Monica Barros-Greene

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

One of the Dallas metro area's most esteemed restauranteurs is Monica Barros-Greene.

She owns a well known and highly regarded restaurant in Big D called Monica’s Aca y Alla in the Deep Ellum section of Dallas that innovatively mixes Mexico City and Tex-Mex cuisine.

Oh, did I forget to mention that in 2005 Monica narrowly lost a bid to become the first transgender person elected to the Dallas City Council? She ran for the open District 2 seat on the Dallas City Council, was endorsed by the Dallas Morning News but lost in a runoff to longtime activist Pauline Medrano.

Monica was born in Mexico City. When she was 17, on a whim she decided to travel with two friends to Indiana to win the heart of a Mexican girl who lived there.

At the border, the road trip with her friends couldn't continue because they didn't have the proper visas, so Monica proceeded without them. She arrived in Dallas a little after midnight on January 5, 1974.

But Monica had been struggling with her gender identity, trying on dresses behind locked doors. Her first impression of Dallas at the time was that she wasn't going to stay long. "But life has turns you don't necessarily see ahead," she said.

Her father wanted her to attend business school, but she wasn't amenable to the idea. He issued her an ultimatum: either attend business school or support yourself. She chose the latter, taking a job as a busboy.

After an initial rocky start, she quickly moved up the restaurant ranks and eventually became a manager for some of the hottest restaurants in town. She got married and divorced twice and had two kids with her first wife. In the midst of her second marriage she opened Eduardo's Aca y Calla in February 1992.

Her father died a year later back in Mexico, and that summer she shared her gender secret with her family. On March 4, 1994 she called the restaurant staff together for a meeting and announced that the restaurant would undergo a name change.

The restaurant wasn't the only place undergoing a change. Monica arrived wearing a black plaid miniskirt, white jacket and heels. She left the restaurant management duties to her second wife and moved in with an accountant who was also undergoing a gender change.

The roommate died two days after a successful GRS procedure, but that didn't dampen Monica's determination to undergo what she calls a 'reincarnation in the same lifetime'. With a passport in her new name in hand, on May 7, 1995 she boarded a plane to Brussels, Belgium and had GRS.

Monica has continued to have success post-surgery. She is a member of the international culinary organization Les Dames D'Escoffier and has received the Dallas Leadership Award. In 2002 and 2004 she was recognized by her Dallas area peers as 'Best Restaurateur', was a wine consultant for the Julius Schepps Company and has served as a judge for the Lone Star State Wine Competition and the Dallas Morning News Wine Tasting Competition.

Her narrow loss in the 2005 city council runoff garnered her recognition amongst the Dallas political ranks as a rising star. Former Dallas mayor Laura Miller said about her, "Monica is bright, she is gutsy, she is independent. All very important traits that few politicians at City Hall possess."

Monica has worn many hats in her lifetime. She's familiar with the plight of immigrants. She's a staple of the Dallas hospitality industry. Her story resonates with a wide spectrum of potential voters, GLBT and non-GLBT. And as she proudly points out, "I have become part of the fiber of this community."

Here's hoping that one day she'll add Council member to that list of accomplishments as well.


TransGriot Note: Thanks to KarenSerenity.com for some of the info I used to compile this post.

Lynnell Stephani Long

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

Lynnell Stephani Long is a trailblazer in her own right. I first became aware of her during the summer of 1999 when I was part of the activist team putting together NTAC. She was 'ejumacating' us on intersex issues. I traded e-mail with her for a while before we lost contact with each other.

She's a voice for a community that many African-Americans aren't aware exists, the intersex one.

According to ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, about one in every 1500 children is born with genitalia ambiguous enough to call in a sex differentiation specialist.

Lynnell was one of those kids. She was born in Chicago on June 11, 1963 with ambiguous genitalia. After being surgically altered by doctors she was raised male most of her life. She went through major drama in her life until she saw ISNA's Cheryl Chase on TV in 1997 and discovered she was intersex. She eventually met Cheryl Chase at a 1999 GenderPac Lobby Day (how did I miss meeting both of them?) and began working with the organization by telling her story about growing up Black and intersex.

As any transperson can tell you, being outside the norms in the Black community can be a pain in the ass, and being an intersex child wasn't easy for her. As she wrote in a 2003 BLACKlines article,

"Growing up in an all-Black community and going to an all-Black high school was rough as hell. While a lot of the other boys walked around nude, proud of the size of their penis, I tried my best to hide. Hiding didn’t stop the questions though. Questions like, “Why is your penis so small? Why do you have breasts? What are you, a boy or a girl?”

