Tourmaline Isn’t Just Telling Our Stories — She’s Putting Us in Museums
February 12, 2019Born and raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts, Tourmaline’s mother, Maureen Ridge, and late father, George Gossett, worked in the Labor and Black Power movements, respectively. With their influence, she developed a deep commitment to social justice and empowering marginalized people. As a college student, she became particularly drawn to the experiences of incarcerated, queer, and trans people. This led to her dedicating much of the last 15 years organizing with New York-based LGBTQ+ organizations like FIERCE and Sylvia Rivera Law Project, teaching at Rikers Island, and working with elders like Miss Major. “For a lot of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people of color, we didn’t [initially] know about the prior generation of activists because their stories had been erased,” she says. “I think about not just people being pushed out of the movement, but how did HIV and AIDS — like criminalization, not just the epidemic — play into the erasure of us ever knowing of so many people who came before us?”