Imara Jones left Georgia to discover herself as a trans woman. Two decades later, she returns to meet her family as her whole self.
Imara writes in The Guardian:
There is one essential truth about human beings: we all come from somewhere. Me? I’m a black trans woman who left the deep south at 18.
It’s September 2018, two decades later, and I’m in a car headed back to Georgia for the first time as my whole self – with a new body, and a whole new way of being – to meet my 95-year-old great aunt Mama Rose and the rest of my family. [...]
[My mother] died in 2011 before I transitioned. [...] I was wondering whether she would have ultimately accepted me as her daughter.
That’s why meeting with Mama Rose is so important to me. I had to get clues from my mother’s aunt to find out whether she would have accepted me. She is the only person still alive who knew my mom before my mom knew herself. [...]
As my conversation with Mama Rose unfolded, so did my joy. I was blown away by her as she talked about my mother’s sweetness, intelligence, thoughtfulness and sensitivity as a child. We rarely can imagine our parents as children; I was suddenly able to do so and it rounded out her humanity and vulnerability in my mind. Mama Rose is giving me the gift of memories of my mom which only she possessed.
But Mama Rose does even more. As she talks, she embodies the example of love she sets for our entire family. When I ask her why she doesn’t judge people, she says simply because “it is what it is”.
It is this example which has led me to be embraced by four generations of my family, including some of its youngest members.
Imara, whose work has won Emmy and Peabody Awards, is the creator of TransLash a multi-episode docuseries about it is like to be trans at a time of social backlash. In 2019 she chaired the first-ever UN High Level Meeting on Gender Diversity with over 600 participants.
As a journalist and intersectional news-producer, Imara is the host The Last Sip a weekly, half-hour news show currently on hiatus which targets Millennials of color, especially women and the LGBTQ community. Imara’s work as a host, on-air news analyst, and writer focuses on the full-range of social justice and equity issues. Imara has been featured regularly in a number of leading news outlets such as The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, Mic, and Colorlines.
Imara has held economic policy posts in the Clinton White House and communications positions at Viacom. Imara holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Columbia. Imara is currently a Soros Equality Fellow and on the board of the Anti-violence Project. She goes by the pronouns she/her/they/them.