She also states that African-Americans need to educate themselves on intersex issues. "There isn’t any one thing an organization like ISNA can do to help the Black community, except make sure information is available. I strongly believe people of color need to educate themselves."

"We need to step outside myths and stereotypes. If a child is born with a small penis, that child may be Intersex. If a girl is born with an enlarged clitoris, chances are she is Intersex. There is nothing to be ashamed about. There is no reason to hide the child or try to get that child fixed unless the child needs medical treatment."

She does her part to educate us by writing columns for various magazines, her website, appearing twice on the Montel Williams Show, doing performance art, and telling her story. She's a member of ISNA's Speakers Bureau and has spoken in the Chicago area and across the United States and Canada on ending intersex genital mutilation.

Lynnell's doing her part to let us know that intersex issues aren't just a 'white thang'.

Carole Simpson

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.


“Everyone has something to contribute in the newsroom, but not if they have no place at the table, or no place at the rim."

"To have a real democracy we need a multitude of voices. If the news historically and currently is exclusively held by a select group of people, the discussion is exclusive. If the news does not reflect the nation’s diversity in on-air staff, in story selection, in management, in employment, we are doomed.”

Carole Simpson, in remarks to newsroom executives at an RTNDF luncheon

I'm a person who craves news and information. You'll find this news junkie the majority of the time when I'm not reading the newspaper or on the Net watching C-SPAN, CNN, ABC, the BBC and my local news.


One of the major reasons I used to watch ABC World News Sunday was to see Emmy Award winner and ABC's Washington senior correspondent Carole Simpson use her distinctive voice to deliver it.

The University of Michigan journalism graduate started her broadcast career as a reporter and weekend anchor at WMAQ-TV in her hometown of Chicago. Before joining NBC News in 1974, she was a journalism instructor at Northwestern University's Medill School. She also spent two years as a journalism instructor and director of the information bureau at Tuskegee University.

At NBC News she covered the US Congress and then vice president George HW Bush before joining ABC News in 1982. She accompanied him on his foreign and domestic trips and covered Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign. In 1990 she anchored the ABC live coverage of Nelson Mandela's release from his 27 year imprisonment. She's also done live coverage of major breaking stories such as the Persian Gulf War, the Tiananmen Square massacre, the fall of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, and the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. She was moderator for the second 1992 Presidential debate in Richmond, VA.

From 1988-2004 she was the anchor for ABC World News Tonight-Sunday, and her reports also appeared on '20/20'. 'Good Morning America', 'Nightline' and other ABC programs. She was also a substitute anchor for the late Peter Jennings on World News Tonight.

In addition to the Emmy, Simpson garnered numerous journalism awards including a 1992 Journalist of the Year one from the National Association of Black Journalists. She has also established numerous college scholarships for women and minorities pursuing careers in broadcast journalism at her alma mater. The RTNDF named its scholarship in her honor. She retired from ABC News just last year.

Not long after she stepped down from her anchor position Simpson embarked on what she says "may potentially be the most important job of my career." She was named a News Ambassador by ABC and given the task of speaking to high school students across the country.

She engages students in discussions about the value of reading, listening and watching the news, the role of a free press in a democratic society, and the importance of becoming an informed citizen in an America facing serious challenges at home and abroad.

She has her work cut out for her in this assignment. But if anyone can pull it off, I have no doubts that Carole Simpson will get her message across to at least some of the kids she talks to. She may even inspire a few of them to follow in her legendary journalistic footsteps.

One person who did follow in her footsteps is her daughter, Dr. Mallika Marshall. She's a practicing physician who is also the medical correspondent for CBS affiliate WBZ-TV in Boston. She appears every Saturday on the CBS 'Early Show,'

One of the other things I love about Carole is that she's never been shy to speak truth to power or to speak her mind. It's one of her values that I diligently work on incorporating in my column and on this blog.

If I get to even half of the level of excellence that Carole Simpson achieved over her career, I'd consider it an honor.

Cookie LaCook RIP

I was saddened to hear that legendary Houston drag performer and emcee Cookie LaCook, AKA 'The Mouth of the South', passed away on July 27.

The Louisiana born Cookie moved to Houston and became an icon in the Houston SGL community. She was a former 1987 Miss Gay Texas USofA at Large who was always happy to do a benefit show, host an event, visit the sick or attend a funeral for someone whose loved ones had disowned them. She even hosted a Juneteenth event in Dallas. And she always loved her f*****g great audiences.

