By Major Griffin-Gracy & Toshio Menorek
The future of black, queer, and trans liberation from a legendary transgender elder and activist.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, getting her jaw broken by a police officer the first night of the riots, a former sex worker and atavist, and a transgender elder and civil rights activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, New York’s jail system, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Miss Major Speaks is both a document of her brilliant life—told with intimacy, warmth, and an undeniable levity—and a roadmap for the challenges black, brown, queer and trans youth will face on the path of liberation today.
This is a superb visceral compassionate and raging memoir that brings a fierce focus onto the personal and political lives of Miss Major and shows how living without fear or shame, supporting communities and fighting injustice can begin about radical sustainable change. She don’t give a fuck, tells it like it is, and exhilarates with her forthright hard won wisdom. The books unfolds as a series of questions from Toshio Menorek, which roam across the rich tapestry of her life, warts and all, sharing shocking, challenging and heartwarming insights into this tremendously affectionate person.
Miss Majors’ work around grassroots community organising and HIV/AIDS care laid the foundations for supporting people at the end of their lives, educating people in desperate need of evidence-based information and focusing the righteous anger of communities ignored, sidle lined and sacrificed by right wing political classes.
Born on the Chicago South Side but raised on the streets and battered, buffeted and bemused by many medical, mental or corrective institutes and interventions Miss Mayor confounds them, and their labels, boxes and outcomes and offers us real insight into what a life well lived looks like.
This is not your average biography, there’s no simple answers here, no easy ‘and then I…’ explanations, but plenty of hard slaps to bring us round to reality, plenty of hard-won experience lightly shared as cautionary tales but not wisdom, plenty of heartbreak and hopes that have paved the road to where Miss Major is today. In conversations with the author, questions are asked, answers are given interwoven with flashbacks, observations, rallying calls, radical empathy, a ferocious scathing tongue aimed at the hypocrites and wasterills who tried to take her down.
Miss Mayor offers us hope, through her own Black Trans Mature lens, but wraps it in the guise of ourselves, bound together by common ideas, not our complex intersections of identity, class or race but by our needs and community duties to each other. To care, to learn, to listen, to offer a hand, to find dignity and humility, and to be the monster who rages at the people who come to harm us, purposefully or by ignoring us. But most importantly by stepping up and just doing, doing the things that need doing, the everyday things, the longer term committed things, the hard things, but doing them, not passing the buck or turning the other cheek.
Eight decades down the line she still roars with life, anchored in the moment driving her will and personality off the pages, and offers startling and practical advice into living with all the passion you can muster. It’s offered wrapped up in earthy humour, acid wit and a real sense of ‘I see you’ eyebrow raising. I’d give a lot to spend an afternoon with this gorgeous firebrand.
I adored reading this book, every page making me smile, sigh of feel anger. Reading about the need to honour our elders, but also understand them and what drove/drives them, to pass the baton with grace to those who coming up behind us, to shift from our privilege and platform voices in need of space. Her refrain is ‘work with what you’ve got – YOU – and work together’ it’s a powerful reminder of fighting for Queer, TNBI, LGBTQ & QTIPOC liberation, recognition and rights is ongoing and a community endeavour. This fight is something for all of us to work towards and not leave it to often very well meaning but ineffective non-profit organisations or so called ‘representation’ as this is a half-way house to the honest, equitable and truly fair future of black, queer, and trans liberation.
Strong clear noncompromising voices like Miss Major don’t come along that often and when they do, we better listen, because by telling us their past, pointing out the road they’ve carved to allow the glorious procession of themselves to roll on, they show us the way to a better future.
The fact that this is done with such ruthless sharp pointed humour gives this memoir a delirious tangy edge and offers you a peek and some insight into Miss Majors gentle inner warmth & pure power which has shaped LGBTQ+ struggles in American for more than fifty years. Miss Major is truly an Icon with a glorious Legacy!
Seriously Recommended.
Out May 2023, Paperback.
For more info or to order/buy the book see the publisher’s website.
Review: Eric Page
From the off the cast own the stage, giving full throttle performance and working within the compact confines of the Theatre Royals stage to pull out convincing feeling of a High School full of movement, activity and stories. This is a deeply dark and twisted story of bullying, murder, and dealing with malevolent peer pressure all given a bright primary colour candyfloss coating. I’d not seen the film or the musical before so was wide eyed at the narrative surprises and the plot development. What gory Gothic fun!
