The Trans Studies Working Group is organizing a film screening of Major! (2015) in honour of the life and work of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1946-2025), an African American trans community leader and Stonewall veteran whose recent passing TSWG seeks to commemorate. The screening of the film (1h 35m) will prompt a discussion of its themes in relation to Black transfeminist theorist Dora Silva Santana’s formulation of “Mais Viva!”—a practice of aliveness and “refusal to lose oneself” that she enacts in communion with Miss Major (Santana 2019:218). Readings will be distributed to all attendees in advance of the event.
About the Film:
Major! is a documentary film that narrates the life, story, and legacy of the late Black trans elder and activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. At the heart of the film is Miss Major’s vision of a liberated society in which Black trans people and trans women of color are regarded with dignity and endowed with the right to self-determination. The film documents Miss Major’s early life, participation in the Stonewall Uprising of 1969, and leadership of the Trans Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) in the United States by drawing on oral history and embodied testimony.
