In this biography, Miss Marsha's trauma and her joy provide the basis for a life well lived and for revolution. Activist Tourmaline writes a wonderful and accessible biography based upon massive amounts of research: interviews, other research (media) and personal narrative. Johnson was born in 1954 in New Jersey to a working class family. She was assigned the male sex at birth. While her neighborhood was diverse and accepting, the city of Elizabeth itself was not. It was segregated. In 1963 Miss Marsha moved to New York City where she was constantly evolving. She was an unhoused sex worker for most of her life but she cultivated deep and rewarding relationships with other LGBTQ+ activists like Sylvia Rivera. Her life was a series of big events - she was one of the first to resist police at Stonewall in 1969 and she created STAR in the 1970's to help Trans people in NYC. In the 1980's, she became a caretaker during the AIDS epidemic, even though she had HIV herself and had been shot by a john.
I am embarrassed to say that I did not know who Miss Marsha was before I picked up this book and so I didn't realize how much she had actually done in the short period that she was alive - she was found in the Hudson River dead in 1992. I loved this book because the whole book taught me an enormous amount about a person that had an impact on so many people as a whole but also to individual people. She literally changed lives all the while remaining true to herself and who she was. She never lost sight of who she was and what was important to her and it seemed that everything that she did was guided by that. Even though Marsha's life was hard and her death is considered to be a cold case, this biography is a joyful and vibrant celebration of her life. It is a must read. Tourmaline's writing is lyrical and simple - it is clear that Miss Marsha has had a tremendous positive impact in Tourmaline's life.
Highly recommend.
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