Category: Black Excellence

Gina Maria Prince-Bythewood (born June 10, 1969)^[1] is an American film director and screenwriter.^[2] She is known for directing the films Love & Basketball (2000), Disappearing Acts (2000), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), Beyond the Lights (2014), and The Old Guard (2020).

Prince-Bythewood was born in Los Angeles, California,^[1] and adopted by Bob Prince, a computer programmer, and Maria Prince, a nurse, when she was 3 weeks old.^[3] Her adoptive father is white and her adoptive mother is of Salvadoran and German descent.^[4][5] She grew up in the white middle-class neighborhood of Pacific Grove, California.^[6] She has four siblings through her adoptive family.^[3]

In 1987, Prince-Bythewood graduated from Pacific Grove High School.^[3] She attended UCLA’s film school, where she also ran competitive track.^[7] At UCLA, she received the Gene Reynolds Scholarship for Directing and the Ray Stark Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Undergraduates. She graduated in 1991.^[8]

She sought out her birth mother around 2014, but it was “not a positive experience”. Her birth mother, who is white, was a teenager when she gave her up for adoption, because her family knew her child would be multiracial and they wanted her to have an abortion.^[9][10]

Career

After five years working in TV as a writer on shows like A Different World and South Central, Prince-Bythewood wrote her first film, 2000’s Love & Basketball.^[11] The film was based on Prince-Bythewood’s personal life and her experiences growing up.^[3] It was developed at the Sundance Institute‘s directing and writing lab.^[6] The film won 12 awards and was nominated for three more. It won Best Film and Best Film Poster at the Black Reel Awards, and Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. The film also grossed $27.7 million worldwide, making it the ninth most popular basketball film in the United States at that time.

She directed the feature film The Secret Life of Bees, adapted from the best-selling book by Sue Monk Kidd. It was released by Fox Searchlight in October 2008, and debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and Urbanworld Film Festival that same year.^[12]

In 2014, Prince-Bythewood directed Beyond the Lights, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw.^[13] Prince-Bythewood began work on the film in 2007, before work on 2008’s The Secret Life of Bees was completed, but struggled to find financing when the original production company, Sony, backed out after she insisted on casting Mbatha-Raw.^[14][15] The film premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.^[16]

Beyond the Lights, originally called Blackbird, is based on the Nina Simone song “Blackbird” from the record Nina Simone with Strings.^[17] Prince-Bythewood said: “That song really inspired the movie and inspired Noni’s story.”^[15] The main character’s story was loosely inspired by the lives of Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland.^[18] Prince-Bythewood also stated that the movie is filled with intense personal issues with some resulting from her own adoption and her fraught encounter with her birth mother.^[19] Prince-Bythewood did research with the assistance of a number of singers, including Alicia Keys.^[20] The story was also inspired by an experience seeing Keys play the song “Diary.” Elements of the film, especially the sexualization of female pop artists, act as a “critique of American media culture.”^[21] The film was shot in 29 days and cost $7 million.^[7] All of the key crew members on the film were women, including costume designer Sandra Hernandez, production designer Cecilia Montiel, cinematographer Tami Reiker, and editor Teri Shropshire.^[22] Other collaborators were choreographer Laurieann Gibson (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj), hairstylist Kimberly Kimble (Beyoncé), and record producer The-Dream.^[23]

In 2016 Prince-Bythewood announced her next project would be an adaptation of Roxane Gay‘s novel An Untamed State. The project would be co-written by herself and Gay and would star Gugu Mbatha-Raw.^[24]

In 2017 Prince-Bythewood, along with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood, created the show Shots Fired for Fox.^[25] Later that year, Prince-Bythewood was announced as the director for Silver & Black, a movie based on Marvel Comics characters Silver Sable and Black Cat.^[26]

She wrote the screenplay for the movie adaptation of the novel Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. The film had an estimated $12,498,674 worldwide box office take by March 2017 after its release date (January 21, 2017). She directed the 2020 film adaptation of Greg Rucka‘s The Old Guard for Netflix, starring Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne.^[27] She is the first mixed race woman to make a comic-book film.^[28]

In 2020, she and her husband signed a deal with Touchstone Television to produce their output using the banner “Undisputed Cinema.”^[29]

Prince-Bythewood is currently working on directing TriStar Pictures epic The Woman King, a feature inspired by true events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, one of the most powerful states of Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, The Woman King tells the story of Nanisca (Viola Davis), general of the all-female military unit known as the Amazons, and her daughter, Nawi, who together fought the French and neighboring tribes who violated their honor, enslaved their people and threatened to destroy everything they’ve lived for.^[30] She also directed the first episode of ABC’s Women of the Movement.^[31]

In March 2021, Prince-Bythewood took on a new role as Co-Chair of the Directors Guild of America African American Steering Committee (AASC). Working alongside Director Jeffrey W. Byrd, Prince-Bythewood will be addressing needs of the African American members of the Guild such as job creation and career advancement in this new position.^[32] On August 26, It was announced that because of Prince-Bythewood’s commitments to other projects, she would not direct The Old Guard 2 and will be replaced by Victoria Mahoney. Prince-Bythewood will remain as producer on the film.^[33]

Personal life

In 1998 Prince-Bythewood married film director and writer Reggie Rock Bythewood, whom she met on the writing staff of A Different World.^[19] The couple have two sons, Cassius and Toussaint, and live in Southern California.

Along with friends Mara Brock Akil, Sara Finney Johnson and Felicia D. Henderson, Prince-Bythewood endows The Four Sisters Scholarship.^[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Prince-Bythewood

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was a British composer and conductor.

Of mixed-race birth, Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the “African Mahler” when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s.^[1] He was particularly known for his three cantatas on the epic poem Song of Hiawatha by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor premiered the first section in 1898, when he was 22.

He married a British woman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers.^[2] Their son Hiawatha adapted his father’s music for a variety of performances. Their daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor became a composer-conductor.

