Akilah Monifa
Author, Media Trainer & Strategist

Akilah Monifa was born in Manhattan, KS and raised in Huntsville, AL. After practicing law for several years, she moved to her favored career and is now a writer. "When I think about issues of beauty in this society, being heavy isn't considered ideal. Neither is being this tall. Neither is being African-American, or wearing dreadlocks. Neither is being a lesbian. So among all these various issues, weight is simply one more."

Akilah Monifa has a rich career in teaching, media activism, and journalism. She was press officer for Medea Benjamin's Green Party candidacy for U.S. Senate in California. Although an underdog candidate, Benjamin did score media hits and managed to "jam" a broader progressive message into the 2000 elections thanks in part to Akilah.

Akilah was Media Education Coordinator at Media Alliance and planned, scheduled, conducted and marketed media classes for numerous organizations. She did outreach to community organizations to determine their media training needs and assess their media activism capacity. She was managing editor for Mediafile, the bi-monthly publication about media issues at Media Alliance. She was president of the board of the Media Alliance.

She is a contributing columnist to the Progressive Media Project and the New York Times Syndicate New America News Service. Her commentaries have been published in more than 100 newspapers and online journals. She is a former member of the editorial staff of ColorLines.

She has placed feature articles and cultural criticisms on music, arts, sports, and politics in numerous national and local publications, including Ms. Magazine, Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, and Emerge. In addition, her work has appeared in several books.

Her commentaries have aired on KQED-FM. She is a columnist for Full Court Press: The Women's Basketball Journal and on-line publication.

Akilah has been a public interest law professor and lawyer for more than 10 years, and taught law at San Francisco's New College, a public interest law school. She has been a legal analyst at the Continuing Education of the Bar, a legal publishing company.

Ms. Monifa is a lesbian of African descent, freelance writer and an adjunct professor of law at New College of California. She is a contributor to Lesbians in Academia: Degrees of Freedom, edited by Beth Mintz and Ester D. Rothblum (Routledge Press 8/97). Ms. Monifa also has a review of the non-fiction work Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race in the Jan/Feb QBR.  Ms. Monifa lives with her life partner and their daughter, Isabella, in Oakland, CA.

Book Reviews By Akilah Monifa

Jamerican Connection by Sandra Ottey
Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash
It Begins with Tears by Opal Palmer Adisa
In Another Place, Not Here by Dionne Brand

Articles by Akilah Monifa

Video games perpetuate racial and gender stereotypes
By Akilah Monifa -- December 18, 2001 (The Progressive Media)

Malcolm X stamp is surprising -- January 1999 (The Progressive Media)

Niggas, Dykes, and Corporate Types:  Some Notions on Racism and Homophobia in Sports (ColorLines)

Black History Month Has Degenerated Into A Farce Of Token Commercialism (Common Dreams News Center)

The "Miss" Education about African American Lesbians (FemmeNoir)

Contact Info:  amonifa@aol.com

Source:   http://reviews.aalbc.com/akilah.htm
http://www.rcgraphics.com/biggirls/photos.html
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