This month, we're ​s​etting the record straight (​w​ell...) and reading MISS MAJOR SPEAKS: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary, by Toshio Meronek.

Stonewall veteran and lifelong organizer, Miss Major ​Griffin-Gracy spent decades fighting for the survival and dignity of trans women, long before rainbow capitalism learned how to print a tote bag.

H​er grassroots networks of care ​were expansive: from supporting people living with HIV and AIDS at the height of the epidemic, to launching San Francisco's first mobile needle exchange in the 90s, to leading the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP)​ in advocacy for current and formerly incarcerated folks​, Miss Major reminds us that queer liberation has always been rooted in the work of Black trans women who organized, not for recognition, but for survival and​ dignity. 

This isn't a polished, PR-friendly memoir — it's testimony, a movement's history reframed by someone who lived and shaped it. Through candid dialogue​, Miss Major reflects on​ sex work, prison abolition, institutional oppression and community care, offering a model of "joyful resistance" that has inspired generations. 

​Queer elders are not guaranteed to us. Too many were lost to violence, to HIV / AIDS, to systems that were never designed for them to survive, so access to their living wisdom is sacred. It roots us in lineage, and reminds us that everything we have was fought for.

Miss Major passed in October 2025, just days shy of her 79th birthday. Her storied legacy of community mother is proof that, ​despite ​s​tructural and cultural ​b​arriers, Black trans people ​not only endure, ​t​hey triumph.

We throw around the word "icon" — this month, we sit at the feet of one. 

Rest in power, Miss Mama.