Happy Belated Birthday, Danai Gurira: Fem Film Rogue Icon Spotlight

 

Happy belated birthday, Danai Gurira.

Born on Valentine’s Day, our favorite sweetheart Danai Gurira is an incredible double threat—an award winning actress and a Tony and Pulitzer Prize nominated playwright. For years, she turned our heads as the courageous, machete wielding Michonne on The Walking Dead, played the torn immigrant Adenike making heavy decisions in Mother of George, and kicked butt as Okoye, the head of the Dora Milaje in the Black Panther, Avengers: The Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. 

In Andrew Dosunmu’s Mother of George, newlywed Adenike (Danai Gurira) must keep her Yoruba family tradition alive in her new American life. DP Bradford Young. 

Born in Grinnell, Iowa to Zimbabwean parents (Josephine, a college librarian and Roger, a tenured professor at Grinnell College), Danai Jesekai Gurira was the youngest of four children . Her family returned to Zimbabwe in 1983, a few years after its gained independence from British rule. She then attended Dominican Convent High School and returned to the United States; pursuing higher education at Macalester in St. Paul, Minnesota (earning a psychology BFA) and Tisch School for the Arts at New York University (earning an MFA in acting). At Macalester, she performed the late great ntozake shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuff. While at NYU, she tried recruiting Lupita Nyong’o (who chose Yale instead) and they have been close friends ever since. Gurira also taught playwright and acting in Liberia, South Africa, and home country, Zimbabwe. 

Danai Gurira and Lupita Nyong’o have a beautiful, Black sistah girl friendship that has them traveling the world together, showing up at premieres and red carpets holding hands, and professional partnerships— co-starring in Ryan Coogler’s successful Black Panther and Nyong’o starring in Gurira’s play, Eclipsed. 

Gurira’s poignant, must-see plays are extraordinarily written; all taking considerable care to point out the role of Christianity’s dominance over the spiritual nature of Rhodesia (later turned Zimbabwe). For In the Continuum—which she both wrote and starred in— Gurira won a special citation from Obie, the Helen Hayes Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award. The Convert tenderly showcases a young woman’s devotion to her ancestral heritage despite others desperately wanting her allegiance to new religion. It won the Whiting and Los Angeles Drama Circle Critics Award. Eclipsed is a heartbreaking drama centering the trials and tribulations of abused women during war and co-starring Nyong’o. It was the first all female cast/crew production ever on Broadway. Eclipsed was nominated for Best Play at the Tony Awards; winning Lilly, Drama Desk Awards, and ImageNation Revolution Awards. Gurira also put on a Shakespeare in the Park performance and was commissioned by Yale Preparatory Theatre for her last play Familiar. 

Michonne (Danai Gurira) lasted for eight seasons on The Walking Dead.

The funny quipping, resourceful fighting Okoye (Danai Gurira) was a real scene stealer in the Black Panther. DP Rachel Morrison.

In the acting realm, Gurira is widely known for portraying Black heroines from comic book adaptations— The Walking Dead and Black Panther. Originally, Michonne entered as a vessel withholding emotions, having lost so much to the undead disease. Grief transformed her into that machete soldier. Until, she met Rick and opened up a softer, gentler side, letting her guard down among the monsters that constantly surrounded them. Gurira won two Saturns, an honorary merit CinEuphoria, and Gracie Award for her portrayal. Black Panther’s Okoye is similar, her passion for her king and country driving her stout heart. She loves her Dora Milaje women including Nakia who is not of the army, but of Wakanda. Gurira won another Saturn, an Image Award, People’s Choice, and SAG Award for her amazing performance. Mother of George reveals Gurira’s potential to be in other roles— another stirring drama or perhaps a romantic comedy or a grisly horror— with her as the lead. Although Gurira admits that horror is not her favorite, she held her own in a gruesome zombie apocalypse. Maybe she could star in Nikyatu Jusu’s upcoming project with Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. African womanhood/blackness is a courageous theme in Gurira’s plays. Imagining her starring in a cinematic story told by another Black woman would be struck gold. 

