Gay and Transgender in a Hip-Hop World: Toni Newman and Terrance Dean
BY Diane Anderson-Minshall
May 14 2012 4:30 AM ET
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2012/05/14/toni-newman-and-terrance-dean-are-gay-and-transgender-hip-hopTransgender author Toni Newman, whose recent memoir I Rise: The Transformation of Toni Newman was a multiple nominee for the Lambda Literary Award and is being turned into a film, talks to gay author Terrance Dean, whose memoir Hiding in Hip Hop shook up the entertainment world. Dean has five books to his credit — including Straight from Your Gay Best Friend, Visible Lives, and Reclaim Your Power — and his latest, Mogul, is a fictional account about a man in the hip-hop world struggling with his sexuality.
[...]
Dean: What inspired you?
Newman: I wrote the memoir because I had not seen anything like it... during my 25 years as a transgender person, I have never seen an African-American memoir which talks about how they felt, what your thoughts are, why you did it, what were you feeling? What was the response by your family, co-workers and friends? How you will be received? What the people say when you first step out as a transgender woman and all of those things that go with that. There was a book written in 1986 by African-American transgender author...but it was a small publication and I have never read it or seen anything since in the last almost 30 years. So I wanted to write a book to let other minorities, Asians, blacks, Latinos, know that these feelings that you have, they are normal. You are not odd, you are not peculiar, you are OK. And help guide young black kids through those things that [they] are feeling as a young black child.