I got to chat with her numerous times over the years whenever I visited Studio 13/Rascals or happened to occasionally bump into her when I was downtown. The one conversation I had with Cookie that's the most memorable one happened at a short lived GLBT club called Uptown/Downtown in the early 90s. She introduced me to her favorite drink, the amaretto sour while we had a long free ranging conversation over a wide range of subjects. (y'all know how much I love intelligent conversation). After that night anytime I showed up at Rascals and she spotted me in the crowd I was incorporated into her monologue as 'Soul Sister Number 1'.

As someone noted on the Houston Splash website, a f*****g great audience has a f*****g great host. Cookie was all that and three bags of chips. Best of all, she was a first class human being as well.

It's gonna be strange next May if I'm lucky enough to attend Houston Splash and not see Cookie's regal presence keeping things moving and making us laugh.

Rest in peace, Cookie. You've earned it.

Nichelle Nichols

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

photos-Nichelle Nichols in 2004, as Lt Uhura, the EBONY magazine cover, Dr. Mae Jemison, Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan, the christening of the Space Shuttle Enterprise

Nichelle Nichols in addition to being a trailblazing actress has been an inspiration for people of my generation and subsequent ones to not only follow their dreams, but reach for the stars.

She was born in Robbins, IL as Grace Nichols on December 28, 1932, just outside Chicago. She toured the Unites States, Canada and Europe with the Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington bands. She appeared in a Chicago production of Carmen Jones before she moved west and had her fateful meeting with Gene Roddenberry. Before casting her as Lt. Nyota Upenda Uhura on Star Trek, she'd worked as a guest actress on Roddenberry's first television series The Lieutenant.

As we Trekkies all know, it was Star Trek that made her a historical icon, launched her life into a new direction and sharpened her interest in space exploration.

But she almost quit the show. Frustrated during the first season over what she perceived as playing just a glorified telephone operator, she was ready to hang up the Starfleet uniform until she ran into Dr. Martin Luther King at a civil rights rally. Dr. King was a huge Star Trek fan and urged her not to quit. He pointed out to her that she was the first African-American actress who was on a network TV show playing a non-stereotypical role.

According to Nichols, he told her "Don't you know you have the first non-stereotypical role in television? For the first time the world will see us as we should be seen -- people of quality in the future. You created a role with dignity and beauty and grace and intelligence. You're not just a role model for our children, but for people who don't look like us to see us for the first time as equals."

She stayed and later made television history with the first interracial kiss on TV with costar William Shatner. She costarred in the six subsequent Star Trek movies and eventually her character was promoted to Commander.

Once Star Trek ended, she worked for NASA in the 70's and early 80's as part of a program to not only encourage African-American youth to consider math and science careers but recruit women and minority astronauts for NASA. She recruited Dr. Sally K. Ride, US Air Force Col. Guion Bluford (the first African-American in space), Dr. Judith Resnik and Dr. Ron McNair, who flew missions before both were killed in the 1986 Challenger disaster. The essay contest I won in 8th grade in which I earned a trip to NASA was part of that program.

And like other issues that Dr. King was prescient on, he was on target in terms of Nichols being a role model to African-American children and others. She was the inspiration for another Chicago girl who grew up to become the first African-American woman in space, Dr. Mae C. Jemison. She also inspired a New York City girl by the name of Caryn Elaine Johnson to shoot for an entertainment career after seeing her on Star Trek. Caryn Elaine Johnson would not only accomplish that goal, but would have a recurring role herself on Star Trek-The Next Generation as Guinan.

Nichols is considered part of the NASA family. She flew aboard NASA's C-141 Astronomy Observatory on its eight hour high altitude mission to analyze the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn. She was present along with her Star Trek castmates when the first space shuttle Enterprise was christened and was a guest of the Jet Propulsion Lab when Viking 1 soft landed on Mars on July 17, 1976. She has written two science-fiction novels about a tough black woman in space, Saturn's Child and its sequel, Saturna's Quest and is working on a third. She has since the mid 80's sat on the Board of Governors for the National Space Society.

So if you haven't had the pleasure of meeting her like I did back in the mid 70's, check out this multi-talented and passionate ambassador for space exploration.

Live long and prosper, Nichelle.

Constable May Walker

I remember when May Walker became the first Black female officer in the Houston Police Department. It was back in 1975 and HPD still had a negative shoot first and ask questions later reputation in our community.

As May patrolled our neighborhoods and became a well known and comforting presence as a African-American officer in the Houston Police Department, she quickly earned a nickname among myself and the kids in our South Park neighborhood. We called her Christie Love, after the short lived ABC-TV show about ironically, the first female African-American officer to join a big city police force. The other irony was that the late Teresa Graves, who played Christie Love was from Houston as well.

