Black Women Who Kickass And Also Happen To Be Adopted

These Black women are awesome and you should totally check out their work.

Imani Gandy, aka, @AngryBlackLady

angryblackladychronicles.com

"Well, hello there. My name is Angry Black Lady, or ABL if you’re into the whole brevity thing. In a former online life, I was known as stopthemadness. And before Al Gore invented the internet, I was simply known as Imani Gandy."

Lisa Marie Rollins

birthproject.wordpress.com

"Lisa Marie is a Bay Area (Oakland) based, Black/Filipina writer, performer and lecturer and one leading voice in transracial/ international adoption education and advocacy. She is currently touring her acclaimed solo show, Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girls Story of being adopted by a White Family… that aren’t Celebrities, a comedic, but intense look her experience of being adopted by a white family in the 1970′s."

Lisa Brimmer

pwcenter.org

"Lisa Brimmer is a poet and playwright residing in Minneapolis, MN. In 2009, she attended the Juniper Summer Writers Institute week long workshop with Dara Weir. Brimmer was a fellow through the Given’s Foundation of African American Literature in 2009 and worked with Ishmael Reed, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Laurie Carlos. In 2010, she was a Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow. Her work has been produced by Bedlam Theatre’s 10 Minute Community Play Festival. Her poetry has been published in the Summit Avenue Review and Konch Literary Magazine and featured in the Lowertown Reading Jam Series, the Pillsbury House Theatre’s Late Nite, The Loft Literary Center’s EQ (Equilibrium) Spoken Word Series. Her band High Society has been featured on KFAI and MPR."

Shannon Gibney

shannongibney.wordpress.com

"Shannon Gibney was born in 1975, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was adopted by Jim and Sue Gibney about five months later, and grew up with her two (biological) brothers, Jon and Ben. Shannon has loved to read and to write as far back as she can remember. When she was in second grade, she started making “books” about her family’s camping trips, and later graduated to a series on three sibling detectives in fourth grade.When she was 15, her father gave her James Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, a book that changed her life and made her see the possibilities of the written word. The novel took a long, difficult look at relations between Blacks and Whites, the poor and the rich, gay and straight people, and fused searing honesty with metaphorical beauty. After this experience, Shannon knew that she needed to read everything Baldwin had ever written, and also that she wanted to emulate his strategy of telling the most dangerous, and therefore liberating kind of truth, through writing.

Gina M. Samuels

ssascholars.uchicago.edu

(Gina is pictured on the right) "In her ground-breaking research, Gina M. Samuels, an associate professor at the School of Social Service Administration, examines two broad themes: identity development among transracial adoptees and the "aging out" of young adults from foster care. As a multiracial adoptee and past child welfare worker, Samuels' scholarly work is distinct, informed by her professional and lived experience."