A sweet phone call
Cover Art | Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o
From Academy Award–winning actress Lupita Nyong’o comes a powerful, moving picture book about colorism, self-esteem, and learning that true beauty comes from within. Sulwe has skin the color of midnight. She is darker than everyone in her family. She is darker than anyone in her school. Sulwe just wants to be beautiful and bright, like her mother and sister. Then a magical journey in the night sky opens her eyes and changes everything. In this stunning debut picture book, actress Lupita Nyong’o creates a whimsical and heartwarming story to inspire children to see their own unique beauty.
Artwork by Vashti Harrison
Release date | Oct 15, 2019 Goodreads
Read this book. It’s beautiful and so sad how dark girls feel they aren’t beautiful. They always are. You always are.
Daughters Of Nri (The Return of the Earth Mother) (2019)
Strong-willed Naala grows up seeking adventure in her quiet and small village. While the more reserved Sinai resides in the cold and political palace of Nri. Though miles apart, both girls share an indestructible bond: they share the same blood, the same face, and possess the same unspoken magic, thought to have vanished with the lost gods.
The twin girls were separated at birth, a price paid to ensure their survival from Eze Ochichiri, the man who rules the Kingdom of Nri. Both girls are tested in ways that awaken a mystical, formidable power deep within themselves. Eventually, their paths both lead back to the mighty Eze.
by Reni K Amayo
Get it here
Reni K Amayo was born and raised in London to two Nigerian immigrant parents. Her active imagination was the cause of many terrible nightmares, beautiful daydreams and colourful white lies. Reni has now used her gift to reimagine the Nigerian land untouched by the scars of colonialism, and instead enriched with its deep, old and powerful magic in her debut book Daughters of Nri, the first instalment of The Return Of The Earth Mother series.
she wore her armor well it grew from her skin and kept her pristine she was a warrior but war could not touch her
The finished Cancer zodiac. Thank you to my Patreons for making this possible!
Paintings of black women (cis-gender, trans, and gender fluid) in love, from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and across 100 years in time. Because love is love. You can find them all as prints in my Etsy shop. Just click on the link here.
“Every Glinda who plays it, we bring our own experiences to our roles and I feel like ‘Thank Goodness’ for me is the culmination of this entire experience. Singing those words, in this skin, on that stage, in front of all those people…the magnitude of it hit me during that scene.”
Her name is Laetitia Ky and she’s only 23! 😍😍 I’ve already seen a white girl steal her idea so let’s promote tf out of the OG.
Source: twitter.com
Cover Art | War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi
Two sisters are torn apart by war and must fight their way back to each other in a futuristic, Black Panther-inspired Nigeria. The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky. In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life. Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace, of hope, of a future together. And they’re willing to fight an entire war to get there.
Release date | Oct 15, 2019 Goodreads
OUT NOW!!
Katelyn Ohashi scores a perfect 10 for her floor routine at the 2019 Collegiate Challenge [x]
Speedpaint of Amari from CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE by Tomi Adeyemi.
Failed to do the MerMay challenge this year, but here’s mermaid Nadia for the hell of it 😂
not to be dramatic, but Okoye telling her bitch ass husband she would end him without hesitation when he tried to manipulate her changed me as a person and cured my depression.
briskeboys
“would you kill me my love?”
“for wakanda? No question.”
a woman in my theater: “oH I HEARD THAT!!!!”
Listen. LISTEN. *cups your face in my hands* Listen to me. I have never so perfectly and purely seen a Paladin depicted in a movie as I saw in Okoye. Lawful good to her core. Pure, unvarnished loyalty to Wakanda and her people evident in every goddamned motion. Dignified, graceful, reverent respect for the rules of her country and its greater good.
There is something so beautiful about faith, something that just burns through with a beautiful glow that lights up someone’s eyes and every expression. There is a confidence and a peace that is both palpable and enviable when faith has been tested and come through intact. You could so hear it in her voice.
Personal shit is great, and I’m glad she was seen in a loving relationship. The Lone Woman Warrior trope is worn thin, and I’m sure even thinner for black women who are often not allowed to be lovable people on screen. But the core of the Paladin is ‘there is something greater than I, and I will sacrifice everything for it’, and it was beautiful to not only see that happen on screen but see her proved right, see her win, in one case by not even raising her weapon. She stood firm in her faith and the narrative said yes, it said this is just, it said your very faith will protect you from harm. And she’s not seen as hard or cold edged weapon for that. The imagery around her in that moment is more like a saint or an angel, glowing and reaching out a peaceful hand to a symbol of one of the tribes of her country. Her country loves her back.
Okoye doesn’t just love her country. She doesn’t just serve her country. She doesn’t just believe in her country. She has unshakable faith in an absolute truth: Wakanda Forever. She is elevated for her faith as much as her skill.
It’s fucking breathtaking.
The deleted scene between W’Kabi and Okoye has definitely got to be seen:
Like, as much as she has deep faith about Wakanda, the fundamental fact is that it is literally tied to what kind of future she wants to see. You really need to tie the question she asks W’Kabi near the end of this question: “What kind of world do you want me to raise my children in?” and realize — for her, Wakanda isn’t just some kind of credo or belief that she holds, but it is a promise of a future, a direction for her nation, and where it ought to go — a matter she struggles with throughout the movie. Her faith lives, she lives with it day-to-day, and everything she does reflects her engagement with her belief in what Wakanda is.
W’Kabi wins this scene by persuading her that following Killmonger will make Wakanda great, but later, when he asks Okoye whether she’d kill him, and invokes their love, in retrospect? This scene makes it very clear that W’Kabi has overplayed his hand. From that moment on the rhino on, W’Kabi had lost literally any right to talk about the future of Wakanda, and any right to persuade Okoye that he had Wakanda’s best interests at heart.
Because by then, she knew full well that W’Kabi was driven more by personal need and vengeance. So, yes. She’d fucking kill him for Wakanda. There was literally no other way, in her universe. Too much was at stake.