For 24 years as a HPD officer May not only won over people in our community, she fought the entrenched racism and good-ole-boy culture within HPD as well. She opened doors that African-American youth in my neighborhood and beyond would follow. The current multi-ethnic professional force that Houston enjoys is largely because of her efforts. She also earned the respect and admiration of her law enforement peers.

But she was just getting started in terms of making more history. In November 2004 she ran for Harris County Precinct 7 Constable and won with 82% of the vote. When she was sworn in on January 2, 2005 she became the first female constable in Harris County history.

In addition to Constable Walker's long and distinguished law enforcement career, she's an author and is active in a long list of organizations in the Houston area.

Congratulations to Constable Walker and may 'Christie Love' continue to blaze trails for my generation and others to follow.

Janelle Commissiong

On this date 30 years ago I was in front of the TV one hot summer night watching the Miss Universe Pageant. Little did I know that I was watching history being made by a girl from Trinidad.

During this 26th Miss Universe pageant being held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, then 24 year old Janelle Commissiong became the first woman of African descent to break through and win the Miss Universe crown. Even though she was from Trinidad, we African-Americans were just as proud of her as the Trinis, who issued three postage stamps in her honor and gave her the Trinity Cross, Trinidad's highest honor in celebration of her victory. Janelle ended up gracing the cover of Jet magazine and we felt connected to her not only because of our shared African ancestry but because she spent ten years living in New York before she returned home in 1976.

When her reign was over she moved on with her life. She got married to Brian Bowen, the founder of Bowen Marine, a successful Trinidad based boat building business. When he was killed in a November 1989 accident she took over running the business. Bowen Marine sells them not only across the Caribbean, but in the US and Europe as well. She started a cosmetics line in 1997 and has gotten married a second time to publishing executive Alwin Chow. She is stepmother to a 13 year old daughter named Sasha.

It took another twenty-one years before another Trini, statuesque Wendy Fitzwilliam won Miss Universe and became the third Black woman to win the crown. Janelle Commissiong Bowen Chow has not only become more beautiful over time, but has reinforced the old saying that true beauty is inside, not outside.

Elizabeth Kizito

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

I was introduced to her cookies a year before I actually met Elizabeth Kizito in 2001. She lived two doors down from our old house and one of the things I hated about our move to the new one is that every Christmas we used to get a cookie basket from her. We used to fight over who would get to devour the snickerdoodles.

Elizabeth Namusoke Kizito-Bartlett parlayed her father's cookie recipe and business acumen learned as a little girl in Uganda and turned it into a legendary Louisville institution.

She's known as 'The Cookie Lady' in Louisville and you'll see her delectable treats in stores all over Louisville. You can also get them at her shop on Bardstown Road which also has African arts and crafts for sale. She sells her treats at various Louisville events, several local Louisville outlets and at Louisville Bats games by using a skill she learned back in Uganda. She will walk through the crowd balancing a basket on her head filled to the rim with her cookies.

At 17 she was sent by her father, who owned a bakery business in her homeland to attend school. She moved to Louisville in 1978 and worked as a waitress at a local restaurant. She baked cookies for her co-workers and after the restaurant closed down, she decided to try to make a living baking her cookies.

Without the benefit of savings or a bank loan she started Kizito's Cookies in 1987 and worked hard to build it up. She had no store or collateral when she started and needed a co-signer just to get a six month lease on a bakery. Only after much hard work and five years of building the business did she finally gain the ability to get a bank loan to expand her business.

Her work resulted in her being named Women's Business Owner of the Year by Louisville's chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She has been approached by numerous investors about franchising her business. In addition to the 10 types of cookies and seven types of muffins she bakes, she has brownies and biscotti for sale as well.

See y'all later. I'm gonna head out the door and grab a few of her cookies to eat with my Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream.

BernNadette Stanis

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

Back in 1974 a spin off show from Maude debuted on CBS called Good Times. The iconic show chronicled the trials, travails and sometimes comic pitfalls of the Evans family, who were trying to earn their piece of the American Dream while dealing with the reality of living in the Cabrini-Green projects of Chicago.

This was the first television show show to focus on an African-American lower income family. One of the things that made it entertaining to watch for many teenaged boys of my generation besides Jimmie Walker was BernNadette Stanis, who played Thelma Evans.

