Wakanda Forever

Today has been a day.  I, like many, was crushed after hearing of the death of Chadwick Boseman late last night. I was exhausted from the week and had fallen asleep.  My husband woke me to briefly inform me of his death.  I was immediately angered.  Perhaps it was because of the fog that ensues when one is woken up unexpectedly, but it ignited something inside of me.  It wasn’t until I woke to use the restroom several hours later that the gravity of it hit me and I wept.  It seems like 2020 has been so extremely unfair. 
​

I remember going to see Black Panther with the boys.  Alaiah was still young for the movie theater, so we went as a family of 4.  We were so ungodly busy at that time in life that we could only find time to go on a weeknight.  The boys were already tired from a long day but they were excited nonetheless.  I knew this was important, although I wasn’t sure how important. 

It is difficult to explain what I felt when I saw the movie.  Just as it is difficult to explain the taste of a foreign fruit one has never tasted or explain the sensations one feels when laboring or giving birth, it is tough to explain unless you can experience it yourself.  What I felt was a new sensation; one I was not familiar with.  When I embarked on my 200 hour yoga teacher training certification in 2016, I remember the first weekend of the training.  In a long and intense practice, we were cued from head to toe on how to stand in our True North alignment.  From the outside, it looked like just standing.  But it was bigger than that.  The cues started at the feet.  

“Root down into all four corners of your feet. Spread your toes.  Pull your inner ankles to the back of your mat.  Root your outer ankles down the floor.  Hug your outer shins in.  Soften your knees.  Pull your pelvis up as the tailbone descends.  Draw your front ribs together. Draw your navel in and up toward your spine. Pull your shoulder blades together down your back.  Draw your shoulders away from your ears.  Press the crown of your head up to the roof.” 

As I executed all of these cues at once, I remember feeling completely exhausted.  I never knew what it looked like to stand in integrity and total body engagement. It was tiring and exhilarating.  I felt like I was hearing from parts of my body I never had a connection with. I had never asked them to participate in the work of standing because I felt no connection to them. 

As I watched the movie, I felt a similar sensation to what I just described.  I felt connected to a level of visibility and possibility that I had not experienced in my life. Often in life, I have been unaware of my underlying hunger until receiving my first bite of a meal.  Being in survival mode, I didn’t realize I was hungry until I ate.  In many of these cases, I was actually famished. 

Until watching this movie, I was totally disconnected from the utter starvation for visibility I was experiencing as a Black person. Representation matters and as a Black woman, I made superheros of my parents and grandparents. And eventually, I  stepped into the role of being my own superhero.  Not because I wanted to, but because there was nobody else to do it for me. Our world is so white centered that I had lost the desire to even dream about what it might look like if this wasn’t the case.  Black Panther did it for me.  It showed me what the world might look like if we could take the giant spotlight off of white people for just a moment.  If Black wasn’t “other,” but it’s own unique and equally relevant option. It reignited a childlike imagination and whimsy that died once I saw how the world works for Black folks. 

The movie connected me to the power of ancestral connection.  And to the beauty of the continent of Africa.  It showed Afrocentric beauty standards as the norm.  I watched a clip of the Jimmy Kimmel show today where people were talking to a movie poster of Black Panther.  They were unaware that Chadwick Boseman was right behind a red curtain listening intently to all they had to say, ready to surprise them with his presence.  One woman shared something that stuck with me. She stated that the Black female characters were strong in the movie.  But they weren’t strong because they were angry.  They weren’t strong because they were bitter or because they were relying on a man in the movie for something. They were simply strong because.  As a Black woman who is often put in boxes of angry, sassy, opinionated, overbearing or intense, it was so liberating to see characters that were strong just because they were and not have that carry any negative connotations. 

Traditionally, African cultures are collectivist cultures.  They’re deeply connected and value community.  Despite the hardships of slavery and assimilation, this is an aspect of many Black households and communities that remains.  I feel in some way that the loss of Chadwick stings so badly because we feel the missing piece of our community.  We notice the hole that is left by his absence and know what visibility and pride he brought to our community.  We know that without ever speaking to him, he understood the Black struggle and the importance of giving back.  He was leading by example. Perhaps he kept his diagnosis and journey silent to protect his privacy.  Perhaps it was to protect all of us from clenching in anticipation and creating more pain.  Nobody knows, but it truly is everyone’s loss.  


Wakanda Forever.

​