Moving Forward

Activists You Should Follow Right Now ,Because they bring awareness about the reality of being a black person in America and they fight for our souls.

Watch: Beauty Vlogger Jackie Aina is challenging her peers to only use black-owned makeup brands

Maeve McDermott, USATODAY 9:19 a.m. EDT May 3, 2016 

Lupita Nyong’o won an Oscar for her staggering performance in 12 Years A Slave, made the animated Maz Kanata come to life in the blockbuster Star Wars: The Force Awakens, continues to rule every red carpet she steps on, and just picked up a Tony Award nomination for her Broadway play Eclipsed.

And yet, people continue to question whether the 33-year-old actress knows what she’s doing with her career.

Nyong’o described her experience with an unpleasant reporter while doing press for her new Broadway play Eclipsed, writing in Lena Dunham’s Lenny newsletter how she was asked, “Why would such a big star choose to do such a small play?”

“I think as women, as women of color, as black women, too often we hear about what we ‘need to do,‘” Nyong’o wrote. “How we need to behave, what we need to wear, what’s deemed as too much or not enough, the cultural politics of what society considers appropriate for us and for our lives.”

“As an African woman, I am wary of the trap of telling a single story,” Nyong’o continued, praising her Eclipsed character of an orphan fleeing the Liberian civil war. “The chance to appear in Eclipsed after winning an Oscar was an opportunity to share in the incredible (and too rare) freedom of playing a fully rendered African woman.”

(L-R) Actresses Pascale Armand, Lupita Nyong'o and Saycon Sengbloh from 'Eclipsed.’ (Photo: Mark Sagliocco, Getty Images)

“So often women of color are relegated to playing simple tropes: the sidekick, the best friend, the noble savage, or the clown … I love the idea of people of color participating in mythical, magical stories, whether that’s as hero, villain, sage, or sorceress,” she said, referring to her recent role voicing the Jungle Book’s wolf mother Raksha.

The beautiful essay reinforces that Nyong’o shouldn’t have to justify her career choices to anyone — it’s clear she knows what she’s doing. Next stop, the Tonys.

11. Some places have much better cycling lanes than others, which is good for those places! But it doesn’t fix the unequally-shared-road problem and really underlines how cyclist-unfriendly other places are.

“I made wine from the lilac tree, Put my heart in its recipe, It makes me see what I want to see, And be what I want to be.”

Palestine, West Bank.