She was the Brooklyn born sistah that African-American boys of my generation drooled over. In my case I wanted to BE her, but that's a story for another time. ;)

We got to see for the first time on American television a young, smart, proud, strong-willed, beautiful and sexy sister who had dreams bigger than the environment she lived in. She was a good girl, which only enhanced the enjoyment that the fellas got when they saw her in her tastefully sexy clothes she got to wear as Thelma or showed off her graceful dance moves honed as a Julliard graduate.

The former Miss Black New York was our first sex symbol. She showed mainstream America that the stereotypes of folks that lived in the ghetto were wrong. There were beautiful peeps there in body, mind and spirit who had hopes, dreams, aspirations, integrity and class. We had the pleasure of seeing her on the small screen for seven seasons until Good Times went off the air in 1979.

BernNadette has done guest spots on various TV shows, most recently on Girlfriends in an episode when she played Maya's cousin. She was set up on a date with William, who blathered on and on in her presence about his teenage crush on Thelma.

She eventually got married and became the mother of two daughters. She is a writer and producer, and has acted in some stage plays, most notably one called Whatever Happened to Black Love that she also produced with her husband Kevin Fontana. She also had a role in He Say...She Say But What Does God Say? She's written a book on relationships called Situations 101 that she is currently promoting.

And yes fellas, BernNadette's still as beautiful, smart and sexy as she was in 1974.

Happy Birthday Monica!

Just in case you're wondering, I celebrated my birthday a month ago. The Monica I'm wishing a Happy Birthday to is one who is no longer with us, but is still very special to me in my heart.

Her name is Monica Monet Holloway-Barrett and she was born on this date in 1962 in Mobile, AL.

So how did a native Houstonian get to meet this Alabama girl? Her grandparents lived in Houston and during her spring break in 1980 she traveled to H-town to visit them. HISD was still in session at the time and my classmate and her friend Virginia Tucker lived next door to Monica's grandparents.

Virginia invited Monica to hang out with her for the day at Jones and Virginia was in my trig class. When she and Monica walked through the door she had my undivided attention that day instead of my math teacher Mr. Stevenson.

Intelligent people tend to gravitate to other intelligent people and I picked up on that. My 'twin' liked smart sistahs. Monica was about 5'6", had a flawless light caramel colored skin tone and shoulder length jet black hair framing her face.

We exchanged contact data and I was even more smitten with her after I discovered her birthday was June 4, which also happens to be my late Grandmother Tama's birthday as well.

Through the summer of 1980 we traded letters but as the demands of my census enumerator job increased and her summer classes at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute demanded more of her attention we gradually lost contact with each other. When my own freshman year at UH approached and subsequently my transgender issues demanded resolution during the spring semester she faded from my memory for a while.

Over the years I wondered what happened to the girl I met during the last months of my senior year and developed a serious crush on. One day I was flipping through the Houston Chronicle and stumbled across her wedding announcement that her grandparents had placed.

It caught me up on her life up until that time. She'd graduated from Duke in 1984, pledged AKA and had become a doctor after graduating from medical school in 1990. I also discovered that she was now living in Houston. I'd seen the announcement too late to attend the wedding, was a little jealous of the guy she was marrying, but at the same time was pleased to know that things were going well for Monica. I was also happy to know that she'd found someone special to spend the rest of her life with.

In April 1998 I was once again perusing the Houston Chronicle when I was shocked to see something I didn't expect.

Monica's obituary

It didn't mention how she died, but Dr. Monica Holloway-Barrett had become nonetheless an Ivy Beyond The Wall. That obituary also updated me on the final chapter of her life before she was called home April 9. She'd given birth to a daughter in 1993, was teaching classes at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and was involved in a long list of local organizations at the point of her untimely passing.

I cried for a few moments after reading it and realizing that she was only 35 when she died. Once again I was seeing it too late to attend and pay my last respects and I was a little upset about that. It's also ironic and frustrating to me that our paths could have crossed before she passed away. One of the schools that we used to do Trans 101 seminars at was Baylor College of Medicine and the first one I was part of took place in February 1998.

I took some time to remember the beautiful girl I met in my math class that day who'd become an outstanding woman. I clipped that obituary, scanned the picture (which is on my other computer, darn it) and stored it in my high school memory book.

She's one of the reasons that when it came time for me to choose a feminine name when I transitioned in 1994, I chose Monica.

My name today is a reminder to myself on multiple levels. I wanted to honor her memory, so I strive to carry myself in the same way that I remember her as a classy, beautiful and intelligent woman. It's also a reminder to myself to make every moment count and make quality use of the time that you're allotted.

