Photo from 2011 Academy Awards, via Wikimedia Commons.
New Orleans native Tyler Perry has built an entertainment empire of successful films, plays, and best-selling books. In the early 1990s, he staged his first play, “I Know I’ve Been Changed.” He spent all his money to stage the play in Atlanta, but the production flopped. He took on a series of odd jobs and, even lived in his car for a while, but he kept writing. Over the next 13 years, he wrote thirteen plays. In 1998, he got a second chance to stage his play and, this time, he had a better marketing plan. The play sold-out and drew attention from excited investors.
By 2005, he turned one of his plays into a film called “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” which was a huge hit. That was followed by more hits, including “Madea’s Family Reunion,” “Daddy’s Little Girls,” “Why Did I Get Married?,” “Meet the Browns,” “The Family that Preys,” and many other hits. In 2006, Perry published his first book, Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Life and Love. It was a New York Times bestseller for eight consecutive weeks.
In 2015, Perry became the first African-American to own a major film studio outright, when he purchased the vacant Fort McPherson Army Base as the home for Tyler Perry Studios, a 330-acre campus in southwest Atlanta.
Don't Make a Black Woman Take off Her Earrings by
If you can count on one thing from |Madea|' Mabel Simmons, star of the smash hits Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion, it's that she's got something to say. Now the beloved, sharp-tongued, pistol-packing grandmother has her own book - part memoir, many parts hard-won, hilarious, straight-up in-your-face words of wisdom. |A surprisingly fresh compilation of homespun advice.| - Publishers Weekly
Precious (Motion picture) Widescreen
In 1987, obese, illiterate, black 16-year-old Claireece 'Precious' Jones lives in Harlem with her dysfunctional family. She has been raped and impregnated twice by her father, Carl. She suffers constant physical, mental and sexual abuse from her unemployed mother, Mary. After getting pregnant for the second time, Precious is suspended from her school. Her principal arranges to have her attend an alternative school where her new teacher, Ms. Rain, helps Precious learn to read and she responds to this glimmer of hope. Precious also meets Mrs. Weiss, a social worker, who discovers the abuse and incest that Precious has had to endure. Her father dies of AIDS and Precious learns that she is now HIV-positive.