The ancestral magic of audiobooks (Part one) 🎧
Our Black freedom fighters have something to say!
Hiya family! Welcome back to Black Joy Behind the Scenes 📽️, where every Sunday I’ll be giving y’all a glimpse beyond the journalism veil of my nationwide media brand Black Joy. My mission is to chronicle the different ways we as Black people continue the lineage of cultivating liberatory joy in our lives. Today we are getting into the ancestral magic of audiobooks. Decided to make this post a two parter for brevity sake! So before we get book’d and busy (see what I did there lol), consider becoming a subscriber if you’re not part of our community already!
As a writer and media maker, I’m ashamed to say that reading a good book has been a struggle of mine.
I feel the expectation in my profession is to inhale books. Make sense because how you gonna write when you don’t read well-written work. My issue has nothing to do with the passion for reading. Books have been portals of joy for me ever since I was a child. I didn’t see libraries as physical spaces back then. They were, and still are, reservoirs of galaxies brimming with knowledge, imagination and power.
Then adulthood came, and it has been the most ghetto hood of my life. I’m talking zero stars ‘cause I barely have enough time to breathe and folks want me to read???? Audiobooks have been solving this issue for me the past few months. I’m already a pretty frequent visitor of the podcasting world. Listening to novels seemed like a natural fit, and it has been such a gift for me because I now have a deeper connection to the Black trailblazers who have blessed my life (and I’m betting your life, too) way before I was even born. Hearing about these legacies is a radical act nowadays. Our history is under attack. The banning of books written by Black and queer authors is intentional. If knowledge is power, then we become disempowered when we are disconnected from the stories of our culture, heritage and history.
While I would love to go on a tangent about how censorship is connected to the campaign of disinformation, I would rather give more space to the inspiring audiobooks and the people who voiced them. So, let’s get into it! 📖
The joyful revolution of Marsha P. Johnson
It’s a shame that I learned about the uprisings at Stonewall Inn before even hearing Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson’s name.
It was even crazier for me to be up in the gay clubs celebrating Pride Month without an understanding of Johnson’s movement work. Pride is a riot, and when police raided Stonewall and, essentially, sexually assaulted trans and gender nonconforming bargoers during searches of their genitalia, many witnessed Johnson and other queer freedom fighters turn their rage into a revolution. During my drive back home after a work trip in Mississippi, I listened to the recently-released first biography about Johnson’s life titled “Marsha: the Joy and Defiance of Marsha P Johnson,” which is beautifully voiced and written by trans creative Tourmaline. Here’s a snippet of a conversation Johnson had with trans Latina Holly Woodlawn during the night of the uprising.
Marsha spotted Holly in the crowd and quickly filled her in on what was happening. “The queens are holdin’ the cops hostage. Here, have a drink!” [Marsha] told Holly. Marsha then grabbed a bottle ‘and headed straight for the police while ranting and raving, ‘Oh, dawlin’! Oh, honey! Let me tell you!’” - “Marsha” by Tourmaline
The whole reason Pride Month is celebrated in June is because the Stonewall Uprisings began on June 28, 1969. Johnson and fellow trans activist Sylvia Rivera were involved in the first Gay Pride Parade in 1970. While Johnson did drop bricks on cop cars during the riot, her legacy outstretched her presence at a parade and protest. Johnson was a movement mother who fed, housed and clothed queer youth. When politicians and healthcare professionals ignored the HIV and AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, Johnson’s love of performance raised millions of dollars in aid for those who were dying during the epidemic. Her sparkling personality matched the glistening sequins and gemstones ornamenting her extravagant outfits. Vibrant makeup adorned her face. Gardens of flowers bloomed her crown. Johnson was a fiercely fabulous activist and artist who left behind a legacy that should be fully honored.
And Tourmaline made sure of that. The trans luminary spent 20 years researching Johnson’s life – and it shows. When I had the honor of interviewing Tourmaline for my story about the book, the first thing I said to her was a compliment on how she voiced her audiobook. Tourmaline’s tone was just as bright and lively as the biography itself, which reads like a vibrant playbook on how to find justice through joy. I noticed how Tourmaline called trans people “queens,” giving them a sense of royalty that isn’t offered to them in a world that would rather keep trans and gender nonconforming folks invisible. Tourmaline told me that when she recorded the audiobook, she made sure to read her pages energetically.
“Marsha's story has been a gift in my life for nearly 20 years now. So my hopes for the printed book, but also the audiobook, was to express how I received that gift. Then I wanted to share that back with the world,” Tourmaline said. “Receiving Marsha is one of the biggest honors that I've ever received. So there's a level of euphoria I have when I talk about Marsha and joy and adoration and appreciation from the small aspects of her, to the big, magical parts of how she transformed mass consciousness. It was all activating inside my body. So when I'm reading the words, I'm feeling really moved.”
Tourmaline’s intentionally not only accentuated Johnson’s own compassionate and animated nature, but she also connected the reader/listener to the power of Johnson’s authenticity. I’m writing this post during Pride Month and while hundreds of thousands of people nationwide are marching during the “No Kings Protest” against President Donald Trump’s policies. The coincidence isn’t lost to me because Johnson was a multifaceted activist who stood for all human rights. And if she were alive today, she would be out there giving folks hell with a smile.
America needs no kings cause we got plenty of queens who are making sure no tramples on our rights. Marsha P. Johnson’s legacy reminds us that our dignity is eternal and our joy is a source of liberation. And you can hear all of that in every word of the “Marsha” audiobook.
“Marsha was navigating very harsh realities, and at the same time it was very important for her to access joy,” Tourmaline said. “She knew that in her joy she had a greater sense of clarity to solve big, big problems. So to me, she is such a model of someone living with the volume turned all the way up on their authenticity, their truth and their joy, and knowing that it was in those places she could change the world.”
That’s all for part one! Hope to see you back again next Sunday for part two, which will be about Bob the Drag Queen’s novel about Harriet Tubman!