Unlike the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, we only get one shot at living our lives and you don't get multiple practice runs until it's perfect.

Happy birthday, Monica. Say hello to my grandmother Tama for me.

Thank You Tyra

I was moved to post this comment on The Tyra Banks Show website after running across a few less that enlightened comments posted in response to a show Tyra did that was broadcast yesterday called 'In Love With A Transsexual'.

I have to thank Tyra and her staff for consistently tackling transgender topics with the respect and dignity they deserve. She's been one of my role models in terms of the type of sistah I wanted to be and project to the world. It makes me happy to hear that one of my role models considers herself a friend of the transgender community. I hope that one day I get to tell her how much I and other transpeople appreciate that in person.

My posted comment:

One of the things I get so sick of hearing as an African-American transwoman who transitioned a decade ago is the sanctimonious bigoted comments of people that either profess to be 'christians' or 'supporters' who arrogantly assert that transpeople aren't 'real women' or 'real men'.

I am a Big 'C' Christian and I know that God loves me as much as you folks who were fortunate enough to have your gender identities and bodies match up at birth

Transgender people are just trying to live quality lives with the hands we are dealt and could do a lot better job of that without the ill-informed, intolerant attitudes and ignorant moralizing that overwhelmingly comes from people who claim to be 'christians'.

It's past time some of you quit cherry-picking scriptures and wake up to the fact that gender identity is between your ears, not the configuration of the genitalia between your legs.

Thank you Tyra for all you've done to help educate people to the fact that transpeople are human beings, too

Raven!

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

Back during the heyday of The Cosby Show I used to enjoy seeing this adorably precocious three year old who played Olivia Kendall. She went by the name of Raven-Symone and it never failed that when she was in a scene, she was usually stealing it. She was a Ford Model at the ripe old age of 2 with numerous television commercials to her credit when she auditioned for a role in the Cosby produced Ghost Dad. She was too young for that part, but was cast on the Cosby Show instead.

For a while it seemed as though she disappeared off our TV sets once Hanging With Mr. Cooper ended its run on ABC. Just as I began to wonder what was going on in her life she popped up in the 1998 Disney remake of Dr. Doolittle and a 2003 Disney Channel TV show called That's So Raven. I began watching it after Debbie Allen started directing it. As of this writing it is the Disney Channel's highest rated and longest running show. Raven's also blossomed into a very attractive young woman since her Cosby Show days.

Today Raven-Symone Christina Pearman is what Ebony magazine recently described in their March 2007 issue that she was on the cover of as the $400 million dollar woman. She is a multi-talented entertainer who has graced various Disney productions, a six time NAACP Image Award winning actress and has also won two Nickelodeon Kids Choice awards. You can hear her voice on various Disney cartoons such as Kim Possible (one of my guilty pleasures), see her sing and dance in The Cheetah Girls movies and hear her sing on various CDs, including her own solo efforts.

Not bad for someone who's 21 years old.

The thing I'm impressed with about Raven is that she went to public school in the ATL area during that time period. She seems pretty down to earth about much of what she's achieved as well. She's cognizant of being considered a role model and proud that she's one of the few African-American Disney stars. Raven's also proud that she's a 'thick' sista with curves. The fact that she's a young African-American woman doing it in Hollywood makes me even prouder of the little girl I first watched on the tube back in 1989.

She's gradually moving toward doing more serious roles and was one of the many peeps who auditioned for the role of Effie in the Dreamgirls remake. I have no doubts that one of these days Raven will be gracing the silver screens in a movie that doesn't have a Disney logo all over it.

Nikki Giovanni's Encounter With Cho

Professor Had Expelled Gunman From Class

By ALLEN G. BREED
AP National Writer

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- The mood in the basketball arena was
defeated, funereal. Nikki Giovanni seemed an unlikely source of
strength for a Virginia Tech campus reeling from the depravity of one
of its own.

Tiny, almost elfin, her delivery blunted by the loss of a lung,
Giovanni brought the crowd at the memorial service to its feet and
whipped mourners into an almost evangelical fervor with her
words: "We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are
Virginia Tech."

Nearly two years earlier, Giovanni had stood up to Cho Seung-Hui
before he drenched the campus in blood. Her comments Tuesday showed
that the man who had killed 32 students and teachers had not killed
the school's spirit.

"We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid," the 63-year-old
poet with the close-cropped, platinum hair told the grieving
crowd. "We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We
are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to
invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this
sadness."
In September 2005, Cho was enrolled in Giovanni's introduction to creative writing class. From the beginning, he began building a wall between himself and the rest of the class.

