Pam Grier…
Jamaica Jamaica! After all the recent ruction about cross dressers and transvestites I was astonished to hear in the morning news today that a fearsome ‘gunwoman’ nicknamed He-She had been shot in West Kingston. Astonished because you would think that with the supposedly intense homophobia that exists here, and zero tolerance for ambiguous sexualities, you’d hardly come across someone like this. Of course unlike Dwayne Jones, who was a guy who liked to dress like a woman, apparently Bianca was a gal who liked to dress and behave like a guy. Blow wow. An interesting thing I found when looking for an image to go with this post was that gunwomen are almost always portrayed as femme fatales, unlike Bianca Bradley who dressed butch and acted masculine by all accounts.
When I posted about the gunwoman’s shooting on Facebook it led to the following convo between two of my writer friends:
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Marlon James Lawd man, me just done write me book, don’t mek me frighten me editor with another chapter…
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Garfield Ellis Marlon… are we writing the same book…
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Garfield Ellis Hold on to yours …let mine publish first…
Terry Lyn by Peter Dean Rickards
At the moment details are pretty sketchy but I promise to find out more and post it asap. In the meantime here’s what the Gleaner had:
Feared 23-y-o gunwoman shot in west Kingston
For the second day running, the Luke Lane/Chancery Lane section of western Kingston erupted into violence when a feared gunwoman was shot in the area.
Twenty-three-year-old Bianca Bradley, who is well known in the community as a notorious member of a feared gang involved in an ongoing feud, was shot multiple times.
Bradley is known in the area as ‘He-She’ because of her masculine appearance – notably her predominantly male clothing and style of walk – as well as her so-called no-nonsense approach.
A large crowd converged at the Kingston Public Hospital as a police team transported the wounded woman to the facility yesterday.
“She nuh afraid to fire di gun,” a member of the community whispered as traffic blocked the area.
The shooting took place 24 hours after two men were shot by the police, one fatally, after they were accosted and two illegal weapons seized.
Active Voice 