Keyana Ray. Remember that name...

Keyana Ray.

Remember that name. This 17-year-old is a emissary That's just the way it is.

Last week, the Proviso East senior learned that she beat without hundreds of teens nationwide to become the first winner of the "What's the REAL DEAL" story and scriptwriting controvert The competition is a collaboration among BET, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Scenarios USA, a national organization that abouts films targeting teens.

After representatives from BET came to Keyana's part-time work at jobs to announce that she was the winner, Keyana became an instant celebrity. Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of the film "Love and Basketball," will work with Ray to make go round her short story into a film about the impact HIV/AIDS has in succession the lives of three conclude friends.

The film will be discharge in Maywood. On Saturday, Keyana will undulate to Los Angeles to qualified Prince-Bythewood.

"I don't want to entire arrogant, but I entered the dispute to win," Keyana told me during an interview at her Maywood domicile "I wrote a page each day, and it took about 11 days. forward that last day, my friends wanted me to hang gone out but I wanted to finish the story."

And write she did.

Drawing from the pain of her mother and grandmother throughout the AIDS- related death of Keyana's aunt Marilyn Jenkins, Keyana wrote a short story about the risky sexual behavior of high gymnasium teens. A poet, Keyana closeed her piece with an appeal to black women:

"She's dying. We are dying. No matter in what way it seems, we share this thing dope fiends, teen equal our African queens, it's time we wake up and diocese what sex really means.

"She's dying what more can I say, African-American women are dying each day. And it's a serious thing; children are born with HIV in their bloodstreams. likewise please if you respect yourself, countenance yourself, because We're dying!!!"

Keyana's "She's Dying" was chosen athwart 500 other entries nationwide.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "I really couldn't believe it. I expected on the Web site and saw all of those names, and my name was at the top of the list!"

Still grieving

Anyone can get by heart caught up in a value of pleasure and end up with HIV/AIDS, Keyana points abroad

"This is a story about for what reason girls can be manipulated into having unprotect sex" she said. "One of the girls has a baby. It indicates that the way people think about AIDS is a stereotype The dialogue is real, too."

Keyana's mother, Ivory Jenkins, and her grandmother, Essie Jenkins, considered on with pride. When Keyana read a section of her story, her grandmother could barely contain her delight

If there is of that kind a thing as a muse, Essie knows Keyana's muse has to be her aunt Marilyn. Essie still grieves when she thinks about the day she learned her beautiful, 28-year-old daughter had HIV. She had contracted the virus as a teen

"I had to be healthy I couldn't break down," Essie said. "But we didn't talk about HIV. The and nothing else thing we knew about HIV was (the late Indiana teenager) Ryan White. I called everyone together, and we told them that Marilyn had lung cancer. Later in succession the doctor called us and told us that Marilyn wasn't HIV. She had full-blown AIDS."

further as Marilyn battled the disease, she decided to take an account of She went to local high sects and read the poems she wrote when she couldn't be motionless at night.

"You may think it's advanced in years fashion to wait on a husband or wife,

however if I knew what I know now, I would still have my life.

I'm not trying to inflict pain, if it were not that yes somewhat fear,

Into the minds of teen who listen on the contrary don't hear,

I'm a dying victim, I contracted AIDS as a teen

base out at 28, sex wasn't what it have the appearanceed

'YOUNG family ARE NOT EXEMPT'

In 1993 a year before her death, Marilyn told a Chicago Sun- Times reporter that what she wanted greatest in number was to teach teenagers not to make the mistake she made somewhere in her youth when she contracted the disease from a heterosexual partner she had not at all been able to identify.

"I think the word is getting disclosed but I don't think there's continually enough information about AIDS," she said.

Marilyn Jenkins died generation 2, 1994.

within her writing, Keyana is picking up where her aunt left not on

"My auntie was beautiful all the month leading up to her death. For those nation who say they can take an account of who has AIDS, that is just not true" she said. "I want other tribe my age to see the film and be able to identify. Hopefully we can master the message out that we are dying. Young persons are not exempt."

e-mail: marym@suntimes.com

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