Meet Dr. Nora Woodson, a six-foot-tall, curvy African American doctor living in the City of New Orleans, Louisiana. The southern metropolis is the first place in the world where Nora Woodson feels at home. She was born in New Hampshire to a Jamaican immigrant mother and a white American father, and felt out of place there for most of her life. At the age of thirty, with a University of New Hampshire degree, the good doctor moved down south and found herself at last.
The City of New Orleans appealed to Nora Woodson for many reasons. With so many African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and Arabs in town, people of color are the norm. As a tall, curvy, brown-skinned woman with dreadlocks, Nora Woodson felt right at home. Interracial couples are everywhere in the City of New Orleans, southern racism be damned. For the first time in her thirty years, the biracial gal from New Hampshire felt...normal.
"I want to connect with black folks and do my best to help them," Dr. Nora Woodson assured her patient, Trevor Blakes. Tall and dark-skinned, with a handsome face and a perpetual scowl, Trevor Blakes is emblematic of Black masculinity. In a world that's perpetually hostile to him, Trevor doesn't know who to trust and therefore trusts no one. The young brother ran afoul of the law and Dr. Nora Woodson is his last chance to stay out of the slammer...
"Whatever, lady, I'm just here to stay out of the pen," Trevor said as he sat on the couch, and rested his Timberland boots on Dr. Nora Woodson's expensive teak table. Dr. Nora Woodson resisted the urge to swat the fool upside his head. Trevor is nineteen years old and has been in and out of foster homes his entire life. Seriously, the brother seems destined to a life of crime. If the good doctor can't get through to him, he is toast...
"Take your feet off the table, and while in my office, you will address me as Dr. Woodson, are we clear?" Dr. Nora Woodson said, and Trevor grinned, and took his feet off the table. Decked out in a blue FUBU jacket, black T-shirt, blue jeans and black Timberland boots, Trevor seemed emblematic of young black manhood. What society lusts after, and hates, at the same time...
"Doc, I didn't mean to insult you, it's just that we come from different worlds, you know?" Trevor said, sighing. Dr. Nora Woodson took off her stylish glasses. For some reason, she smiled at Trevor, for like everyone else, he underestimated her. Nora Woodson had been underestimated her whole life. In the town of Manchester, New Hampshire, there aren't a lot of black folks. Nora Woodson was used to being the odd duck wherever she went.
Nora's parents, Lincoln Woodson and Jamila Harrison, tried their best to protect her. As an interracial couple living in Manchester, New Hampshire, they experienced their share of hardship. Nora grew to be tall, athletic and stunning. She studied at the University of New Hampshire on a full scholarship, graduating with honors from the psychiatry program. As soon as Nora got her university degree, she decided to leave the state of New Hampshire, never to return.
In supposedly liberal places like New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the insidious racism that folks like Nora Woodson face can be even deadlier than the more blatant prejudice experienced by minorities down south. Nora Woodson grew up in a world where everyone was too faced. The same white male students who fancied Nora at school would say racist things and expect her to be okay with it because she was biracial instead of purely African American.
"Todd, I could never be with a pale, racist loser like you," Nora Woodson told the last white dude she went out with, during her final year at the University of New Hampshire. Todd Jenkins, a blond-haired, blue-eyed New Englander whose parents always leaned liberal seemed to think it okay to make inappropriate comments about blacks and Latinos. The fool expected Nora to be okay with it, and she happily disabused him of that notion.
"That will be your loss," Todd told Nora as he walked away with a bruised ego. Nora Woodson moved to New Orleans a few months later, and set up her practice as a newly licenced psychiatrist. While New Orleans is lively and vibrant, it also has a seedy underbelly. There's a lot of poverty and inequality in New Orleans and a lot of local minorities are driven to a life of crime. Nora Woodson, formerly of New England, intended to do something about it...
"Trevor, my father is white and my mother is black, from Jamaica, I grew up hearing racial jokes from mean people in my old neighborhood in Manchester, and I learned to trust no one, you're wrong if you think I lead an easy life," Dr. Nora said firmly. Trevor sat up on the couch, and looked at the good doctor. The lady reminded him of actress and singer Alicia Keys, only she was taller, and with a much bigger ass. What a dame, Trevor thought wistfully.