Akilah
Monifa
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
Spin Project Staff Bios:
http://www.spinproject.org/about/staffbios.html
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