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Sarah Jones isn't the least bit invisible, but you know that she knows what that feels like.
You watch her change from Jewish grandmother to Asian immigrant to cocky African-American rapper and you realize there are plenty of women just like her, at times invisible.
You've walked past them on the street, not even realizing they have dreams and hopes just like you. Maybe you didn't even care.
However, if you had the good fortune of recently being at the Georgia World Congress Center, it was hard not to get to know them. For a full hour, they held you captive --- compliments of Sarah Jones.
The Tony Award-winning actress and poet marked the 10th anniversary of the Atlanta Women's Foundation at a luncheon where she was the guest performer.
For years, the foundation has been saying that nearly 25 percent of Atlantans with children live in poverty, almost twice the national average; that the average age of a homeless person in Atlanta is 8; and that women who are paid an hourly wage are twice as likely as men to be compensated at or below the minimum wage.
At the luncheon, Jones put a face on the numbers and dared us to look each of them in the eye and see ourselves.
"My name is Miss Lady," she began her monologue, gumming her words in the voice of a person with no teeth. "I'm homeless and hungry, but I ain't gawwn bite nobody."
The Atlanta Women's Foundation has been working to inspire and empower women and girls who've come to uncertain intersections.
Indeed, it is the only public foundation in the state that focuses solely on helping women and girls become self-sufficient. If that seems like a small thing, consider this: Every night, some 2,000 women and children make Atlanta streets their home. Georgia is among the lowest in the country in numbers of women with health insurance.
Twenty years ago, only about 7 percent of private funding was going to support programs serving women and girls, said Deborah Richardson, the foundation's chief executive officer.
"Since we started," she said, "we've granted more than $8 million and funded more than 250 organizations."
By changing the lives of women and girls, Richardson says the foundation can lift entire families and, thus, the community.
But too often the people who suffer the greatest need are the most invisible in our society.
"You need to be blown in on a hurricane," Miss Lady noted, "for people to know we even exist."
Thus was the beginning of an hour's worth of zingers and socially conscious observations lobbed from the mouths of Jones' characters.
You didn't know whether to laugh or cry. For sure, not much of what's happening to some women here --- or in the world, for that matter --- is funny.
It's like what Miss Lady said, observing the foundation's three P's: passion, power and possibility. They'd need them, she said, to fight poverty, prejudice and patriarchy.
They're all the reasons you need to join the foundation's efforts, to try to make a difference.
It's what Sarah Jones does, whether she's the Jewish grandmother or the Asian immigrant or the African-American rapper. Each makes you laugh, but they also make you think. They inspire you so much, you find yourself on your feet applauding, filled with the same empathy Jones must have felt when creating the characters in the first place.
And then, finally, Miss Lady is back to leave you with this:
"I might not look the same," she said in her toothless voice, "but I am your mirror. If you don't see yourself, somebody done stole your soul."
To suggest a story, write Real Living, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, 72 Marietta St. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30303; e-mail gstaples@ajc.com; or call 404-526-5370.
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
