of experience. It’s reductive and robs us of genuine relationships and the understanding our own history(because like it or not, marginalized history is everyone’s history.) It makes small, unremarkable people too big in our minds, and unique, expansive people too small.
Take, for example, Miss Major.
Miss Major is trans and queer.
She’s Black.
She was at Stonewall.
She was at the forefront of HIV/AIDS healthcare initiatives.
She’s an activist and organizer.
She’s justice-impacted.
A multiple-occasion mental health inpatient.
A personal friend of the late Frank “Big Black” Smith.
A biological parent.
A trans mother.
A tireless advocate for the rights of transgender women of color.
A former sex worker.
She also hates Pride.
She called herself nonbinary before the concept was codified into American identity politics.
She raised her kids in Utah.
Miss Major is all this and more, but if you’ve heard of her at all, she’s probably been flattened into simply a “Black trans activist”, deserving of only performative flowers or scorn.
What I love about this memoir, told in a series of remarkably chatty interviews conducted by journalist Toshio Meronek, is that it forces the reader’s understanding past that. Miss Major is an incredibly nuanced, richly experienced person, and to reduce her to only an emblem of trans experience or politics rather than an individual forced into that role because most of the world won’t let her live in peace, ignores everything that makes that emblematization both necessary and constricting.
Frustration at this comes through in the memoir, as well as pettiness, wobbly moral choices, self-development, politics, justice and most importantly, a lot of love for herself and her community. In between dropping bars of social and political wisdom, Miss Major shares her worst exploits, cusses out those who annoy her, and lays out the reality of her long life, including the unexpected parts.
Good wigs and restorative family time to Miss Major Speaks.
(Fellow readers! Welcome! I’m trying to figure out a schedule for this blog going forward that works with the rest of my life, so be prepared for weirdness. More than the usual, I mean. Also be prepared for great books! If you want to read more books by trans writers, check out this booklist. For more diverse books by diverse readers, check out the Equal Opportunity Bookshop. If you buy something there, we earn a commission.
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