The Punany Poets: Cutting Edge AIDS Awareness   Punany Founder Jessica Holter Talks about the Making of The Punany Project "Sex Education Theater": The Punany Poets, best known for their internationally televised review on HBO, BET, Cinemax, Playboy TV and the Independent Film Channels "Silent, in Search of Black Female Sexuality" documentary, offer a uniquely intense and personal theatrical experience to mature adults who seek entertainment as well as education on HIV / AIDS, Black Sexuality and Communication & Relationship Enhancement. Though many controversial topics regarding human sexually find their way into our productions of poetic cabaret, the subject matter is delivered with intelligence & sensitivity - in a tasteful manner that eases even the most conservative audience member into acceptance. Punany Shows offer the titillating allure of a strip club but delivers a social service unlike any ever created. The Punany Project is a historical one, that has blazed new trails in studies of contemporary sexuality and African-American social science. "Young people may not remember the early days of hip hop, when women held a respectable position in society. In fact, they may even think of themselves as "Baby Mommas" and "Bitches" and "Hos" willingly tossing it up to ride on spinners... but I do," says Jessica Holter, Founder of the Punany Poets, who was a young hip hop writer in 1995 when rapper "Eazy E" Wright announce his HIV/AIDS infection a short time before he died. And while the tragedy did not make the headlines that Magic Johnson’s did, it sealed the sexual health of young African American women who were finding lovers among men who were being incarcerated at a rate 3 times that of Black men in South Africa at the time. Holter began The Punany Project in 1995, inspired by this new fascination with the dogmatic approach to sex that rappers sparked through their often condescending lyrics. Women encouraged the debasing attitude as they fell into the victimization of the money and fanfare that the rap subculture promised. The Punany Project began with a book entitled Punany: The Hip Hop Psalms, which mimics the poetic style of rap, draws urban readers with erotic imagery while, at the same time, promotes sexual responsibility and AIDS Awareness. The Word "Punany" While some people blush at the use of the word "Punany", if they know what is means, Holter says she chose it to brand her project as a means of reclaiming a positive attitude about female sexuality. "I chose the word "Punany", an Afro Caribbean slang for female genitalia, because the sound of it is a beautiful contrast to other popular euphemisms for the sacred place of a woman. I mean, really, cunt? What is that? The word "Punany" is so much more beautiful than even the accepted clinical term "Vagina", Holter continues. Punany, Rap Culture & PrisonUsing the brazen context of rap, I compiled an anthology of works by various writers including some notable public figures to create my first anthology, Punany: The Hip Hop Psalms a book of poetry and images as bold as Hip-Hop had become when Ice Cube and Eazy E bent freedom of speech with NWA (Niggaz With Attitudes) turning us into bitches and hoes, not worth sexual honesty. Today, in 2008, you can find children of 12 and 13 years, dressed like video girls, selling their bodies on the street, right here in Oakland, CA on International Blvd, on any given night... like there is no shame in it at all. I am a writer, I believe in freedom of speech, but even back in 1993, I believed C. Delores Tucker had a point when she waged her fiery national campaign against obscenities in rap music. Tucker was the only internationally recognized voice to speak up for the power of womanhood, and while she probably wouldn’t appreciate my books or my shows, I know she would roll over in her grave if she could see what young Black women have become. As a college student in Washington, DC, I discovered what brothers on the down-low were, long before they even had a commercial label. I worked at the Washington Post between 1988 and 1992 when there seemed to be a campaign to incarcerate Black men brewing. Between internationally distributed articles on "Black Men as the Endangered Species", "The War on Drugs", "Black on Black Crime" and the fact that any ignorant brother with a hard knock story, a poor education and a poetically musical flare could become rich for his part in glamorizing violence and street life; We were bamboozled. I was on the payphone in the hallway of the Harriet Tubman Quadrangle on the Howard campus talking to a friend that told me all of the drug dealers I knew and knew of in my home town of Oakland had been taken down in a huge series of busts in 1988. That same year Eazy E and his Niggaz with Attitudes busted their reality gangster chronicles Straight out of Compton. Brothers were snatched into task force vans in droves all over the country throughout the 80's. In anticipation of more prisoners, private corporations (see Prison Corporation of America), rich individuals and even politicians began to invest in building new prisons. But by 1990 there to too many empty beds. The Federal government bailed them out, working out arrangements that would use tax payer monies to pay to fill the beds. New reasons to lock people up and to lock them up for longer periods of time were created. The 3 Strikes Law for example became very popular in the 1990's." (Three strikes laws are statutes enacted by state governments in the United States which require the state courts to hand down a mandatory and extended period of incarceration to persons who have been convicted of a serious criminal offense on three or more separate occasions - Wikipedia ) "More than 68 percent of men in prison admit to having same sex relations, so on that hot July night in 1991 when I visited a gay Washington, DC club called Tracks and saw all of the tough, hard, thugged-out men embracing one another, I should not have been surprised. I know, a lot of women get mad at me when I suggest that more than half of the 2 million Black men in American prisons are fucking each other, but I mean damn, most men can’t go a week without sex when they are at home, why would they stop fucking for a 10-year stretch? You tell me how AIDS, a disease that first stung Gay White Men found its way inside the Black Female Pussy?" Holter decided to create a project that was multidimensional and not purely focused on using condoms and abstinence, as many AIDS awareness projects of the time did. Punany: The Hip Hop Psalms covers many topics that relate to Black sexuality including prison, black family values, and sexual honesty. "To generate interest in the book, I produced events with Dwayne Wiggins of Tony Toni Tone', a long time friend and primary investor. The events became live eloquent performances of the poems, short stories and images found in the 104-page Collector’s item when it was published in October of 1998. When Punany: The Hip Psalms landed on the desk of HBO Real Sex producer Patti Kaplan, she found The Punany Project pregnant with possibilities. By the Spring of 1999, Kaplan was filming the sexy writers, dancers and actors for a world-wide presentation of the longest and most sensual episode of HBO’s Real Sex Documentary program. The Punany Poets gained instant fame, though the erotic television venue that, somewhat, compromised the AIDS awareness focus, and like rap videos, centered the production around ass. But hey, we made you look! For more information about Punany Books, Videos, Novelties and Theatrical Productions visit us at www.PunanysPlayhouse.com