Tim'm T. West

Last updated

Timothy Terrell West (born July 6, 1972), better known as Tim'm T. West, is an American educator and multi-discipline performance artist, author, hip hop recording artist, poet, activist, and youth advocate. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Humboldt State University notes West as a Renaissance man who has achieved success as a performer, activist, author, teacher, and poet. [7] [8] He has been featured in many documentaries about hip hop culture, in addition to his books, he is widely anthologized, and has produced nine hip hop albums including with Deep Dickollective. [7] West has been interviewed by an array of media outlets from Newsweek to the New York Times. He was awarded a "2013 Esteem Award", and in 2015 was named an LGBTQ icon. [9]

Contents

Early life and education

West was born with a speech impediment that caused him to stutter and repeat the 'M' on his first name. [10] [11] His family began calling him "Tim'm" which has remained his moniker. [12] He is the second son of nine children, born into a musical family in Cincinnati, Ohio to Charles Edward, a minister, and his mother, Irma Pearl Stinson, who served at various times as an administrative assistant and nurse. [13] He counts his mother as one of the biggest influences on his life, showing him how to be thankful, loving, forgiving, and gracious. [13] His early influences besides his family were reggae, rap and house music. [14] He says his dad was more of a storefront preacher with mixed success, but it did offer the first times West recalls being a poet, and performing. [12] West grew up primarily in Little Rock, Arkansas and later Taylor, Arkansas in extreme poverty, where he attended Taylor High School. [11] [13] He served as captain of his high school basketball team and president of his school's chapter of Future Farmers of America.

He participated in Upward Bound at Southern Arkansas University and competed in the National Science Competitions where he was twice selected to represent his state at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. He met then-Governor Bill Clinton and traveled to The United States Military Academy at West Point to compete. He was interviewed by West Point recruiters, but after revealing he had same-sex interests, he was dropped as a potential recruit. West is now openly queer. [11] [15]

His activity as a Boy Scout led him to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) which sponsored his troop. He began attending LDS Church functions at the age of twelve. While being considered for a Mormon mission, he came out to his Bishop, which heightened his existing feelings of rejection and shame. This was a difficult for him, and he contemplated his future, as well as suicide. He struggled with depression and anxiety. He decided to move on to attend college, accept himself, even if uncertain about what his future held. His tireless work as a high school student enabled many opportunities for college, Cornell University and Duke University among others.

West enrolled at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, and used an opportunity while at Duke, to attend Howard University in his senior year to experience and study at a historical black college. [11] He returned to complete his studies at Duke, and graduated in 1994, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, with a concentration in women's studies and pre-law. [11] After a few years working as a college admissions officer at Duke, he moved to New York City to attend The New School for Social Research where he earned a Masters of Arts degree in liberal studies and philosophy in 1998, while immersing himself in the spoken word and poetry scene in Brooklyn and Manhattan. [11] [16] He later earned a master's in modern thought and literature from Stanford University. [11]

Deep Dickollective/hip hop

West traveled to the west coast, enrolling in a Ph.D. program in interdisciplinary modern thought and literature at Stanford University. [11] Shortly thereafter in 1999, he discovered that he had AIDS, [16] so he took an academic break to focus on his health and options for his future. [11] [14] It was during this time that he started youth advocacy work and joined forces in early 2000 with Juba Kalamka, and Phillip Atiba Goff to form the black and queer hip-hop group Deep Dickollective (DDC). [1] West believes the Bay Area, with San Francisco's AIDS activism, and Oakland's Black Panthers, was one of the few settings where DDC could emerge. [16] The "idea of pan-Africanism and black nationalism is also kind of working against progay [causes]. It's one of the few places were those two identities converge." [16] DDC was one of the first groups of their kind. [1] [3] [16] They were formed, in part, as a response to the pandemic of HIV/AIDS among queer black men. [11] Curator William Jones booked them as part of his "Black Gay Male Radical Performances" series at the Black Dot Café in Oakland, California. Their debut recording "BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo" surprised hip hop and spoken word communities, with a fresh approach to the political and social issues, from a perspective of an increasingly vocal black and queer community. [1] What started as a parodic exercise became an underground, and critical success. [1] West continues to educate on homophobia in hip hop. [17] West coined the term homohop but feels that the term should be replaced. [18] At first it helped organize LGBTQI hip hop artists, but he feels now it serves to separate artists who are fundamentally just hip hop artists. [18]