Early life and education

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born at 15 Theobalds Road, Holborn, London,^[3] in 1875 to Alice Hare Martin (1856–1953),^[4] an English woman, and Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Krio man from Sierra Leone who had studied medicine in the capital and became a prominent administrator in West Africa. They were not married, and Daniel Taylor returned to Africa without learning that Alice was pregnant. (Alice Hare Martin’s parents were not married at her birth, either.)^[5] Alice Martin named her son Samuel Coleridge Taylor (without a hyphen) after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.^[6]

Alice lived with her father Benjamin Holmans and his family after she had the boy. Her father was a skilled farrier and was married to a woman other than her mother; they had four daughters and at least one son. Alice and her father called her son Coleridge. The family lived in Croydon, Surrey. In 1887 Alice Martin married George Evans, a railway worker. Their street had a railway line at its end.^[7]

Taylor was brought up in Croydon. There were numerous musicians on his mother’s side and her father played the violin. He started teaching it to Coleridge when he was young. His ability quickly was obvious, and his grandfather paid for the boy to have violin lessons. The extended family arranged for Taylor to study at the Royal College of Music, beginning at the age of 15. He changed from violin to composition, working under professor Charles Villiers Stanford. After completing his degree, Taylor became a professional musician, soon being appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and conducting the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire.

The young man later used the name “Samuel Coleridge-Taylor”, with a hyphen, said to be following a printer’s typographical error.^[8] In 1894, his father Daniel Taylor was appointed coroner for the British Empire in the Province of Senegambia.^[9]

Marriage

In 1899 Coleridge-Taylor married Jessie Walmisley, whom he had met as a fellow student at the Royal College of Music. Six years older than him, Jessie had left the college in 1893. Her parents objected to the marriage because Taylor was of mixed-race parentage, but relented and attended the wedding. The couple had a son, named Hiawatha (1900–1980) after a Native American immortalised in poetry, and a daughter Gwendolyn Avril (1903–1998). Both had careers in music: Hiawatha adapted his father’s works.^[10] Gwendolyn started composing music early in life, and also became a conductor-composer; she used the professional name of Avril Coleridge-Taylor.

Career

By 1896, Coleridge-Taylor was already earning a reputation as a composer. He was later helped by Edward Elgar, who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival. His “Ballade in A minor” was premiered there. His early work was also guided by the influential music editor and critic August Jaeger of music publisher Novello; he told Elgar that Taylor was “a genius”.

On the strength of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which was conducted by Professor Charles Villiers Stanford at its 1898 premiere and proved to be highly popular, Coleridge-Taylor made three tours of the United States.^[11] In the United States, he became increasingly interested in his paternal racial heritage. Coleridge-Taylor participated as the youngest delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference held in London, and met leading Americans through this connection, including poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois.^[11]

Coleridge-Taylor’s father Daniel Taylor was descended from African-American slaves who were freed by the British and evacuated from the colonies at the end of the American War of Independence; some 3,000 of these Black Loyalists were resettled in Nova Scotia. Others were resettled in London and the Caribbean. In 1792 some 1200 blacks from Nova Scotia chose to leave what they considered a hostile climate and society, and moved to Sierra Leone, which the British had established as a colony for free blacks. The Black Loyalists joined free blacks (some of whom were also African Americans) from London, and were joined by maroons from Jamaica, and slaves liberated at sea from illegal slave ships by the British navy. At one stage Coleridge-Taylor seriously considered emigrating to the United States, as he was intrigued by his father’s family’s past there.

In 1904, on his first tour to the United States, Coleridge-Taylor was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, a rare event in those days for a man of African descent. His music was widely performed and he had great support among African Americans. Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, which he considered Johannes Brahms to have done with Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák with Bohemian music. Having met the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in London, Taylor set some of his poems to music. A joint recital between Taylor and Dunbar was arranged in London, under the patronage of US Ambassador John Milton Hay. It was organised by Henry Francis Downing, an African-American playwright and London resident.^[12] Dunbar and other black people encouraged Coleridge-Taylor to draw from his Sierra Leonean ancestry and the music of the African continent.^{[citation needed]}

Due to his success, Coleridge-Taylor was invited to be one of the judges at music festivals. He was said to be personally shy but was still effective as a conductor.^{[citation needed]}

Composers were not handsomely paid for their music, and they often sold the rights to works outright in order to make immediate income. This caused them to lose the royalties earned by the publishers who had invested in the music distribution through publication. The popular Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Coleridge-Taylor had sold the music outright for the sum of 15 guineas, so did not benefit directly.^[13][14][15] He learned to retain his rights and earned royalties for other compositions after achieving wide renown but always struggled financially.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of pneumonia. His death is often attributed to the stress of his financial situation.^[16] He was buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, Wallington, Surrey (today in the London Borough of Sutton).^[17] He was survived by his wife Jessie (1869–1962), their daughter Avril and their son Hiawatha.

Honours

• The inscription on Coleridge-Taylor’s carved headstone includes four bars of music from the composer’s best-known work, Hiawatha, and a tribute from his close friend, the poet Alfred Noyes, that includes these words:

Too young to die: his great simplicity, his happy courage in an alien world, his gentleness, made all that knew him love him.

• King George V granted Jessie Coleridge-Taylor, the young widow, an annual pension of £100, evidence of the high regard in which the composer was held.^[18]
• In 1912 a memorial concert was held at the Royal Albert Hall and garnered over £1400 for the composer’s family.
• After Coleridge-Taylor’s death in 1912, musicians were concerned that he and his family had received no royalties from his Song of Hiawatha, which was one of the most successful and popular works written in the previous 50 years. (He had sold the rights early in order to get income.) His case contributed to their formation of the Performing Rights Society, an effort to gain revenues for musicians through performance as well as publication and distribution of music.^[4]

Coleridge-Taylor’s work continued to be popular. He was later championed by conductor Malcolm Sargent. Between 1928 and 1939, Sargent conducted ten seasons of a large costumed ballet version of The Song of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall, performed by the Royal Choral Society (600 to 800 singers) and 200 dancers.

Legacy

Coleridge-Taylor’s greatest success was undoubtedly his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, which was widely performed by choral groups in England during Coleridge-Taylor’s lifetime and in the decades after his death. Its popularity was rivalled only by the choral standards Handel‘s Messiah and Mendelssohn‘s Elijah.^[19] The composer soon followed Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast with two other cantatas about Hiawatha, The Death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha’s Departure. All three were published together, along with an Overture, as The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30. The tremendously popular Hiawatha seasons at the Royal Albert Hall, which continued until 1939, were conducted by Sargent and involved hundreds of choristers, and scenery covering the organ loft. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast is still occasionally revived.

