Inspirational people to celebrate this Black History Month and beyond

So in in terms of people that have really influenced you and have contributed, black people contributed to your sense of identity and belonging. Um, Or have had some other type of significance, you know, an important lesson that you, you felt that has come from your knowledge and understanding of um and becoming aware of of people, um. Well, the, the list is endless, a long list, a really long list. I'm very inspired by a lot of black people, um, and, and it's, I suppose it's like across every creative and intellectual genre.

Um, I was just thinking like very, very, uh, I was thinking, who inspired me yesterday? That's what I thought. There's this comedian called Josh Johnson, he's African American. He's, yeah, he's, I love him because he is so topical and his ability.

To take the world that we can't comprehend as it's being played out today and digest it into a humorous but really thoughtful critical package that where you can take in the news of the world without feeling in utter despair. Yes, he's wonderful in that respect. Yes, yes, he has a particular way of stepping outside of something and helping you look at it in all its absurdity, uh, and does it in a, in a gentle way that still really, really shows it up for what it is, right? He's, he's, I, I like him so much.

I feel like he is, it's precisely what you're saying. That gentle way means that We, and there's always, there's space for black rage too, but his particular, I feel like gentlemanliness makes the digesting of his hard truths or the way he clouds them, you know, much more palatable. More, more people can take it on and hear it and think because of his very nuanced southern style of speaking.

I'm really a huge fan. Are there any other people you'd really like us to know about? Um, Yeah, do you know what? I'm going to go to the space of theatre. There's a playwright, well, there's two playwrights I could name.

One is Susan Lori Parks. I think she does such interesting and complicated. theatre in the space, theatre that is dealing with race, and she's, she's always reflecting on the gaze, both what it is to be looked at and what it is to look.

I think there's an actress called Anna Deavere Smith who I find fascinating because she embodies all these different people and in a way that's so uncomfortable for us to watch people embody different race or races or cultures. I think she's African American, light skinned, and she somehow makes her body into a canvas to hold all these different people and there's a contemporary Performer who on social media who does something similar unfortunately I can't remember her name. I know she's of a Caribbean background, but she, she'll do these sort of impersonations of Donald Trump where she's mouthing we've got his audio or she's saying it exactly how he said it, but something about her body as a canvas really highlights sometimes the absurdity.

Of, of contemporary speech. So I, I, yeah, I'm really inspired by performers who are able to use their bodies to, um, make us really think. Yeah, yeah, that's there's a feminist tradition of doing that as well, isn't there? So that that makes it, yeah, really, really.