Andrea Jenkins is a writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is the first African American openly trans woman to be elected to office in the United States. Jenkins moved to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota in 1979 and was hired by the Hennepin County government, where she worked for a decade. Jenkins worked as a staff member on the Minneapolis City Council for 12 years before beginning work as curator of the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota's Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. Andrea holds a Masters Degree in Community Development from Southern New Hampshire University, a MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University and a Bachelors Degrees in Human Services from Metropolitan State University. She is a nationally and internationally recognized writer and artist, a 2011 Bush Fellow to advance the work of transgender inclusion, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships.
Documentary Practices Can Give Visibility to Trans History
Oral history projects offer rich fodder for documentarians “who emphasize the voices of their subjects using their own words, no matter how odious they may be to power structures involved,” writes Andrea Jenkins, a poet, Minneapolis City Council member, and transgender oral historian at the University of Minnesota’s Jean Nicholas Tretter Collection Archives in GLBT Studies.