Miss MajorandToshio Meronek
Miss MajorandToshio Meronek
Miss Major and Toshio Meronek
Miss Major and Toshio Meronek have created a powerful document of resistance and resilience in Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary, which won the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction. The book captures the voice of Miss Major, a legendary activist whose life spans decades of queer and trans liberation struggle, from the Stonewall uprising through the AIDS crisis to contemporary movements for Black trans justice. Through Meronek’s attentive interviewing and editing, the conversations reveal not just a historical record but a philosophical framework rooted in survival, care, and radical imagination.
What distinguishes Miss Major Speaks is its refusal of conventional biography. Rather than imposing a linear narrative, the book honors the oral tradition of storytelling, allowing Miss Major’s reflections to unfold with the urgency and wisdom of someone who has lived through transformative moments most histories overlook. The Lambda Award recognizes both the historical significance of these conversations and their contemporary resonance—Miss Major’s analysis of incarceration, transphobia, and Black liberation speaks directly to ongoing struggles for trans people, particularly those at the intersection of race, gender, and class. In centering a Black trans elder’s voice with such integrity, Meronek and Miss Major have created a work that functions simultaneously as memoir, manifesto, and gift to future generations fighting for a more just world.
