Newcomer Lupita Nyong'o was
honored with the Best Breakthrough Performance Award at the 7th annual Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon for her work in critically acclaimed film, 12 Years a Slave, presented by fellow actress,
Alfre Woodard. The following is her acceptance speech in full:
I wrote down this speech that I had no time to practice so this
will be the practicing session. Thank you Alfre, for such an amazing, amazing
introduction and celebration of my work. And thank you very much for inviting
me to be a part of such an extraordinary community. I am surrounded by people
who have inspired me, women in particular whose presence on screen made me feel
a little more seen and heard and understood. That it is ESSENCE that holds this
event celebrating our professional gains of the year is significant, a beauty
magazine that recognizes the beauty that we not just possess but also produce.
I want to take this opportunity to talk about beauty. Black
beauty. Dark beauty. I received a letter from a girl and I’d like to share just
a small part of it with you: "Dear Lupita," it reads, "I think
you’re really lucky to be this Black but yet this successful in Hollywood
My heart bled a little when I read those words. I could never have
guessed that my first job out of school would be so powerful in and of itself
and that it would propel me to be such an image of hope in the same way that
the women of The
Color Purple were to me.
I remember a time when I too felt unbeautiful. I put on the TV and
only saw pale skin, I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin. And my
one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up
lighter-skinned. The morning would come and I would be so excited about seeing
my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of
a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first. And every day I
experienced the same disappointment of being just as dark as I had been the day
before. I tried to negotiate with God: I told him I would stop stealing sugar
cubes at night if he gave me what I wanted; I would listen to my mother's every
word and never lose my school sweater again if he just made me a little lighter.
But I guess God was unimpressed with my bargaining chips because He never
listened.
And when I was a teenager my self-hate grew worse, as you can
imagine happens with adolescence. My mother reminded me often that she thought
that I was beautiful but that was no consolation: She’s my mother, of course
she’s supposed to think I am beautiful. And then Alek Wek came on the
international scene. A celebrated model, she was dark as night, she was on all
of the runways and in every magazine and everyone was talking about how
beautiful she was. Even Oprah called her beautiful and that made it a fact. I
couldn’t believe that people were embracing a woman who looked so much like me
as beautiful. My complexion had always been an obstacle to overcome and all of a
sudden, Oprah was telling me it wasn’t. It was perplexing and I wanted to
reject it because I had begun to enjoy the seduction of inadequacy.
But a flower couldn’t help but bloom inside of me. When I saw Alek
I inadvertently saw a reflection of myself that I could not deny. Now, I had a
spring in my step because I felt more seen, more appreciated by the far away
gatekeepers of beauty, but around me the preference for light skin prevailed.
To the beholders that I thought mattered, I was still unbeautiful. And my
mother again would say to me, "You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed
you." And these words plagued and bothered me; I didn’t really understand
them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire
or consume, it was something that I just had to be.
And what my mother meant when she said you can’t eat beauty was
that you can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally
beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of
beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul. It is what got Patsey in so
much trouble with her master, but it is also what has kept her story alive to this
day. We remember the beauty of her spirit even after the beauty of her body has
faded away.
And so I hope that my presence on your screens
and in the magazines may lead you, young girl, on a similar journey. That you
will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper
business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade to that beauty
KUMSIKILIZA LIVE INGIA KWENYE LINK HII
http://entertainment.time.com/2014/02/28/lupita-nyongo-essence-black-beauty/
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