Articles tagged with: Wanda Sykes
Wanda Sykes, comedian and actor (LGBT History Month)
Wanda Sykes is an Emmy Award-winning comedian and actor praised for being one of the most entertaining women of her generation. She was the first African-American and first openly gay master of ceremonies for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Bent Alaska presents her story as part of our celebration of LGBT History Month 2011, with thanks to the Equality Forum.
Wanda Sykes
“They pissed off the wrong group of people. Instead of having gay marriage in California, we’re going to get it across the country.”
Wanda Sykes (born March 7, 1964) is an Emmy Award-winning comedian and actor praised for being one of the most entertaining women of her generation. She was the first African-American and first openly gay master of ceremonies for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Sykes was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, and raised in the Washington, D.C., area. Her father, an Army colonel, worked in the Pentagon; her mother worked as a bank manager. At a young age, Sykes discovered her passion for making people laugh. She was outspoken and entertaining in high school. In 1986, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing from Hampton University and began working for the National Security Agency (NSA).
Sykes’s stand-up career began spontaneously at a talent showcase. She quickly made close friends in the comedy world, including rising star Chris Rock. She was a performer and writer for “The Chris Rock Show” and won the 1999 Emmy for outstanding writing for a variety, music or comedy special. In 2002, Sykes won her second Emmy for her work on “Inside the NFL.”
In 2003, Sykes launched her first television show, “Wanda at Large.” On the show, she played Wanda Hawkins, an unsuccessful stand-up comic hired to be a correspondent on a political talk show. Sykes acknowledged, “Wanda Hawkins is basically me personified. We have the same attitude, the same point of view—pointing out hypocrisies in the way we see the world.”
Sykes has starred in “Wanda Does It,” “The Wanda Sykes Show” and “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” HBO has produced two Wanda Sykes comedy specials, “Sick & Tired” (2006) and “I’ma Be Me” (2009).
In 2008, Sykes came out when she announced her own marriage while speaking at a rally for same-sex marriage. In a March 2009 interview, she told The Advocate tells the story of how she met and married her wife:
In 2006, Sykes went on a weeklong, end-of-summer vacation with friends to Cherry Grove, one of two predominantly gay communities on New York’s Fire Island. (“I’m not making that Pines money,” she says of the neighboring, ritzier enclave, Fire Island Pines. “But it’s so nice over at the Pines. Nice coffee shops, gourmet foods, and all that crap over there.”) It was a nasty, rainy day, but on the ferry ride to the island Sykes spotted an intriguing woman. “She had on this black trench coat and was carrying a computer bag,” she says. “I was like, We’re going to Fire Island — what the hell is she doing with her laptop?”
It wasn’t so much the trench coat or the laptop, though, that sparked Sykes’s attention. “She just caught my eye,” she says. And that’s when something happened that she’d never experienced before. “It was like a voice inside me saying, See? That’s what you need, Wanda. That’s what you need.” Sykes’s eyes well up with tears as she tells the story. “She’s beautiful, but there was just this aura about her. We’ve been inseparable since.” Inseparable and protective: Sykes, walking a tightrope, will not say what her wife does for a living. In fact, she tells the whole story of their meeting without once uttering her wife’s name. Later Sykes decided to give us her first name, Alexandra, for the article. “She’s not in show business. I want her to have as much of her private life as she can.”
Two years later, emboldened by the California supreme court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality, she and Alexandra decided to make it official. “This was it,” Sykes explains. “We’re in love and we want to spend the rest of our lives together. That’s why you get married.” So they rented a small hotel in Palm Springs and were married in a simple ceremony before about 40 friends and family members. “We had an amazing weekend. I don’t like to talk about it. It was a very special moment for us, for our friends. I like to keep that.” Sykes is happy—and obviously sentimental: “Even looking at the pictures, I just go back to that moment and get all teary-eyed.”
She lives in California with her wife, Alex, and their twins, Lucas and Olivia.
In her “I’ma Be Me” comedy on HBO in 2009, Wanda Sykes talked about what it would be like if you had to come out black. Watch:
For more about Wanda Sykes, visit her website, LGBT History Month page, or Wikipedia article.
Photo credit: Wanda Sykes at a Marriage Equality Now rally in Sacramento, 16 February 2009. Photo by Elijah Nouvelage (wanderinghome on Flickr); used in accordance with Creative Commons license.
Schools are making headway in addressing anti-LGBT bullying, the AP reports (Bent News 10/24/11)
Progress in addressing anti-LGBT bullying in the nation’s schools; a brutal murder in Scotland might have been an antigay attack; and 100 black icons for LGBT History Month in this edition of Bent News.
Based on @bentalaska tweets and Facebook shares from October 23, with supplementation.
Schools are making progress in addressing anti-LGBT bullying
@tlrd: AP survey of last year’s anti-bullying sentiment in WaPo is well written, balanced, will aggravate many http://t.co/6TWH0oLS #- AP story in WaPo: A year after teen suicide spate, more gay students are speaking out, schools taking action http://t.co/B5f6cmRS #
Associated Press reporter Christina Hoag’s story on how schools have bee addressing anti-LGBT bullying since last year’s spate of suicides appeared in the Washington Postand other newspapers. The gay blog Towleroad summarizes it as “a well written, balanced, succinct piece of work, and it’s probably doomed to aggravate a lot of people.” Both the original piece (second tweet & link) and Towleroad’s commentary (& its readers comments) are worth a full read. Most important is that schools and students around the nation have been working to address anti-LGBT bullying, and the attention paid to it is also leading to broader acceptance of LGBT people.
But the work is far, far from over. And so another tweet from yesterday:
- Miami Herald: on the death by suicide of bullied youth Jamey Rodemeyer, which led actor Zachary Quinto to come out. http://t.co/AkD0THir #
The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) had anti-bullying resources.
