As the leading scholar on Marsha P. Johnson, Tourmaline paints a rich and moving portrait of one of queer history’s most important activists. Marsha is a long-overdue biography that finally gives Johnson the spotlight and recognition she has always deserved, exploring the incredible impact that her life and legacy continue to have for queer, Black, and trans communities all over the world.

Michael Collina: You’ve been very open with the fact that Marsha P. Johnson has long been a guiding force in your life and work. What was it about Johnson that first interested you?

Tourmaline: I first encountered Marsha when I was learning about my own identity and beginning to explore what it would be like to live as my most authentic self. Marsha’s legacy was so powerfully infused with joy, abundance, and a commitment to living fully as herself that it was absolutely enlivening to behold. The more I learned about her—and how loving, joyful, and full of life she was—the more drawn to her I became.

As one of the first definitive biographies of Marsha P. Johnson, what did your research and writing process look like for Marsha?

Researching a figure like Marsha was an incredible experience, because it was an opportunity for me to connect with the people who had loved her and knew her best. Her friends, family, and beloved community were incredibly generous in sharing their memories, recordings, letters, and photographs. It was such an intimate process to come to know someone through the lens of the people who loved her. Marsha’s community was amazingly generous with their memories and records of her, and the love and generosity they showed to me felt like a continuation of her legacy in and of itself.

Beyond the research process, the writing process was filled with surprises and delight. I spent a lot of time feeling into Marsha’s voice and story after spending so much time with interviews and videos of her. My own background—academic, organizing, and artistic—let me dive into some of the more complicated parts of her story with more nuance. For instance, in the book I was able to unpack her role at Stonewall through the lenses of disability justice and personal vs. collective memory, which I believe offers a much richer picture of what happened that day than a flat recitation of facts.

What was one of your favorite things you discovered about Johnson and her life throughout your research and the process of writing this book?

Her sense of humor! She was so funny, which I think is easy to miss when you only consider her role as an important leader, organizer, and revolutionary. But she loved to make people laugh and had this impeccable sense of comedic timing. One of my favorite stories was about how from her childhood all the way into her career as a performance artist on international tour, Marsha could read a crowd and find an angle that would get the audience going—she was a spotlight-stealer and people-reader extraordinaire.

Marsha P. Johnson was a revolutionary activist and arguably one of the most important figures in LGBTQIA+ history and progress. In your view, what was her most impactful or striking act of activism, art, or defiance in her lifetime?

One of my goals with this biography was to really show how Marsha’s ability to create these striking and impactful acts—like her role at Stonewall or her work as an organizer and leader—was premised first on her ability to imagine or dream of them. So I trace back these hugely impactful moments to subtler moments. Marsha drew tremendous strength from her community and the time she spent with them in motel rooms, on dance floors, at encampments and protests—those moments became the well from which she drew her strength. So when I think of an impactful or striking act of defiance, I might think of Marsha and her fellow “street queens” packed into an hourly motel room near Times Square, laughing, teasing, flirting, and dressing up. In these simple moments, Marsha was creating the fuel that fed her spirit to pursue her biggest freedom dreams.

What was it like getting into the booth to perform Marsha? Did you learn anything about yourself in that process?

Absolutely! It was so interesting to spend so much time with my own voice—like a lot of trans people, it's been a journey for me to accept the sound of my own voice and connect it to my inner sense of self. Spending all day every day for days straight listening to myself talk was such powerful medicine for loving my voice!

And after spending hours, months, and years with the words that compose this book written on a screen or a page, speaking them out loud felt like such a powerful invocation of Marsha’s continuing life—her legacy is so full of energy and vibrancy that it was palpable in the booth at times. It felt so right to have her be so present and alive in the reading aloud of her story.

As trans and queer rights continue to be targeted politically and socially, what do you hope people take away or learn from Marsha’s life and legacy?

Marsha’s story is so filled with dreams. Dreams big and small—dreams of love, family, connection, travel, ease, and pleasure. Marsha was facing down incredibly harsh circumstances—she experienced poverty, huge personal loss, and police violence on a routine basis. But she never stopped dreaming, and she didn’t lessen the size of her dreams. Her belief in the world that she knew she deserved became fuel for her and her beloved community to build it. In our current moment of harsh circumstances, and pervasive fear and dread, she is a role model for us—teaching us how to look beyond and through current circumstances to the beautiful, abundant, and loving world we can wake up and work towards every day.