So you can just imagine how happy I was to see her on the cover of Vogue Magazine this morning.
This is her second time being front and center of the "bible of fashion" and she did not dissapoint. The images are just STUNNING.
Lupita spoke at length about her experiences growing up in Africa, filming in the continent and the advice that Oprah gave her. Check out 7 of her most memorable quotes from the interview
1. Dressing well is a form of good manners
"Presentation is extremely important in Kenya. You dress formally. You can’t just wear flip-flops. My mother always had her own style. She wore A-line, tea-length flowery dresses, very well fitting. Her nails were always perfectly done.”
2. We keep it moving
Lupita's family returned to Kenya when she was one and she vividly recalls how scary it was. Her father was at times detained in jail, once for an entire month, and the family “had to destroy a lot of his documents. I wasn’t allowed to go to school. We were basically locked up in the house. The curtains were shut all the time, and we were just burning papers.” She says the experience made her resilient. “I was definitely exposed to some extreme situations. Tragedy is something that I have known and that I have tried to accept as part of life. But I don’t dwell on it. . . . OK! I need to powder my nose!”
3. Filming the Disney movie Queen of Katwe in Uganda was surreal.
“One amazing thing about filming in Uganda was that on the first day of rehearsal we were all barefoot. I looked down and all the feet were my complexion. That had not happened to me before. I was reminded that I’m actually not that special. There are lots of people in the world who look like me.”
4. Her love of Africa is at the heart of Lupita’s persona and her work.
“Oprah Winfrey advised me to figure out what my intention is and to act on it. I think I can make a difference by having certain stories be told. But it’s in the hope that I will not always be the only one telling them.”
5. Moving to America made her confront race for the first time
“As Africans, we don’t grow up with a racial identity. We grow up with cultural and ethnic identity before racial identity. I never used the word black as a child. It was never a thing. When was I ever discussing black? Why?”
6. A hero's welcome
Going back to Kenya after winning her Oscar was an experience. Speaking on her visit earlier this year she says “it was overwhelming" “In Africa there is a nationalism that comes with things like winning an Oscar. It’s traditional to be welcomed and celebrated. Praise songs, which are the highest honor in Kenya, were sung for me, and they included lines from my Oscar speech.” (“Your dreams are valid” featured prominently in the lyrics.) She chuckles as she recalls local newspaper coverage under a headline that read “Tears Roll Down Hollywood Cheeks.”
7. Talk of settling down
7. Talk of settling down
“This is my conundrum. When I was back in Kenya this past week, I would be driving along with my mother and she would say, ‘That’s a nice school for children’ and look at me like——” Lupita raises her eyebrows as if to say, My mom wants me to have children now. One of her fondest childhood memories is of climbing the mango trees in her grandmother’s village. She ate the fruit straight from the branch. She’d like her children to have the same experience one day. “But I think that will all be determined when I have that moment. When I have that man.”
8. Always remember your roots
"It took me leaving Kenya to really appreciate the glory of the place. Ultimately,” she concludes, closing her eyes and smiling for a few seconds, as if she is back in her home country, mango-picking with her grandmother, “I will always be a child of Kenya.”
Fantastic!
Read the rest of the interview here
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