Unveiling Marsha P. Johnson: The Untold Story of Joy, Defiance, and Revolution in Tourmaline’s New Film
Like this biography, the photos arranged in rough chronological order—except, like the story, when they aren’t. Tourmaline gives us a Marsha without limits, a Marsha who gets to be the multitudes that she contains in whatever sequence makes sense. Chaotic? Sometimes. Compassionate, exuberant, and inspiring? Always.
Tourmaline foregrounds Marsha’s story with her own in her introduction. Drawn to the heart of the West Village after college in the early 2000s, Tourmaline found Christopher Street to be a “sanctuary for young queer and trans people of color like myself, buzzing with an electrifying joy.” The more she spent time in the neighborhood as an activist and artist, the more she began to hear about Marsha.