West is featured prominently in the 2005 hip hop documentary, Pick Up the Mic and appears in Byron Hurt's documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes . Most recently he appeared in a set of documentaries directed by Mario Van Peebles about black manhood and responsibility; Bring Your 'A' Game and its complement, Fair Game? In Spring of 2007, DDC released its final, full-length studio project, On Some Other, on Sugartruck Recordings. The group disbanded in 2007. DDC was a part of The Anthology of Rap book from Yale University Press in 2010. West credits DDC for breaking through the media as queer and black artists, and enabling him to perform as an out LGBT black soloist, "We had pretty much remained invisible in the media prior to Deep Dickollective, so the affect was far-reaching." [12]

As a solo artist, West released Songs from Red Dirt on Cellular Records in 2004. [11] [19] The debut provided musical complement to his first book, Red Dirt Revival: a poetic memoir in 6 Breaths (2003). [4] [11] [20] [21] West says the book and CD are testimonial, they are "literary and musical projections of my rites of passage from shame and silence into self-love." [13]

In 2005 he released a chapbook, BARE: Notes From a Porchdweller. [6] Flirting (2007), was his second full-length poetic memoir book. [14] Also in 2007 he completed his second solo album, Blakkboy Blue(s), which was met with positive critical response. [14] [22] In the Fall of 2008, and in support of the campaign against California's Proposition 8, West created a limited edition chapbook Love In Full Color. In January 2009, he released a third solo rap project, In Security: The Golden Error. [23] [24] In July 2011 he released Fly Brotha, [12] [25] which also received critical acclaim. His fifth solo release, Snapshots: The He-Art and Experience of Tim'm T. West, was released in April 2013. [16] [26]

West continues to host "Front Porch," [27] a spoken word/hip-hop/soul showcase that has appeared at various colleges and universities nationwide. [11] [14] He continues to teach and perform nationally, promoting a collection of poetry released in April 2015, "pre|dispositions: affirmations on loving" and a new Hip-Hop/Soul/House project, "ICONography," which was released in October 2015.

Educator

West worked in HIV/AIDS advocacy awareness and mobilization, specializing his work for young black gay, bisexual, same gender loving men at both AID Atlanta and Saint Hope Foundation's FUSION Center in Houston, Texas. [28] He has been recognized for his work over multiple years with the National Association of People with AIDS's "Positive Youth Institute," and his graduation as a distinguished fellow of the Black AIDS Institute's "African-American HIV University's Community Mobilization College." [29]

West served as the Department Chair of English and Creative Writing at the Oakland School of the Arts from 2002 to 2004 before relocating to Washington, DC where he taught in the English Department of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School. In various capacities, since 1995, West has also worked for College Summit, notably as a high school coordinator in DC in 2006 and 2007, where he helped to the build capacity of high schools to get more of their students into college. He is known for his engaging teaching methods, and has taught on the post-secondary level as an instructor of Writing Pedagogy classes at Eugene Lang College of The New School in New York City, and as an instructor in Stanford University's first-year Writing and Critical Thinking Program. In the 2008 to 2009 Academic Year, West taught in the Department of World Languages and Cultures as a Visiting Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at California's Humboldt State University. More recently, West served as an adjunct professor of English and Philosophy at Houston Community College, and in the summer of 2011, joined distinguished faculty with the Washington National Cathedral Scholars Program where he taught a 6-week blog-based social justice/activism course.

In May 2011, West relocated to Chicago, Illinois, where his daughter, Shannon Rose Matesky, a recent DePaul University graduate and well known poet, spoken word artist and performer, lives. He started MyWritingProfessor.com where he serves as the owner and principal consultant, and remains a longstanding advocate for youth. [5] In December 2012, he accepted a position at the Center on Halsted where he was swiftly promoted to serve as the director of youth services through May 2014. [2] [16] Tim'm's desire to have a broader impact on LGBTQ youth and young adults led his interest in Teach For America, who'd just launched its LGBTQ Initiative and was seeking a managing director. Given the trajectory of his own struggles as a queer black male in the South and even a suicide attempt at sixteen, Tim'm proudly accepted this position with Teach For America in July 2014; a position he feels bridges his work as an educator with his long-standing commitment to LGBTQ youth advocacy. He relocated from Washington, DC to Atlanta, GA where he serves on the Atlanta-based Programming Board for the LGBT Institute. Tim'm was promoted to Senior Managing Director of Teach For America's LGBTQ Community Initiative and continues to do work nationally to advance safer and braver classrooms for LGBTQ kids and educators.

See also

Related Research Articles

Queer studies, sexual diversity studies, or LGBT studies is the study of topics relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender dysphoric, asexual, queer, questioning, and intersex people and cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center</span> LGBT community organization in New York City

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, commonly called The Center, is a nonprofit organization serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) population of New York City and nearby communities.

