During my Texan in Exile days in Louisville, two of the many people I got to meet in the nearly nine years I lived there were Sheila O'Bannon and her lovely trans feminine daughter ShemiyiaI met them back in 2004, when Miyia was just getting started with her transition, and Sheila was adjusting to it as well.
It's a story that Sheila captured in a play she wrote and produced entitled The Prodigal. It was a fictionalized account of a family's journey to understand and eventually come to accept the transition journey of one of its family members.
It debuted at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in downtown Louisville, and yours truly was going to be the moderator for its June 2010 debut until I had to move back to Houston several weeks before the play had the first of its two sold out performances on June 26-27.
It was another piece of unfinished Louisville business I was disappointed and pissed off about not getting a chance to complete as I pointed the moving van southward on I-65 toward Nashville and the opening leg of my journey back home.
I did get to catch up and have lunch with the O'Bannon women at the 59 Diner when they rolled through Houston on vacation two years ago. We had a wonderful time catching up on what was transpiring in all our lives at the time while discussing the then state of the trans community for Black trans folks vis a vis our white counterparts..
Thanks to Miyia's FB page, she's alerted me to an upcoming appearance of her and her mother on Dr. Drew On Call that they taped yesterday. It's scheduled to air on HLN August 27.
Looking forward to seeing it, and you may wish to set your DVR's for it. I'm also looking forward to the next time I get a chance to talk to these TV stars.
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