Coleridge-Taylor also composed chamber music, anthems, and the African Dances for violin, among other works. The Petite Suite de Concert is still regularly played.^[20] He set one poem by his namesake Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Legend of Kubla Khan”.

Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by African Americans; in 1901, a 200-voice African-American chorus was founded in Washington, D.C., named the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society. He visited the United States three times in the early 1900s, receiving great acclaim, and earned the title “the African Mahler” from the white orchestral musicians in New York in 1910.^[1] Public schools were named after him in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Baltimore, Maryland.

Coleridge-Taylor composed a violin concerto for the American violinist Maud Powell. The American performance of the work was subject to rewriting because the parts were lost en route—not, as legend has it, on the RMS Titanic but on another ship.^[11] The concerto has been recorded by Philippe Graffin and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Michael Hankinson (nominated “Editor’s Choice” in Gramophone magazine), Anthony Marwood and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins (on Hyperion Records), and Lorraine McAslan and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite (on the Lyrita label). It was also performed at Harvard University‘s Sanders Theatre in the autumn of 1998 by John McLaughlin Williams and William Thomas, as part of the 100th-anniversary celebration of the composition of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Lists of Coleridge-Taylor’s compositions and recordings of his work and of the many articles, papers and books about Coleridge-Taylor’s life and legacy are available through the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation and the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Network.^[21]

There are two blue plaques in his memory, one in Dagnall Park, South Norwood,^[22] and the other in St Leonards Road, Croydon, at the house where he died. A metal figure in the likeness of Coleridge-Taylor has been installed in Charles Street, Croydon.^[23]

A two-hour documentary, Samuel Coleridge Taylor and His Music in America, 1900–1912 (2013), was made about him and includes a performance of several of his pieces, as well as information about him and his prominent place in music. It was written and directed by Charles Kaufmann, and produced by The Longfellow Chorus.^[24]

A feature animation, The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Story (2013),^[25] was made about him, written and directed by Jason Young.^[26] It was screened as part of Southwark Black History Month^[27] and Croydon Black History Month in 2020.^[28]

On 26 August 2021 Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony in A minor received its Proms premier by the Chineke! Orchestra with Kalena Bovell.^[29]

Posthumous publishing

In 1999, freelance music editor Patrick Meadows identified three important chamber works by Coleridge-Taylor that had never been printed or made widely available to musicians. A handwritten performing parts edition of the Piano Quintet, from the original in the Royal College of Music (RCM) Library, had been prepared earlier by violinist Martin Anthony Burrage of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The first modern performance of the Piano Quintet was given on 7 November 2001 by Burrage’s chamber music group, Ensemble Liverpool / Live-A-Music in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The lunchtime recital included the Fantasiestücke. Live recordings of this performance are lodged with the RCM and the British Library.^[6] The artists were Andrew Berridge (violin), Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage (violin), Joanna Lacey (viola), Michael Parrott (cello) and John Peace (piano).

After receiving copies of the work from the RCM in London, Patrick Meadows made printed playing editions of the Nonet, Piano Quintet and Piano Trio. The works were performed in Meadows’s regular chamber music festival on the island of Majorca, and were well received by the public as well as the performers. The first modern performances of some of these works were done in the early 1990s by the Boston, Massachusetts-based Coleridge Ensemble, led by William Thomas of Phillips Academy, Andover. This group subsequently made world premiere recordings of the Nonet, Fantasiestücke for string quartet and Six Negro Folksongs for piano trio, which were released in 1998 by Afka Records. Thomas, a champion of lost works by black composers, also revived Coleridge’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast in a performance commemorating the composition’s 100th anniversary with the Cambridge Community Chorus at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre in the spring of 1998.^[30]

The Nash Ensemble‘s recording of the Piano Quintet was released in 2007.

In 2006, Meadows finished engraving the first edition of Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony in A minor. Meadows has also transcribed from the RCM manuscript the Haytian Dances, a work virtually identical to the Noveletten but with a fifth movement inserted by Coleridge-Taylor, based on the Scherzo of the symphony. This work is for string orchestra, tambourine and triangle.

Thelma, the missing opera

Coleridge-Taylor’s only large-scale operatic work, Thelma, was long believed to have been lost. As recently as 1995, Geoffrey Self in his biography of Coleridge-Taylor, The Hiawatha Man, stated that the manuscript of Thelma had not been located, and that the piece may have been destroyed by its creator. While researching for a PhD on the life and music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Catherine Carr unearthed the manuscripts of Thelma in the British Library. She assembled a libretto and catalogued the opera in her thesis, presenting a first critical examination of the work by a thorough investigation of the discovered manuscripts (including copious typeset examples).^[31] The work subsequently appeared as such on the catalogue of the British Library.

Thelma is a saga of deceit, magic, retribution and the triumph of love over wickedness. The composer has followed Richard Wagner‘s manner in eschewing the established “numbers” opera format, preferring to blend recitative, aria and ensemble into a seamless whole. It is possible that he had read Marie Corelli‘s 1887 “Nordic” novel Thelma (it appears that the name “Thelma” may have been created by Corelli for her heroine). Coleridge-Taylor composed Thelma between 1907 and 1909; it is alternatively entitled The Amulet.

The full score and vocal score in the British Library are both in the composer’s hand – the full score is unbound but complete (save that the vocal parts do not have the words after the first few folios) but the vocal score is bound (in three volumes) and complete with words. Patrick Meadows and Lionel Harrison have prepared a type-set full score, vocal score and libretto (the librettist is uncredited and may be Coleridge-Taylor himself). As to the heroine of the title, the composer changed her name to “Freda” in both full and vocal scores (although in the full score he occasionally forgets himself and writes “Thelma” instead of “Freda”). Perhaps Coleridge-Taylor changed the name of his heroine (and might have changed the name of the opera, had it been produced) to avoid creating the assumption that his work was a treatment of Corelli’s then very popular novel. Since that precaution is scarcely necessary today, Meadows and Harrison decided to revert to the original Thelma.