Danai Gurira in Los Angeles Times photographed by Christopher L. Procter, 2019. 

Still, a shame that Gurira and Nyong’o’s adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah did not pan out over at Amazon Studios. With Gurira on writing duty and Nyong’o starring as Ifemulu, that would have been an incredibly executed miniseries. 

Currently, Danai Gurira is filming the sequel Wakanda Forever sadly without its star the late Chadwick Bozeman. In addition to reteaming with bestie Lupita Nyong’o and filmmaker Ryan Coogler, Gurira has recently announced that she will be starring as Shirley Chisholm in a biopic fueled Hollywood. She will be amazing either way, having shown impeccable acting chops across genres. There is hope that while she continues to write multifaceted stories from the African woman perspective in play medium (with maybe tv/film in the future), that Gurira continues building a successful career as an actress too. She is most certainly very talented at both.  

Danai Gurira on Oscar night. 

Danai Gurira quotes:

“As a kid, that’s when you figure out how you envision yourself. You see yourself as Other as a child because you don’t have the vocabulary nor the worldview or the understanding of global history and all the dynamics of racial oppression to understand that it’s not as it should be. So as a child, you’re really being indoctrinated with the idea that you’re not it. You’re not of the right thing, and these are the people who are. And that’s what’s really scary about not giving children representation. They absorb those images. But it’s so unnecessary. We don’t actually have to put children through that. It’s really easy to give them representations of self, whatever color they are.”

“It happened for the first time when I was nine in Zimbabwe where I was raised... when it happened, I remember being surprised by it. I never thought about it. But when I did receive that compliment, a stunning brown-skinned woman took my face in her hands, her long flowing braids casting down her back. I realized it was something I would always cherish. She looked at me, observing me with deep appreciation... and told me that I was beautiful. She said it with such feeling that it filtered straight into my soul and left an indelible imprint.... So I had to consider the idea that it may just be true.”

“I love writing for actors; women of African descent and people who generally are underrepresented.”

“In terms of writing, I just wasn't finding enough stories about contemporary African people - or historical, just anything, the whole gamut. I was raised in southern Africa and I came back to the West for college. I was starting to look for what I would like to perform, what I would like to see put to life onstage, and I was finding many stories about everybody else, but none about my own people. My playwriting became a "necessity being the mother of invention" type thing. I wasn't finding what I wanted to perform, so I started to create it myself.”

Happy Birthday Grace Jones: Fem Film Rogue Icon Spotlight

Zula (Grace Jones) stole the show in Conan the Destroyer.

I remember gathering at the television set, the whole family making it a big deal that Conan the Destroyer was coming on for the very first time. As our little hands dug into a mass of buttery special movie occasion popcorn, the appreciation in my mother's large hazel eyes grew. Not at the sight of star- Arnold Schwarzenegger. She gazed at the sight of Grace Jones with pure awe, excitedly shouting, “I didn't know Grace Jones was in this!” Now anyone at school would call Grace Jones unattractive and dark skinned calamity. No one would ever wear their hair that short and "masculine" trimmed into box formation. Especially not without a relaxer. In my mother's eyes and joyful tone of her voice, she admired this woman and so did I. Jones' Zula battled men twice her size and killed them with ease, expression wild and dangerous. Before Xena the Warrior Princess's yodeled cries and The Walking Dead's Michonne burst into the world slashing zombies with a machete, dreadlocks flying high, Grace Jones' Zula thrust herself into my heart like an arrowed dagger, piercing tender flesh asunder. As a child, I couldn't comprehend that emotion. Still, idealizing straight hair, thinner lips, and lighter skin- I had wanted that real American dream no one wants to talk about. 

Of course, Grace Jones set me straight real quick.

Jones is the diamond in the rut.

