Black Panther

Ya’ll I saw Black Panther on Friday, February 16, 2018 and I am starstruck and inspired. Yeah, all the stars are closer. As a person of color, seeing this movie definitely had an impact of how I view Black Panther. When I first heard Black Panther, all I knew was that it was a fists up fros out group in the 60’s filled with people of color tirelessly fighting for their rights. I had no idea that at the same time the title Black Panther was bestowed upon a hero. I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t see Avengers Civil War, but I did see clips of the trailers and there was this man running around in a black cat suit. So I was interested and so I googled and so my mom bought the comics. I was so hype to learn about a black hero, an African hero and that he came from an Afrofuturism El Dorado of a city hidden in Africa.
The nature of the story and how it was portrayed on screen shatters stereotypes about Africa and people of color in general in terms of humanization, intelligence, diversity, technology, and culture. Ya’ll I came to the movie in a Dora Milaje shirt and a Wakanda Foreign Exchange student hoodie wrapped around my waist. I was confident that this movie was gonna be bomb and it truly was. It felt so good to look at the characters as dimensional humans who made mistakes and tried to find their pathway, whether it led them to good or evil and not focus on their blackness as a tainting feature. Still, their blackness spoke volumes from the scenes in Oakland, California to Killmonger’s antics and T’Challa’s home in Wakanda.

Believe the hype. It is really good and beyond my liking it as a person of color that gets to see a dynamic superhero of color, Black Panther is genuinely an interesting hero and the world of Wakanda is intriguing as well. As many have said, this isn’t just a nice addition to the Marvel universe. Black Panther is also just a great film and a great story to see even if you know nothing about the Marvel universe. My only issue is that I wanna see more Wakanda and I gotta wait until it’s out on DVD to get some screenshots or find a Wakanda world book or something, which would be really helpful given that I’m having worldbuilding issues in my current WIP.
But thats not all I wanted to talk about. I’m so proud of the people involved in Black Panther because it serves as inspiration for me. I’m writing my own book in the vein of Afrofuturism, but I’m nowhere near done, so I can’t stand with these bomb creatives, but they are helping to push me along. Naturally, since I am still writing, I can’t tell you much but I can show you what’s inspiring me, which is why I opened up my secret Pinterest board on my book…

There’ll be a post about my writing later and the general ideas of the book.
I hope that we keep seeing more films about heroes of color and the worlds that they come from. I felt like a kid when I went to go see this movie and I can’t imagine what it was like for the little black girl who walked past me in the theater to see herself on screen in so many different characters with the privilege to so many different identities. Keep Xscaping! Wakanda Forever!