There are minor discrepancies between the full score and the vocal score (the occasional passage occurring in different keys in the two, for example), but nothing that would inhibit the production of a complete, staged performance.

Thelma received its world première in Croydon‘s Ashcroft Theatre in February 2012, the centenary year of the composer’s death, performed by Surrey Opera, using an edition prepared by Stephen Anthony Brown.^[32] It was conducted by Jonathan Butcher, directed by Christopher Cowell and designed by Bridget Kimak. Joanna Weeks sang the title role, with Alberto Sousa as Eric and Håkan Vramsmo as Carl.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor

“For me, personally, music has been a way to inspire others” – Randall Goosby’s own words sum up perfectly his commitment to being an artist who makes a difference.

Signed exclusively to Decca Classics in 2020 at the age of 24, American violinist Randall Goosby is acclaimed for the sensitivity and intensity of his musicianship alongside his determination to make music more inclusive and accessible, as well as bringing the music of under-represented composers to light.

Highlights of Randall Goosby’s 2021/22 season include debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl, Baltimore Symphony under Dalia Stasevska, Detroit Symphony under Jader Bignamini, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra. He makes recital appearances at London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s 92nd Street Y, San Francisco Symphony’s Davies Symphony Hall and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

June 2021 marks the release of Goosby’s debut album for Decca entitled Roots, a celebration of African-American music which explores its evolution from the spiritual through to present-day compositions. Collaborating with pianist Zhu Wang, Goosby has curated an album paying homage to the pioneering artists that paved the way for him and other artists of color. It features three world-premiere recordings of music written by African-American composer Florence Price, and includes works by composers William Grant Still and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson plus a newly commissioned piece by acclaimed double bassist Xavier Foley, a fellow Sphinx, Perlman Music Program and Young Concert Artists alumnus.

Randall Goosby has performed with orchestras across the United States including the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Nashville Symphony and New World Symphony. Recital appearances have included the Kennedy Center, Kravis Center and Wigmore Hall.

Goosby is deeply passionate about inspiring and serving others through education, social engagement and outreach activities. He has enjoyed working with non-profit organizations such as the Opportunity Music Project and Concerts in Motion in New York City, as well as participating in community engagement programs for schools, hospitals and assisted living facilities across the United States.

Randall Goosby was First Prize Winner in the 2018 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In 2019, he was named the inaugural Robey Artist by Young Classical Artists Trust in partnership with Music Masters in London; and in 2020 he became an Ambassador for Music Masters, a role that sees him mentoring and inspiring students in schools around the United Kingdom.

Goosby made his debut with the Jacksonville Symphony at age nine. At age 13, he performed with the New York Philharmonic on a Young People’s Concert at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall and became the youngest recipient ever to win the Sphinx Concerto Competition. He is a recipient of Sphinx’s Isaac Stern Award and of a career advancement grant from the Bagby Foundation. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he continues his studies there, pursuing an Artist Diploma under Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho. An active chamber musician, he has spent his summers studying at the Perlman Music Program, Verbier Festival Academy and Mozarteum Summer Academy among others.

Randall Goosby plays a 1735 Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu on generous loan from the Stradivari Society.

https://randallgoosby.com/bio/

And check out Randall Goosby’s Tiny Desk Concert!

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/06/1120602267/randall-goosby-tiny-desk-concert

Most people are not fortunate enough to realize the impact their life has made on others because, well, the majority of the accolades often come at memorials. But when you are Serena Williams, playing what is expected to be the final major tournament of a career emblazoned with the acronym G.O.A.T, you must recognize how your presence and accomplishments on and off the tennis court have inspired the hopes and dreams of African Americans, in particular female athletes, how you have introduced a sport that appeared off limits to a new, diverse audience, and how you have rewritten society’s definition of beauty – all this by doing things your way.

Not even father Richard Williams, shunned, disrespected and laughed at when he shuttled his two young daughters, Venus and Serena, from their home in Compton, Calif., where they learned to play on public courts, to tennis clinics and tournaments throughout Southern California, could have predicted the influence his baby girl would have in a country club sport – and beyond. He knew they would both be No. 1. But that wasn’t enough for Serena.

In her 2009 memoir, On The Line, Serena wrote about how a national newspaper article on Venus, published after the two started playing tournaments, spurred her because the article “suggested that I’d never be anything more than a footnote to Venus’s career…I promised myself I’d never forget that article, that one day I’d prove the reporter wrong.”

Venus, 15 months older, certainly paved the way for Serena. Then Serena, with that article fueling the fire that burned inside her, blazed her own path to become the most dominant female athlete of all time with a jaw-dropping 23 Grand Slam singles championships, a record in the Open era, that fittingly began at the U.S. Open in 1999.

Just two years prior, in August 1997, Richard sat with this journalist in the family’s West Palm Beach, Fla., home and wondered aloud if he was doing the right thing by delaying Serena’s U.S. Open debut. Serena was itching to play. But dad wanted to bring his tennis prodigies along slowly so the sisters could enjoy being youths and focus on their studies. Serena had turned pro when she was 14 but only played one tournament in 1995, none in 1996 then five in 1997. The following year, it was game on as she made her first appearance in each of the four Grand Slam tournaments.

Soon, there was no surface Serena couldn’t master, from grass at the prestigious All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, where she won seven prestigious Wimbledon titles, to the hardcourts at Melbourne Park, where she also claimed seven Australian Open titles, and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, where she earned six U.S. Open trophies, to the hallowed clay courts at Stade Roland Garros, where three French Open championships came her way. Few people knew Serena was pregnant with her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. when she beat Venus in the 2017 Australian Open finals for her 23rd Grand Slam singles trophy. In all, seven of Serena’s Grand Slam triumphs have come against Venus, the sister who taught her so much.

Serena always had the luxury of having her protective big sister share tips on how to play opponents whom Venus may have already faced. With Venus, Serena also had a confidant who knew exactly what she was going through when it came to matters of race in the sport. Althea Gibson, who in 1956 became the first African American to win a Grand Slam title, and Arthur Ashe, who won three Grand Slam titles and remains the only African American male tennis player to win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon singles titles, didn’t have this advantage.