If you can get a ticket, get one and enjoy this desperately dark, deeply ironic, savagely sarcastic, and oddly likable musical. As I wandered off into the crisp march evening air, through a really happy chatty and entertained crowd I realised I’m now a huge Heathers fan!
In careful non-judgmental detail the author, 
The first half felt overlong (at 65mins) , but this was partly to do with the distinctly low energy of the performers and some indistinct dialogue due to the soft and slippery drawl of these southern accents, some softer and less slippery than others. Their gossipy interactions and gently social teasing mapping out the small town they all live in, and some yearn to escape from.
The second half picked up the pace, with a much stronger focus on the narrative , allowing some of the sharper lines to land properly and the laughter pick up.
The audience loved this show, a very full house enjoying both the familiar cast and the familiar lines from the film, most worked into this production, but oddly given a vastly different focus. Only Harriet Thorpe’s Ouiser given a delightful thumping grumpy presence having the same heft of dialogue.
The corps de ballet commit and dance with grace, offering some super synchronised moments of ballet bliss. Choreographers Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot bring out the best is this large group of dancers in the compact restrictions of the Theatre Royal stage.
Marco Di Salvo shows great athleticism in the lead, effortless flying across the stage, leaping with lythe perfection, my companion was in awe when Di Salvo shone high and wide demonstrating his rather perfect extension of those phenomenally long legs and giving just enough understated romance in his lead to be convincing as a lover.
Their pas de deux buoyant, energetic, tender, and allowing this passionate young pair of dancers to shine in this demanding and delicate duet. The partnership of Lebedyk and Di Salvo as poor, doomed Giselle and deceitful Count Albrecht, who captures her heart while posing as a peasant, dances out with intricate perfection.
Varna International Ballet are based in Bulgaria, with dancers and musicians from across Europe. They perform with classical tradition and focus on performing much loved classics in an entertaining and agreeable way. This international ballet company feature soloists from Ukraine, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.
You can learn more about the Bishopsgate Institute, which covers the late nineteenth century onward, and access its 
John Waters, the writer and director of legendary films which occupy their own niche in cinema history, doesn’t disappoint here, his mind is twisted in ways which makes rococo baroque look straight, so you kinda know what you’re gonna get from him.
Most of the real horror in this piece is dealt with ‘off stage’: alluded to, talked about, winced over, we see little of the brutal treatment of the men, either from each other or from their guards. The regime is vicious, and this is explored in detail, driving both the narrative tension and also a surprisingly sweet ending for such a bleak, unremitting and depressing story line. My companion, a fan of the film, enjoyed this play although commented that some of the real prison nastiness had been erased from this telling of the story, and the gloriously planned comeuppance of the Warden and his guards was unclear and confused. His eyes, nevertheless, were wide at the naked opening of the play, and he enjoyed the sweet unfolding of the eventual ending.
Ellis ‘Red’ Redding played here in a soft, beguiling way by Ben Onwukwe, leads us through and into the actions, gently narrating the action unfolding and offering up his own take on motivations and outcomes. He’s a nice guy, in contrast to some of the horrors of toxic masculinity on show, showing compassion and care but also expressing his hard-earned wisdom from years of being on the block. His ability as a Mr Fixer, being able to supply most of the prisoners’ needs, keeps him relatively safe and allows him the ability to understand and share his insight with the audience. Leaning in to hear him, focusing on his quiet dignity, Onwukwe is quietly electrifying, his ‘rehabilitation speech’ perfect.
The story centres on Joe Absolom as new inmate Andy who is an enigmatic, guarded man, shrewdly showing his intelligence and honesty and paying the price for it behind bars where those traits are often a weakness. Andy turns to Red for guidance in ‘getting by’ and the story, backstory and deeper understanding of the hideous corruption of the Warden and his vicious murderous regime of prison guards unfolds around them. Together, using their intelligence, Andy’s proficient talent for accountancy and tax avoidance, and hard earned wisdom they play the system, and the guards to their advantage.
The redemption of the title is a curious idea for men who neither wish for it or appear to strive for it, remorse is certainly explored but Andy seems to be the only person (man) advocating his own innocence in this sorry tale. David Esbjornson directs this confident cast with a firm hand, although some of the American accents were prone to drift around, but by drawing out believable performances, exploring the heavy emotional impacts of cynically removed hope by power structures and the people that abuse them.
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