He wore sunglasses to class and pulled his maroon knit cap down low
over his forehead. When she tried to get him to participate in class
discussion, his answer was silence.

"Sometimes, students try to intimidate you," Giovanni told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. "And I just
assumed that he was trying to assert himself."

But then female students began complaining about Cho.

About five weeks into the semester, students told Giovanni that Cho
was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with
his cell phone. She told him to stop, but the damage was already done.

Female students refused to come to class, submitting their work by
computer instead. As for Cho, he was not adding anything to the
classroom atmosphere, only detracting.

Police asked Giovanni not to disclose the exact content or nature of
Cho's poetry. But she said it was not violent like other writings
that have been circulating.

It was more invasive.

"Violent is like, `I'm going to do this,'" said Giovanni, a three-
time NAACP Image Award winner who is sometimes called "the princess
of black poetry." This was more like a personal violation, as if Cho
were objectifying his subjects, "doing thing to your body parts."

"It's not like, `I'll rip your heart out,'" she recalled. "It's that,
`Your bra is torn, and I'm looking at your flesh.'"

His work had no meter or structure or rhyme scheme. To Giovanni, it
was simply "a tirade."

"There was no writing. I wasn't teaching him anything, and he didn't
want to learn anything," she said. "And I finally realized either I
was going to lose my class, or Mr. Cho had to leave."

Giovanni wrote a letter to then-department head Lucinda Roy, who
removed Cho.

Roy alerted student affairs, the dean's office, even the campus
police, but each said there was nothing they could do if Cho had made
no overt threats against himself or others. So Roy took him on as a
kind of personal tutor.

"At first he would hardly say anything, and I was lucky to get, say,
in 30 minutes, four or five monosyllabic answers from him," she
said. "But bit by bit, he began to tell me things."

During their hourlong sessions, Roy encouraged Cho to express himself
in writing. She would compose poems with him, contributing to the
works herself and taking dictation from him.

"I tried to keep him focused on things that were outside the self a
little bit," said Roy, who has been at Virginia Tech for 22
years. "Because he seemed to be running inside circles in a maze when
he was talking about himself."

He was "very guarded" when it came to his family. But she got him to
open up about his feelings of isolation.

"You seem so lonely," she told him once. "Do you have any friends?"

"I am lonely," he replied. "I don't have any friends."

Suitemates and others have said Cho rejected their overtures of
friendship. Roy sensed that Cho's isolation might be largely self-
imposed.

To her, it was as if he were two people.

"He was actually quite arrogant and could be quite obnoxious, and was
also deeply, it seemed, insecure," she said.

But when she wrote to Cho about his behavior in Giovanni's class, Roy
received what she described as "a pretty strident response."

"It was a vigorous defense of the self," she said. "He clearly felt
that he was in the right and that the professor was in the wrong. It
was the kind of tone that I would never have used as an undergraduate
at a faculty member."

She felt he fancied himself a loner, but she wasn't sure what
underlay that feeling.

"I mean, if you see yourself as a loner, sometimes that means you
feel very isolated and insecure and inferior. Or it can mean that you
feel quite superior to others, because you've distanced yourself. And
I think he went from one extreme to another."

When the semester ended, so did Roy's and Cho's collaboration. She
went on leave and thought he had graduated.

When she and Giovanni learned of the shootings and heard a
description of the gunman, they immediately thought of Cho.

Roy wonders now whether things would have turned out differently had
she continued their sessions. But Giovanni sees no reason for people
who had interactions with Cho to beat themselves up.

"I know that there's a tendency to think that everybody can get
counseling or can have a bowl of tomato soup and everything is going
to be all right," she said. "But I think that evil exists, and I
think that he was a mean person."

Giovanni encountered Cho only once after she removed him from class.
She was walking down a campus path and noticed him coming toward her.
They maintained eye contact until passing each other.

Giovanni, who had survived lung cancer, was determined she would not
blink first.

"I was not going to look away as if I were afraid," she said. "To me
he was a bully, and I had no fear of this child."

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

No Joke-This Sistah Can Coach

Not many people have heard of Rutgers University coach C. Vivian Stringer, but the peeps in the NCAA women's coaching ranks definitely have. She's the first coach male or female to take three different schools to the Final Four. (Rick Pitino of Louisville has matched that distinction on the men's side.)

When you mention the elite coaches in the NCAA women's ranks her Big East rival Geno Auriemma of Connecticut or Tennessee's Pat Summitt will come to mind. But C. Vivian Stringer has earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as well. Her record during her 35-year coaching career is 750-215 (.749) which ranks third all time behind the 900 wins of just retired Texas Longhorn coach Jody Conradt and Pat Summitt's 913.