At 42, Venus has not mentioned retiring. Serena also hasn’t used the R word, preferring evolving. Yet hasn’t she already changed so much? The Williams sisters brought to tennis something never before seen in their sport. They flaunted their cultural heritage with braids and beads in their early years on the tour. They played with an aggressiveness and phenomenal power that was decried but has become more commonplace in the women’s game. Serena, with her bulging biceps, took twice the criticism with detractors body shaming her. The younger, more muscular sister accepted being blessed with thick thighs and a round buttocks that women pay good money to achieve through surgery. She proved that her thighs and butt didn’t slow her down when it came to chasing opponents’ shots on the court and returning blistering winners. Instead of hiding her curves, she flaunted them in her outfits on the court and posed nude for the cover of Vanity Fair while pregnant.

Not afraid to show emotion and possessing passion and confidence while winning on her terms in a white man’s sports, Serena inspired little girls and boys of color to pick up racquets. Were it not for the Williams sisters, it’s highly unlikely the 2020 U.S. Open would have boasted 16 either Black or multiracial players, including 12 on the women’s side.

African American players Zina Garrison, the 1990 Wimbledon singles runner-up, and Lori McNeil, a singles semifinalist at the U.S. Open in 1987 and Wimbledon in 1994, were role models for Serena, who in turn inspired Grand Slam champions Naomi Osaka and Sloane Stephens, along with Coco Gauff and Frances Tiafoe, currently ranked second, respectively, among U.S. women and men. Even race car driver Lewis Hamilton, the record holder with 103 Formula One wins and a record-tying seven world championships, has stated how much the Williams sisters inspired him in his sport where he is the only Black driver.

For the past 27 years, Serena has given her all to the game. Now it’s time to say goodbye, to let her continue to blossom into the mother, wife and businesswoman roles she has taken on while excelling on the court. We say, thank you, Serena.

https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/09/01/1120097181/serena-williams-us-open

In January, we profiled Ibrahim Songne. As a kid, newly arrived in Italy from Burkina Faso with his family, he took his first bite of pizza. His verdict: “Gross and completely tasteless.” But he had a change of taste buds and as an adult started his own pizzeria in Trento. He ran into anti-immigrant prejudices but his pizza prevailed and this year, IBRIS, his eatery, was named one of the world’s top 50 pizza places by the website 50TopPizza.it. We caught up with Songne this summer to see how he’s been faring.

The media response to Goats and Soda’s January article about pizza maestro Ibrahim Songne was so strong that ultimately he was forced to call a moratorium on interviews.

“The requests got to be overwhelming. I am just a pizza maker,” Ibrahim states. “I continue to personally prepare every slice of pizza we serve and so already almost every hour of my day is spoken for. My girlfriend kind of put her foot down. And she is the one who has had to do all of the translations into English.”

Nonetheless, his appreciation for NPR’s coverage was so heartfelt that he created a “Goats and Soda” pizza in our honor.

It’s composed of goat cheese, dried figs, Trentingrana cheese shavings, rocket salad, pine nuts and spicy oil — quite a radical recipe by local standards. He couldn’t quite bring himself to actually put soda on the pizza, though. So the pie is paired with soda instead and was an instant sensation as a rotating special.

The NPR story also gave a boost to his practice of asking clients to pay for a second pizza, which he donates to a hungry person. “I didn’t realize what a huge thing NPR was until I started getting donations from around the world,” he says. “I’ve had people calling-in to contribute from Canada, Ireland … all over.”

His pizza charity was inspired by the Neapolitan tradition of caffè sospeso (“suspended coffee”) — cafe clientele pay for an additional coffee that bartenders later give anonymously to those in need. Like some other pizzeria operators, Ibrahim expanded the custom to pizza at the start of COVID lockdowns.

And even though the pandemic put some local pizza joints out of business, the demand for Ibrahim’s pizza is so great that he has secured a lease and started work on a second location that is more spacious and provides seating. It is due to open by year’s end.

Meanwhile, his passion for baking continues. In perpetual pursuit of “perfection,” he’s refined his dough recipe with a longer rise and is also close to developing a pizza crust for the gluten intolerant.

Having just celebrated the fourth anniversary of his IBRIS pizzeria, Ibrahim has become a community fixture in his hometown of Trento. A local theater company has plans to stage a play about his life — detailing his story of immigrating from Burkina Faso at age 12 without knowing a word of Italian, overcoming a stutter and then becoming a self-taught pizza chef who has garnered international acclaim.

His achievements have impressed some Italians with African roots to make a pilgrimage to the pizzeria.

Francesco, age 9, from the Piemonte region recently visited with his family, who emigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They drove close to 6 hours east to visit IBRIS. The boy seemed shy but lit up when it came time to pose for a photo with Ibrahim.

“I’ve never seen a Black pizza maker before,” he said. “I didn’t even know it was possible. And this is the best pizza I’ve ever tasted.”

Anna-Maria, age 5 and like Francesco a second generation Italian of African descent, traveled with her mother on a 3-hour train ride from the Emilia-Romagna region to sample Ibrahim’s slices.

She declared, “Now that I’ve met Mr. Ibrahim, I know exactly what I want to be when I get older: a pizza maker …. but also a doctor, too.”

Ian Brennan is Grammy-winning music producer (Zomba Prison Project, Tinariwen, The Good Ones [Rwanda], Witch Camp [Ghana]) who in the past decade has recorded in the field forty records by international artists across five continents (Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Asia). He is the author of seven books and his latest, Muse-$ick: a music manifesto in fifty-nine notes, was published last fall by Oakland’s PM Press.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/09/03/1119943622/whatever-happened-to-the-african-born-pizza-chef-who-won-over-biased-italians

A swimming cap made specifically for natural Black hair has received official approval from the worldwide governing body for competitive swimming.

Soul Cap is a covering made especially to protect hair that’s thick, curly, braided or otherwise textured — which is often difficult to fit into smaller swim caps.

FINA initially rejected the cap’s use at the Olympics last year, claiming that athletes competing at the world stage have “never used, neither require to use, caps of such size and configuration,” according to The Associated Press.