<i>Pick Up the Mic</i> 2006 American film

Pick Up the Mic is a documentary film, released in 2006, which profiles the underground homo hop scene, which is a subgenre of hip hop that includes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender artists. The film was directed by Alex Hinton.

Deep Dickollective (D/DC) was an LGBT hip hop group based in Oakland, California that were active in the homo hop scene of openly queer/LGBT artists during the 2000s. They were regular performers at the PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival curated by group co-founder Juba Kalamka.

QBoy is a UK-based rapper, producer, DJ, writer and presenter. He is one of the original few out rappers in hip hop circa 2001 that became pioneers of the new subgenre colloquially known as "homo hop". QBoy is currently a DJ and promoter of popular LGBTQ club night and party 'R & She: The Queens of Hip-Hop & R&B' which hosts events in London, Berlin and New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anye Elite</span> American singer

Anye Elite is an American singer, rapper and LGBT activist. He is best known for his contributions to Atlanta's gay community.

LGBT representations in hip hop music have existed since the birth of the genre even while enduring blatant discrimination. Due to its adjacency to disco, the earliest days of hip hop had a close relation to LGBT subcultures, and multiple LGBT DJs have played a role in popularizing hip hop. Despite this early involvement, hip hop has long been portrayed as one of the least LGBT-friendly genres of music, with a significant body of the genre containing homophobic views and anti-gay lyrics, with mainstream artists such as Eminem and Tyler, the Creator having used homophobia in their lyrics. Attitudes towards homosexuality in hip hop culture have historically been negative, with slang that uses homosexuality as a punchline such as "sus", "no homo", and "pause" being heard in hip hop lyrics from some of the industry's biggest artists. Since the early 2000s there has been a flourishing community of LGBTQ+ hip hop artists, activists, and performers breaking barriers in the mainstream music industry.

Historically, the portrayal of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in media has been largely negative if not altogether absent, reflecting a general cultural intolerance of LGBT individuals; however, from the 1990s to present day, there has been an increase in the positive depictions of LGBT people, issues, and concerns within mainstream media in North America. The LGBT communities have taken an increasingly proactive stand in defining their own culture, with a primary goal of achieving an affirmative visibility in mainstream media. The positive portrayal or increased presence of the LGBT communities in media has served to increase acceptance and support for LGBT communities, establish LGBT communities as a norm, and provide information on the topic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT sex education</span> Sex education relevant to those who are LGBT

LGBT sex education is a sex education program within a school, university, or community center that addresses the sexual health needs of LGBT people.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+(LGBTQ+)music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BEN (song)</span> 2012 single by Adair Lion

"BEN" is a hip hop song written by rapper, producer, and director Adair Lion, a native of El Paso, Texas. The song samples Michael Jackson's 1972 song of the same name and gives a pro-LGBT message. One report described it as a message to the rap world, and a stance against gay discrimination. Towleroad called it a "beautifully-spun message about doing away with homophobia in hip-hop and Christianity, and accepting gay parents". Originally titled "It Gets Benner" in homage to the It Gets Better Project, Lion decided to use "Ben" with the name also serving as an acronym for "Better Everything Now".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Brandon Lacy Campos</span> American poet and activist

William Brandon Lacy Campos was an American poet, writer, columnist, LGBT and HIV/AIDS activist. He authored the poetry collection It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt and his writings were included in books and poetry anthologies. He was HIV-positive from his mid-20s and spoke about his serostatus, his methamphetamine addiction and his experiences as a person of color.

Homophobia in ethnic minority communities is any negative prejudice or form of discrimination in ethnic minority communities in the UK and USA towards people who identify as–or are perceived as being–lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), known as homophobia. This may be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, irrational fear, and is sometimes related to religious beliefs. A 2006 study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the UK found that while religion can have a positive function in many LGB Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, it can also play a role in supporting homophobia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African-American LGBT community</span> African-American population within the LGBT community

The African-American LGBT community, otherwise referred to as the Black American LGBT community, is part of the overall LGBT culture and overall African-American culture. The initialism LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.

Austin, Texas, has one of the most prominent and active LGBT populations in the United States. Austin was acclaimed by The Advocate in 2012 as part of its Gayest Cities in America, and was recognized by Travel and Leisure as one of America's Best Cities for Gay Travel. Much of Austin's gay nightlife scene is clustered around 4th Street. LGBT activism groups Atticus Circle and Equality Texas are headquartered in Austin.