Hailing from Jamaica, born on this beautiful day (like playwright Lorraine Hansberry) in 1948, Grace Jones is all guts and glory. A fashion icon, a model, a musician, and a sexy firecracker, she sparkles every composition appealingly chiseled face and lithe body sets foot upon. She gives the most boring space pizzazz and personality. Taking charge, this bold, rebellious, creative genius has inspired millions since she stepped on the scene. Boxed haircuts and tailored men suits aren't just for the male equation anymore. From the hip 80s to beyond, Jones took "masculine" styles and gave them her own signature flare, marketing a brand new campaign of terming beautiful fashionista. 

There is power in Jones' version of sexual freedom. Some say it's embarrassing. Others say it's demeaning to a culture, a race that is often viewed as overly promiscuous. She is blunt and real. By acknowledging what drives others discomfort, she isn't afraid. Nope. She isn't sugar coating to the massively uptight agenda. Most protestors only despise Jones because she doesn't "look" sexy to them. That aesthetic reveals itself in a rather glaring manner. Skin nearing ebony shade, thick, pouty lips, African jawline, and choosing to wear hair in a short boyish natural makes certain characters clench their teeth in disgust. Top off that appearance with men's clothing and hell breaks loose.

An old American dream of whitewashed beauty revealed- disturbing and utterly wrong to glorify one race over another...

Whilst growing up, I disliked myself for all the wrong reasons. For not meeting idealized standards of beauty. Elle, Glamour, Vogue, and Vanity Fair told my teenage self countless times via imagery and startling text that to be lovely, to be desirable is to be pale with long straightened hair and thinner facial features, to be so bright, one looked like a halo missing angel from a period painting. That above image of Jones decked in "whiteface" was my dream- blue eyed, light skinned, and "perfect" haired fantasy. To scrub away darkness, the brown stained skin that seems to still symbolize grotesque monstrosity.

However, one day, I happened upon a stark black and white image of Jones that shattered my brainwashed mind. She looked stunning. So stunning that I observed the portrait for quite a while. Sensuous black eyes staring out at me, daring and challenging. Not whispering quietly. Like she knew things that she shouldn't know. Dressed in squared suit, no shirt underneath, revealing toned breastbone, she spoke loud despite lips closed over stemmed white cigarette. That day she told me to stop hiding behind those magazines, that those ideologies are not me, not catered to me. That I must be proud, free-spirited, and reckless. There is a wisdom in knowing true self- in being so genuine in that self that no cruel words could ever break that loyal, courageous bond. Loving self should be the strongest relationship in a human being;s life before loving another. At least I think so. I also felt a burgeoning love for Jones blossom, as well as the beginning of accepting myself, my appearance in the mirror- afro haired, brown skinned, and thick featured. I respect Jones and have always viewed her as a role model, a worthy inspiration.

I still recall Zula and her bravery. Zula seemed to be Grace herself. Fighting battles that media tossed. She always hits right back, widening, expressive eyes and opened mouth cross between shock and a smile.

Grace Jones is definitely a rogue, a fiery, amazing rule breaker. We need more women to be this passionate about running from the pack. She teaches us to stand out from the crowd and please ourselves first. 

Who cares about anyone else's perspective right?

A picture is worth a thousand silent words.

Closing off with some of the birthday girl's best quotes:

“I’ve always been a rebel. I never do things the way they’re supposed to be done. Either I go in the opposite direction or I create a new direction for myself, regardless of what the rules are or what society says.”

“Men are terrified of me. I can easily step into the man’s shoe, and that puts the man in a position where he has to become the female. That’s what sets off the tension. But my image is supposed to frighten men…”

“It doesn’t surprise me that people can’t see beyond my image. It’s amazing, but I can understand it. That’s what image is for. But it’s never a problem for me. It’s only a problem for them. I don’t really care. I do what I want regardless.”

“I think I’m doing a service to black women by portraying myself as a sex machine. I mean, what’s wrong with being a sex machine, darling? Sex is large, sex is life, sex is as large as life, so it appeals to anyone that’s living, or rather it should.”