The report said that the organization also determined that the cap does not “[follow] the natural form of the head,” a rule that is outlined in FINA’s requirements for approved swimwear.

This ban sparked global conversations about inclusivity and existing barriers within the world of competitive swimming.

Danielle Obe, chair of the Black Swimming Association, told Sky Sports last year that, “by and large, hair is a significant barrier to aquatics for many women especially and many people of color from our communities. So [the Soul Cap] should be considered as a product that overcomes this barrier.”

FINA walked back last year’s rejection this week after “a period of “review and discussion on cap design,” along with Soul Cap creators, Brent Nowicki, executive director at FINA told the U.K.’s Metro.

“Promoting diversity and inclusivity is at the heart of FINA’s work, and it is very important that all aquatic athletes have access to the appropriate swimwear,” he told the outlet.

The British Olympic swimmer (and Soul Cap ambassador) Alice Dearing said the news was exciting, in a statement to NPR. Dearing became the first Black swimmer who represented Great Britain at an Olympic level last year. She also co-founded the Black Swimming Association in 2020.

“I know that a lot of people value the option this cap brings them when going swimming. Knowing that it is acceptable to compete in this cap at the highest level of sport sends a message that hair should not be a barrier which stops people from participating,” Dearing said.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/02/1120761124/swimming-cap-black-hair-fina-approval

David Sanford Big Band will be playing at the Bombyx Center for Arts and Equity in Florence, MA on September 11, 2022. https://laudable.productions/events/david-sanford-big-band/

Born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1963, David Sanford received degrees in music theory and composition from the University of Northern Colorado, New England Conservatory, and Princeton University where he received the PhD in music composition and completed his dissertation, “’Prelude (Part 1)’ from Agharta: Modernism and Primitivism in the Fusion Works of Miles Davis”. During these years, he studied composition and theory with Richard Bourassa, Robert Ehle, Arthur Berger, Pozzi Escot, Jim Randall, Claudio Spies and Steve Mackey. He is the founder and director of the David Sanford Big Band (formerly the Pittsburgh Collective), a twenty-piece contemporary big band.

Sanford’s honors include the Rome Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute, an Arts and Letters Award, an Ives Scholarship and a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awards from BMI, ASCAP, and Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and a Composer Portrait concert at Miller Theater. He was composer-in-residence at Concert Artists Guild and at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music (through BMI), guest composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference, and a chosen participant in the African American Composers Forum with the Detroit Symphony. He has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Chamber Music America for the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Zéphyros Winds, and the Festival of New Trumpet Music, from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Meridian Arts Ensemble and for cellist Matt Haimovitz and the Pittsburgh Collective, the Barlow Endowment for pianist Lara Downes, the Mary Flagler Cary Trust for Speculum Musicae, and from Castle of our Skins and Winsor Music, Astral Artists, the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Princeton University Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble, the Empyrean Ensemble at UC Davis, and the Mana Saxophone Quartet. In addition, his works have received performances by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra under Marin Alsop, the Detroit Symphony under Leslie Dunner, the Peabody Modern Orchestra under Cliff Colnot, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony Chamber Players, and the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, among many others.

Sanford’s works have been recorded by artists including Speculum Musicae, Matt Haimovitz, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, pianist Lara Downes and New York Philharmonic cellist Eric Bartlett. The title track of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s recording of the composer’s works, Black Noise, was named one of “The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2019” by the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/arts/music/best-classical-music.html); the Pittsburgh Collective’s CD Live at the Knitting Factory, featuring his compositions and arrangements was named one of the albums of the year in Jazziz magazine; and Haimovitz’s disc Meeting of the Spirits with his cello ensemble UCCELLO, which featured seven jazz arrangements and one composition by Sanford, received a four-star review from downbeat magazine, and was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Sanford has taught at the University of Chicago and Amherst College, and is currently Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of Music at Mount Holyoke College teaching theory, composition, music and film, and jazz history. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with his wife, architect Mary Yun, and their two children.

https://www.davidsanford.org/david-sanford-full-bio

Janetta Sherrell Goines

Netta Sherrell, is a Multi-instrumentalist, Educator & Mentor, born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She has extensive knowledge in venue operations and event management and has worked for companies such as Disney, Broadway in Chicago and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. While building a foundation in arts and entertainment management, she has also continued to pursue her dreams of becoming a full time musician. Netta currently tours with the Tony Nominated Broadway Musical, ”SIX” as the bassist and strives to use her resources and experience to educate youth and young adults on the importance of marketing, networking, music production and music performance. 

Netta has been seen on the hit tv series, EMPIRE, recorded for the Netflix film “Wendell & Wild” directed by Jordan Peele, appeared on WGN’s Daytime Chicago, and recorded several records for multiple artists across the country. You can also catch her playing with her band “Free Your Dreams”, “Attack the Sound”, “The Txlips Band” and her home church New Promise Land. Netta Sherrell is an endorsed artist with Lakland Basses and Mono. 

Janetta Sherrell Goines

Ronald Erwin McNair (October 21, 1950 – January 28, 1986) was an American NASA astronaut and physicist. He died during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L, in which he was serving as one of three mission specialists in a crew of seven.

Prior to the Challenger disaster, he flew as a mission specialist on STS-41-B aboard Challenger from February 3 to 11, 1984, becoming the second African American and the first Baháʼí to fly in space.

Background

McNair was born October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina, to Pearl M. and Carl C. McNair. He had two brothers, Carl and Eric A. McNair. In the summer of 1959, he refused to leave the segregated Lake City Public Library without being allowed to check out his books. After the police and his mother were called, he was allowed to borrow books from the library; the building that housed the library at the time is now named after him.^[1] A children’s book, Ron’s Big Mission, offers a fictionalized account of this event. His brother Carl wrote Ronald’s official biography, In the Spirit of Ronald E. McNair—Astronaut: An American Hero.

McNair graduated as valedictorian of Carver High School in 1967.^[2]

In 1971, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering physics, magna cum laude, from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.^[3] At North Carolina A&T, he studied under professor Donald Edwards, who had established the physics curriculum at the university.^[4]

In 1976, he received a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Michael Feld, becoming nationally recognised for his work in the field of laser physics. Also in 1976, he won the AAU Karate gold medal. He would subsequently win five regional championships and earn a 5th degree black belt in karate.^[5]

McNair received four honorary doctorates, as well as a score of fellowships and commendations). He became a staff physicist at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California.