Jaime Cortez is a Chicano-American graphic novelist, visual artist, writer, teacher, and performer. Cortez is also known for his role as an LGBT rights activist, and HIV/AIDS prevention work.

In the United States, LGBT youth of colour are marginalized adolescents in the LGBT community. Social issues include homelessness; cyberbullying; physical, verbal and sexual abuse; suicide; drug addiction; street violence; immigration surveillance; engagement in high-risk sexual activity; self-harm, and depression. The rights of LGBT youth of colour are reportedly not addressed in discussions of sexuality and race in the larger context of LGBT rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenyon Farrow</span> LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS activist


Kenyon Farrow is an American writer, activist, director, and educator focused on progressive racial and economic justice issues related to the LGBTQ community. He served as the executive director of Queers for Economic Justice, policy institute fellow with National LGBTQ Task Force, U.S. & Global Health Policy Director of Treatment Action Group, public education and communications coordinator for the New York State Black Gay Network, senior editor with TheBody.com and TheBodyPro.com, and co-executive director of Partners for Dignity and Rights. In 2021, Farrow joined PrEP4All as managing director of advocacy & organizing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yolo Akili</span> American journalist

Yolo Akili, also known as Yolo Akili Robinson, is an activist, writer, poet, counselor, and community organizer who advocates for addressing mental and emotional health needs in the Black community. He is the author of Dear Universe: Letters of Affirmation and Empowerment, and the founder and executive director of BEAM.

Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Wilson, D. Mark. "Post-pomo hip-hop homos: hip-hop art, gay rappers, and social change." Social Justice 34.1 (107 (2007): 117-140.
  2. 1 2 Penney, Joel. ""We Don't Wear Tight Clothes": Gay Panic and Queer Style in Contemporary Hip Hop." Popular Music and Society 35.3 (2012): 321-332.
  3. 1 2 Fleetwood, Nicole Rachelle. Documenting" the Real": youth, race, and the discourse of realness in visual culture. Stanford University, 2001.
  4. 1 2 Flores, Maria Ruth A. Knowledge Morena and Literacies de Colores: Toward the Embodiment of Life Giving Knowledges in the Arts, Poetry and Song. ProQuest, 2006.
  5. 1 2 Bailey, Marlon M. "Performance as Intravention." Black Genders and Sexualities: 211.
  6. 1 2 Accomando, Christina. "Social Justice, Action, and Teaching: The Legacies of Eric Rofes." Issue 34-Social Justice Action, Teaching, and Research: 9.
  7. 1 2 Tim'm West: Reading & Q&A
  8. ↑ Doug Cooper-Spencer: The View From Here: Tim’m West, Hip Hop Renaissance Man
  9. ↑ one of 31 LGBT Icons by LGBT History Month.PrideIndex.com
  10. ↑ stutter
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 "The Deliberate Revolutionary," Washington Blade, April 29, 2005. (archive at )
  12. 1 2 3 4 The One Loved Best, An Interview with Tim’M West | Prideindex
  13. 1 2 3 4 One-on-One With Tim'm West - TheBody.com
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Tim'm West: Rhymes with homo side | Music Feature | Creative Loafing Atlanta
  15. ↑ NewBlackMan (in Exile): DeepDickollective Co-Founder Tim'm West on Frank Ocean
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tim'm West and the masculine mystique: In his career as a hip-hop artist—and now through his work at the Center on Halsted—West has demonstrated that there's more than one way to be a black gay man.
  17. ↑ Tim’m West speaks at UTD and then Queerly Speaking | Dallas Voice
  18. 1 2 "Homo Hop is dead, Queer hip hop is the real deal". Archived from the original on 2013-03-17. Retrieved 2014-01-04.
  19. ↑ Songs from Red Dirt"
  20. ↑ "Red Dirt Revival: a poetic memoir in 6 Breaths."
  21. ↑ Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Kitchen Culture: Literature, Eating and the Body Politic in the Nineteenth-century United States. Stanford University, 2004.
  22. ↑ " Blakkboy Blue(s)"
  23. ↑ "In Security: The Golden Error"
  24. ↑ Album Review: "In Security" by Tim'm West - G-Magazine Now
  25. ↑ "Fly Brotha"
  26. ↑ "Snapshots: The He-Art and Experience of Tim'm T. West"
  27. ↑ 'Front Porch'
  28. ↑ Malebranche, David J., et al. "The relationship between gender role conflict and condom use among black MSM." AIDS and Behavior 16.7 (2012): 2051–2061.
  29. ↑ Bailey, Marlon M. "Performance as intravention: Ballroom culture and the politics of HIV/AIDS in Detroit." Souls 11.3 (2009): 253-274.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.