Stringer is called 'The Master Builder' for taking unknown and unheralded programs and molding them into elite level contenders. She did it first with Cheyney State, an HBCU located just outside Philadelphia. They made a surprise run to the national semifinals during the first NCAA sanctioned women's tournament in 1982. A decade later she coached the University of Iowa to a 1993 Final Four appearance. In 2000 she coached Rutgers to its first Final Four in Philadelphia but that team fell in the semifinals to Tennessee.



In what Stringer considers her most satisfying coaching job she's guided a Scarlet Knight team that has no seniors, three juniors, five freshmen and two sophomores to a second Final Four appearance. This team lost four of its first six games in November and December before putting together a 24-4 finishing kick that's taken Rutgers to the brink of a championship. They knocked off No. 1 seeded Duke and outlasted Arizona State to reach this year's tournament final in Cleveland.

It continued a magical season in which they finally knocked off their perennial Big East nemesis UConn after falling to them in the Big East tourney finals for two consecutive years. Rutgers takes on LSU in today's national semifinal with the victor playing either Tennessee or North Carolina for the NCAA championship Tuesday night.

She is a three time winner of the National Coach of the Year award in addition to a long list of honors she's received. She has a Olympic gold medal courtesy of her assistant coaching stint with the USA Women's team at the Athens Games in 2004. She was also named by Sports Illustrated magazine as one of the '101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports' in addition to being inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.

But the honor she wants most is to walk away from Cleveland April 3 as the second African-American coach to win an NCAA women's championship.

Katrina Rose

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

I first met Katrina Rose when she and I transistioned in Houston back in the mid 90's. I was the lone African-American member of TATS (Texas Association for Transsexual Support) the local transgender group and feeling a little isolated in it until Kat and my Latina homegirl Alexandra joined.

We bonded almost immediately. As I've mentioned I like having intelligent people around me and Kat definitely fit the bill. She was attending law school at the time and loathes hypocrites as much as I do. We also loved discussing history, politics and other real-life subjects that often put us at odds with some then members of the TATS group who were more concerned about getting SRS and going stealth.

Kat's also a gifted writer, photographer and painter. She wrote a column for several years in a local GLBT newspaper while I was doing my radio show co-hosting with Jimmy Carper on KPFT-FM at the time. It's kind of an interesting twist in our lives that now I'm the one writing the newspaper column and she's doing radio.

We're an unbeatable team when we're partnered together at Trivial Pursuit. We used to beat up on our fellow TATS members so badly that they wouldn't allow us to play on the same team after a while. ;) I also admire the relationship she has with her mother.

Kat's now happily married, working on her doctorate and does a podcast radio show these days when she's not cracking books, teaching classes, attending law conferences, teaching seminars and writing scholarly legal articles.

Happy Birthday Vanessa Williams!

On this day in 1963 Vanessa Lynn Williams was born. Her parents announced her birth with a prophetic statement: 'Here she is, Miss America!'

She not only fulfilled her parents prophecy by becoming the first African-American Miss America but has built an enviable career for herself in the process. Vanessa has graced Broadway stages, television, Hollywood and the recording industry and racked up numerous awards in the process.

She's currently playing the delightfully backstabbing Wilhemina Slater on ABC's Ugly Betty.

Happy Birthday, Vanessa!

Miss Honey Dijon

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.

Since I like to spin from time to time (70's-80's-90's R&B, old school hip-hop and jazz are my favorites) my homegirl Jordana brought this transwoman to my attention during a long IM conversation we were having one night.

Miss Honey Dijon has become one of the most sought after DJ's in New York's party scene.

She grew up in Chicago during the early days of house music exposed to the work of legendary house DJ's Frankie Knuckles AKA The Godfather of House, Ron Hardy and Andrae Hatchett. She would later be inspired and encouraged to become a DJ herself by influential DJs such as Danny Tenaglia and others.

After spending a short time in Washington D.C. she moved to New York in the mid-90's and rapidly became one of New York's top DJ's with her infectious mix of house, acid, hip-hop and new wave. Some peeps describe it as a Chicago house sound with a deep New York underground feel to it. She's been featured in Wigstock: The Movie , articles in various DJ magazines and nominated for several local DJ awards.

Miss Honey Dijon is someone that I am looking forward to meeting one day and hearing her spin. If you are lucky enough to see her in your locale or get to New York don't miss her.

Your dancing feet will be glad you did.