Murder in Scotland
- Hotel manager Stuart Walker beaten & burned alive in Scotland may have been murdered for being gay | Mail Online http://t.co/PW0YZOSg #
Stuart Walker, 28, was beaten, burned alive, and left at the side of the road to die in Ayrshire, Scotland in what some now believe may have been an antigay attack, though at this point police are saying there’s no proof. Stuart Walker was clearly murdered, in any case, whether out of antigay bias or for some other reason. There’s more coverage at The Telegraph, and gay blogs in the U.S. are also commenting, including Towleroad.
More icons for LGBT History Month
- 50 black gay men & 50 black lesbians (besides Wanda Sykes) that you should know: video montages by Alvin McEwen http://t.co/Nu5i6LNh #
“Wanda Sykes Is Cool, But What About All The Other Great Black Lesbians?” asks Queerty. YouTube user comingoutblaq has a video of 50 black gay men you should know, and two videos which between them also introduce you to 50 black lesbians you should know — besides Wanda Sykes. Here’s one of them:
NAACP’s first LGBT Town Hall: Gay Rights are Civil Rights
Comedian Wanda Sykes, who is performing in Anchorage next month, and CNN reporter Don Lemon headlined the NAACP‘s first ever LGBT Town Hall at the annual convention in Los Angeles last week, supporting same sex marriage and using humor to explain why ‘praying away the gay’ doesn’t work.
Julian Bond, former NAACP chair and veteran civil rights activist, gave a strong opening speech on the panel theme “Our Collective Responsibility: Overcoming Homophobia.”
He explained that the LGBT Task Force was formed in 2009 with the National Black Justice Coalition, and described the NAACP’s three-point mission to increase acceptance of black LGBT people in the African American community:
- strengthen the NAACP’s knowledge of LGBT issues and policies,
- build alliances with LGBT organizations, and
- advance awareness of LGBT issues as they relate to the programs and interests of the NAACP.
He also addressed several areas where conflict exists between the LGBT and the African American communities.
We know that black lesbians, black gay men, black bisexual people and black transgender people suffer a level of discrimination and harassment far beyond the level felt by straight black women and men.
If you disagree, or if your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don’t tell them they can’t be married at City Hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well as a civil right, and we can’t allow religious bigotry to close the door to justice for anyone….
For some people, comparisons between the African American Civil Rights movement and the movement for gay and lesbian rights seems to diminish the long, black historical struggle with all it’s suffering, sacrifices and endless toil. People of color, however, ought to be flattered that our Movement has provided so much inspiration for others, that it has been so widely imitated, and that our tactics, heroes, heroines and methods, even our songs, have been appropriated as models for others….
People of color carry the badge of who we are on our faces. But we are far from the only people suffering from discrimination…. They deserve the laws, protections and civil rights, too.
(Thanks to Metro Weekly for the partial transcript.)
There were several moments of controversy during the 2 hour discussion. NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous joined the panel and was asked why the organization has an anti-gay preacher, Keith Ratliff, on its board. Ratliff claimed in March that gay rights activists have “hijacked” the Civil Rights movement.
Jealous responded, “He did not say it in the name of the NAACP…. We have board members who hold all sorts of divergent views.”
The last speaker, transgender audience member Ashley Love, pointed out the importance of including transgender people in the discussion:
“The NAACP was founded because black people were being excluded from having a seat at the table,” she said. “So why would we as an LGBT black coalition exclude transsexual and transgender people, who are the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, the most endangered in the entire coalition?”
Other critics of the Convention noted that there were neither transgender nor bisexual members of the panel.
But the people at the town hall, and many of the news reports, agree that the first NAACP LGBT panel was a good start for the veteran civil rights organization, and could have a positive effect on the regional branches and thousands of members nationwide.
Wanda Sykes + k.d. lang = Best. Weekend. Ever.
OMG! Wanda’s coming to Anchorage! Tickets are on sale now for the Dena’ina Center on Sept 17… oh, wait… that’s the same date as k.d. lang’s second night at the PAC. Whose idea was that? Where is the Lesbian Coordinating Committee when you need it?
Well, if you’re lucky enough to have tickets for k.d. lang’s Friday concert, then get your Wanda tickets for Saturday and you’ll be ready for a weekend of amazing entertainment with a lesbian twist, right here in Anchorage.
Wanda Sykes has been called “one of the funniest stand up comics” by her peers and ranks among Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Funniest People in America.
Her HBO Special “I’ma Be Me” has been nominated for Two Primetime Emmys. She’s already won 4 Emmys for other projects. Watch the awards on August 29 to see if she wins again.
In addition to her three television specials – “Wanda Sykes: Im’a Be Me”, “Wanda Sykes: Sick and Tired”, and “Tongue Untied,” all available on DVD – she can also be seen on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and heard on Comedy Central’s “Crank Yankers” as the voice of Gladys Murphy.
In June, she was honored with the first Hope of L.A. award presented by Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa to celebrate the city’s LGBT Heritage Month.
Watch this hilarious clip from “I’ma Be Me” on coming out Black to her parents:
And this clip on how anyone could believe Sarah Palin’s “death panels” meme:
Don’t miss this show!
Wanda Sykes in Anchorage
Another Northern Stage Production
When: Sept 17 at 8pm
Where: Dena’ina Civic & Convention Center
600 W 7th Avenue, Anchorage, Alaska
Cost: $48.50 and $68.50
(Actual price: $59.55 and $80.35 with the fees.)
Tickets available at Ticketmaster.com, the Sports Arena (named after the mayor who vetoed our rights), and Fred Meyer ticket outlets.
More Info: Wanda Sykes home page and the Anchorage event.
