Latinohoosier

Finally in April 1948, Thelma Porter, a psychology major at Brooklyn College, was selected as Miss Subways. Her picture was splashed across black newspapers and magazines nationwide as a point of pride. She was feted nationally, including a reception at the Royal Manor Ballroom. Among those who honored her: Thurgood Marshall.

A year later, Helen Lee became the first Asian-American Miss Subways.

By the 1970s, with a rise of feminism against beauty pageants, the symbolism of a Miss Subway was less portentous, but still notable. In 1974, Sonia Dominguez became the first Dominican to win Miss Subways, which stirred pride in the Latino community. And even then, “there was definitely a pride in the Miss Subways contest,” said Marcia Hocker, who was Miss Subways for several months in 1974 and 1975.

There She Is, From a Trailblazing Beauty Pageant – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com

When Jennifer 8. Lee was in seventh grade, she made a startling discovery — fortune cookies are not an authentic Chinese food. In her New York Times best-selling book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Lee wrote about the experience, “It was like learning I was adopted while being told there was no Santa Claus.”

Born in the United States of Chinese immigrant parents, Lee confesses she is obsessed with Chinese food, in particular with the Chinese-American variety. The book is for anyone who wonders who General Tso is and why we eat his chicken, or where those white takeout boxes come from.

Author of ‘The Fortune Cookie Chronicles’ dishes on Chinese American food: IU News Room: Indiana University

Anyone who doubts that people can turn their lives around quickly should meet Jose Colon.

Over the past 10 weeks, the 33-year-old Colon, of Sixth Street near Indiana Avenue in North Philly’s Fairhill neighborhood, has morphed from a crepehanger whose depression and irritability threatened to cost him his family into an optimist with an infectious love of life.

“My self-esteem was so low,” Colon recalls of the days preceding his transformation, “that I just wanted to be by myself in a dark room. I didn’t want to deal with people. Now nothing bothers me. People can scream at me and I let it go. I’m like, ‘It’s okay. I’m doing right.’”

A Gym of Their Own | News and Opinion | Philadelphia Weekly