McNair was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity^[3] and a member of the Bahá’í Faith.^[6][7]

Astronaut career

In 1978, McNair was selected as one of thirty-five applicants from a pool of ten thousand for the NASA astronaut program. He was one of several astronauts recruited by Nichelle Nichols as part of a NASA effort to increase the number of minority and female astronauts.^[8] He flew as a mission specialist on STS-41-B aboard Challenger from February 3 to 11, 1984, becoming the second African American to fly in space.

Astronaut candidates Ron McNair, Guy Bluford, and Fred Gregory wearing Apollo spacesuits, May 1978

Challenger disaster

Main article: Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

Following the STS-41-B mission, McNair was selected for STS-51-L as one of three mission specialists in a crew of seven. The mission launched on January 28, 1986. He was killed when Challenger disintegrated nine miles above the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds after liftoff. The disintegration also killed six other crew members.^[9]

He was initially buried at Rest Lawn Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina. His remains were disinterred in 2004 and moved to Ronald E. McNair Memorial Park, located elsewhere in Lake City.^[10]

Music in space

Main article: Music in space

McNair was an accomplished saxophonist.

Before his last fateful space mission, he had worked with the composer Jean-Michel Jarre on a piece of music for Jarre’s then-upcoming album Rendez-Vous. It was intended that he would record his saxophone solo onboard the Challenger, which would have made McNair’s solo the first original piece of music to have been recorded in space^[11] (although the song “Jingle Bells” had been played on a harmonica during an earlier Gemini 6 spaceflight). However, the recording was never made, as the flight ended in the disaster and the deaths of its entire crew. The final track on Rendez-Vous, “Last Rendez-Vous,” has the subtitle “Ron’s Piece,” and the liner notes include a dedication from Jarre: “Ron was so excited about the piece that he rehearsed it continuously until the last moment. May the memory of my friend the astronaut and the artist Ron McNair live on through this piece.”^[12] Ron McNair was supposed to have taken part in Jarre’s Rendez-vous Houston concert through a live feed from the orbiting Shuttlecraft.

Public honors

McNair was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 2004, along with all crew members lost in the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

Dr. Ronald E. McNair memorial in his hometown, Lake City, South Carolina

Dr. Ronald E. McNair tomb in his hometown, Lake City, South Carolina

Ronald McNair Park in Brooklyn, New York City

Ronald E. McNair South Central Police Station of the Houston Police Department in Houston, Texas

A variety of public places, people and programs have been renamed in honor of McNair.

• The crater McNair on the Moon is named in his honor.
• The McNair Building (a.k.a. Building 37) at MIT, his alma mater, houses the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
• The McNair Science Center at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina
• The McNair Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research at the University of South Carolina is named in his honor.
• Ronald McNair Boulevard in Lake City, South Carolina, is named in his honor and lies near other streets named for astronauts who perished in the Challenger crash.
• The Quailbrook East development in Somerset, New Jersey has streets named after the Challenger and each of the seven astronauts.[1]
• The U.S. Department of Education offers the TRIO Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program for students with low income, first generation students, and/or underrepresented students in graduate education for doctorate education.
• On January 29, 2011, the Lake City, South Carolina, library was dedicated as the Ronald McNair Life History Center.^[2] When Ronald McNair was eight, the police and his mother were called because he wished to check out books from this library, which served only white patrons before he arrived. He said, “I’ll wait,” to the lady and sat on the counter until the police and his mother arrived, and the officer said, “Why don’t you just give him the books?” which the lady behind the counter reluctantly did. He said, “Thank you, ma’am,” as he got the books.^[1] The episode as recalled by his brother Carl McNair has been depicted in a short animated film.^[13][14][15]
• Several K–12 schools have also been named after McNair.
  • McNair Memorial Park in El Lago, Texas, is named in his honor.^[16]
  • Ronald E. McNair Middle School in Lake City, South Carolina, was renamed from Carver High School in his honor (he was a high school graduate of the facility).
  • Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic High School in Jersey City, New Jersey^[17]
  • Ronald McNair Elementary School in Greensboro, North Carolina
  • Ronald McNair Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland
  • Ronald E. McNair Prince Hall Masonic Lodge No. 146 is named in his honor in Suitland, Maryland^[18]
  • Dr. Ronald E. McNair High School in DeKalb County, Georgia, near Decatur
  • Ronald E. McNair Middle School, San Antonio, Texas – Southwest ISD
  • Ronald McNair Middle School in DeKalb County, Georgia, near Decatur
  • Ronald McNair Middle School in College Park, Georgia
  • Ronald E. McNair Administrative Center in University City, Missouri
  • Ronald E. McNair Elementary School in Hazelwood, Missouri^[19]
  • Ronald Ervin McNair Elementary School in Denton, Texas (Denton ISD)
  • Ronald McNair Middle School in Rockledge, Florida
  • Ronald E. McNair Elementary School in Dallas, Texas (Dallas ISD)
  • Dr. Ronald McNair Junior High School in Pearland, Texas (Alvin Independent School District), is named in honor Dr. McNair.^[20]
  • Ronald E. McNair Academic Center in Chicago, Illinois
  • Ronald E. McNair Junior High School in Huntsville, Alabama^[21]
  • Los Robles Ronald McNair Academy^[22] in East Palo Alto, California
  • Ronald E. McNair High School in Stockton, California
  • PS 5, Dr. Ronald McNair School in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
  • PS/MS 147 Ronald McNair in Cambria Heights Queens, New York City, New York
  • McNair Elementary School in Compton, California
  • McNair Community School (Upper & Lower) in Fairfax County, Virginia
  • Ronald E. McNair Building: Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans, New Orleans, Louisiana
  • Ronald E. McNair Building: KIPP Believe College Prep, New Orleans, Louisiana
• A building on the Willowridge High School campus in Houston, Texas, is named in honor of McNair.
• There is a memorial in the Ronald McNair Park in Brooklyn, New York, in his honor.^[23][24][25]
• The Dr. Ronald E. McNair Playground in East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, New York, is named after him.^[26]
• The Ronald E. McNair Space Theater inside the Davis Planetarium in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, is named in his honor.
• The Naval ROTC building on the campus of Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana is named in his honor.

