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Because of Tourmaline's fastidious work digitizing archival materials that might otherwise have been lost to time, I got to actually watch videos, read newspaper clippings, and view never-before-seen photographs of trans icons Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Because of Tourmaline, Black trans women exist in a mainstream art institution, where thousands will witness us taking up space, centered in the frame as our own heroes. I first met filmmaker and activist Tourmaline in 2012 through her Tumblr "The Spirit Was ", a visual archive centering folks who had been left out of the whitewashed historical narrative of the LGBTQ+ movement. [Extracted from the article]

A personal narrative is presented in which the author reflects on meeting television producer and writer Ryan Murphy and joining the writing staff of Murphy's series "Pose," making her the first transsexual woman of color to be a television writer.