Lupita Nyong'o Answers Questions About Us and Sulwe Book
Lupita Nyong'o Talks About Sulwe, Us, and Being a Dark-Skinned Girl in Twitter AMA
Lupita Nyong'o is now a published author thanks to Sulwe, and in a Twitter AMA on Thursday, Nyong'o answered a few important questions about her debut book. She talked about the inspiration behind Sulwe's story and the impact she hopes it has on readers. "When I was growing up, I read books like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel and Thumbelina," she said. "There was a lot of pale skin, blond hair, and that sort of thing, and I felt like things like dark skin weren't included. So that's why I wrote a book like Sulwe, because I wanted dark skin to exist in a world of magic."
Nyong'o went on to talk about her love for Beyoncé's "Brown Skin Girl" and explained the importance of seeing yourself and your skin in a beautiful light, despite the amount of pain the opinions of others might have caused in the past. "I feel like the work of adults is to heal their childhood wounds, so this book was very much written as the adult, as well, to have that book that you might have needed when you were younger," she said.
In response to a question from Ophrah Winfrey about her thoughts on brown skin, Nyong'o said, "I know that brown-skinned girls are not a monolith. Another thing that I know for sure is that brown skin is ordinary. The extraordinary thing, or the special thing, is being able to celebrate it, embrace it, in spite of a world that might not value it — and that's what Sulwe is about."
Keep scrolling to see all the best moments from Nyong'o's AMA, which also includes a few questions about her performance in Jordan Peele's Us.
