#brownface

Manitas

A photo of Karla Sofia under natural light.

Emilia Perez in the movie

BROWNFACE.

HOW DOES HOLLYWOOD NOT SAY A THING?

Inej Ghafa was so important to us! To me! She is a badass brown girl who stays loving and compassionate despite the trauma she faces, she defends herself and she holds on to her faith and she falls in love and she puts herself first and has goals and aims and is unapologetically herself! She's so dynamic and real and flawed and human and perfect! She made me feel SEEN in a way no other character in fiction ever has! I finally felt like I could write about a protagonist like myself and be well received one day! I found out Amita was cast and how passionate she was about Inej in the same way we all are!

Amita put her heart and soul into Inej and we LOVE HER for it! She performed her role MAGNIFICENTLY and worked so hard to be able to do it. She reread the book multiple times! She trained for the acrobatics and the knife skills all on her own even before the show started filming! She gained literal scars because of how hard she worked! She gave Inej Ghafa her all because like us, she finally felt SEEN in a piece of media and wanted to do her justice and She DID!

And then we all find out that we now have to share Inej Ghafa with a WHITE WOMAN who did BROWNFACE and the showrunners and producers just let it happen?? That Amita had to be told that all her hard work wasn't enough and that instead of a brown stunt woman, a white woman was brought instead and she had to sit and watch HER character be performed by someone who doesn't even understand the importance of her?

It feels disgusting. Inej feels tainted. Like she isn't OURS anymore. Like she doesn't belong to us brown girls anymore when we had been waiting for her for so long!

And to know that Amita trained SO HARD and ended up having to smile through the pain when a white stunt double was donning her skin color to do a stunt a BROWN stunt woman deserved to have been given the opportunity to perform, even if Amita couldn't fit the requirements for whatever reason? Inej Ghafa belongs to the brown women. She deserved to be shared with only a brown woman as a stunt double. She deserved to be played by a fellow brown woman who understood her significance!

It's disgusting. It's appalling and I HATE everyone who had a hand in making this happen. My stomach roiled in disgust when I found out. I wanted to scream and cry. Amita was so brave for having to tolerate that happen and be unable to do anything about it. I am so proud of her but the fact is she shouldn't HAVE to have experienced that kind of racism as part of her job to bring Inej to life for us.

And on top of that, they made Zoya, another brown girl in the show, racist for absolutely NO REASON. It served 0 plot purpose. The show would have been exactly the same without it. This character trait didn't even exist for Zoya in the books.

Please do NOT talk over brown women when we say that we are tired and hurt and upset and angry! Please help us hold Netflix accountable because in no way is this okay! Netflix and Eric and Leigh have been toting Shadow and Bone for diversity points and meanwhile have been silencing their poc cast in the background and forcing them to watch as more and more opportunities slip by them. As they are told once again that what they can do is nothing compared to what a white person can do.

Amita Suman deserves better. Desi women deserve better. POC deserve better.

AND as a note cuz I've seen white people talk about this: we DO NOT want the show cancelled! Thats avoiding the problem! Not fixing it! We demand a better production crew. There are so many POC in this cast: Archie, Jessie, Kit, Sujaya and Amita have put their heart and soul into these characters despite the racism behind the scenes. They deserve to continue to play these characters they love and put so much hard work into bringing to life while the production crew that's being racist behind the scenes get sacked!

Over the last few months, I have seen too many stories and “dramas” regarding white women targeting women of colour to better the reception of their books or race-bait as a person of colour to “better their chances” of getting picked up for a publishing deal. Drama like this isn’t exclusive to white women, as there are other current concerns within the book community in regards to censoring books…