Ronald E. McNair Hall, On the campus of North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina The Engineering building at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, is named in his honor. The university holds a McNair Day celebration annually.^[27] McNair was portrayed by Joe Morton in the 1990 TV movie Challenger. The song “A Drop Of Water,” recorded by Japanese jazz artist Keiko Matsui, with vocals by the late Carl Anderson, was written in tribute to McNair. The Jean Michel Jarre track “Last Rendez-Vous” was re-titled “Ron’s Piece” in his honor. McNair was originally due to record the track in space aboard Challenger, and then perform it via a live link up in Jarre’s Rendez-vous Houston concert. The federally-funded McNair Scholars/Achievement Programs award research money and internships to juniors and seniors who are first-generation and low-income, or members of groups that are underrepresented, in preparation for graduate study. 187 institutions participate (as of 2020).^[28][29] Michigan State University, Washington State University, and Syracuse University are three examples of these programs and both offer Summer Research Opportunity Program as additional program components.^[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McNair

In June 2021, NPR profiled Gloria Majiga-Kamoto of Malawi, who saw goats dying after eating plastic bags and decided to take on her nation’s plastic industry. Cheap, single-use plastic is such a problem in Malawi that in 2015 the government instituted a thin plastic ban. But before the ban could go into effect, the country’s powerful plastic industry filed an injunction. That’s until Majiga-Kamoto, who works for a local environmental organization, came along, organizing protest rallies and marches. In 2019 the nation’s High Court finally ruled in favor of the ban. In 2021 she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her work. So what’s happened to her in the last year?

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto says in the past year she’s become – in her words – “the plastic girl.” We reached her in Blantyre, the financial capital of Malawi, to get an update on the thin plastic ban, and hear about her new tactics for fighting plastic pollution around the world. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does being ‘the plastic girl’ mean?

Being ‘the plastic girl’ is being that one person that everybody sends pictures to if they see plastic pollution anywhere. [Laughs] Or they’re tagging me in everything. So it’s a bit mortifying because it also sort of reminds you how little progress you’re actually making. The thing with policy is, when it’s in place, you almost think everything is just going to magically work out, right? But it’s very slow progress and sometimes, to be sort of stuck in the moment, the slow motion, it’s a bit frustrating. You want to wake up today and know that things are so different. That’s been a bit overwhelming for me personally. I think it’s given me more of a sense of responsibility to say, ‘What more can I do?’

The point of the law was to ban the manufacturing of thin plastic in Malawi. But it seems there are still thin plastic producers operating in the country. What’s going on with you and your supporters?

We’ve now gone back to the courts. There’s been a judicial review application by one of the [plastic] companies with the commercial courts, which is crazy because this issue was resolved in the Supreme Court.

What [the plastic companies] are contesting is the list of the plastics that have been banned. So because that list is [being] reviewed [the government] cannot target the companies. Right now the government can only target the distributors and the users of plastic, which is a very difficult thing to do because these are just local Malawians.

We’ve been calling for the president to take action because we can’t keep on using the courts. [Earlier this month] we had the national cleanup day for civil society organizations. We took a stand and said, ‘We’re not participating in the cleanup because we cannot keep cleaning up somebody else’s mess.” The whole point of the ban, the whole point of setting up the cleanup initiative, was to say that once the ban is in place, we come together as a country and clean up.

But if we continue to produce plastics and then we still say people should come out and clean up, it’s not fair because we are cleaning up somebody else’s mess and [the manufacturers are] making a profit off of it!

So you’re now not participating in government-sponsored cleanups and demonstrations as a symbol of your frustration with the government.

Yes. As of now we’ve actually refused to take part in the national cleanup campaigns, from this month until the president makes a very clear statement on the need for the judiciary to address this issue once and for all. We need him to make a directive on the implementation of the ban.

You don’t want the government greenwashing, basically.

No. [Laughs] You know, we’re done.

I feel like, if you’re ‘the plastic girl’, people around the world look to you for guidance on how to combat plastic pollution in their countries. So I’m wondering, can you give people some ideas about what you’ve learned?

We organized a cleanup with support from the Goldman Prize funds. And what we did was when we gathered all the plastics, we took them straight to a plastic company, because we said, ‘We don’t know what to do with this waste. So you tell us what to do with it. You continue producing it, so take it back!’

We’ll do that for every single cleanup. We’re taking it back to the plastic manufacturers because we don’t want it. And we don’t know what to do with it. Don’t give us the task of writing proposals to come up with projects that are going to recycle, because we can’t. You have to do something about it. And I think that [taking plastic waste back to the plastic companies] showed them that we’re watching and we’re waiting to see what’s going to happen.

I know globally, there’s been a campaign to break free from plastic. We’re not the only country facing this challenge. This is a very huge sector. It’s got huge profits. They’ve got money, they’ve got more than we will ever have. But we have got the power and I think that’s the most important lesson of all.

So when you gave them back the plastic, did they take it?

They were so reluctant, but we went there with media and then they had to take it back. We don’t know what they did with it, but it was such a strong statement.

I think their fear was that if they take it, then everybody starts taking all of their plastic to them on the cleanups. And that’s exactly what we want! [Laughs.]

So we’ve been trying to tell people that if you’re doing a cleanup, you need to have a plan for your plastics because you can’t throw it at the landfill. That kind of pressure is showing [the thin plastic manufacturers] that we’re not backing down.

It’s kind of showing the hypocrisy, how you really can’t recycle a lot of plastic.

Exactly.

What is your next target?

We still have work to do in plastics. I mean, even [if] the ban comes back into full effect, there will still be a lot of work trying to get people to change. We are working on a program for TV called Waste Talk, it should go live on air next month. It’s just 10 minutes every day, a conversation on the types of waste that you experience. Get people to understand what waste is, how they can manage it better, who they can actually take it to, and the incredible people that are managing our waste on our behalf.

So you’re focusing on human behavior in addition to targeting manufacturers.

I feel like one of the challenges we have is a disconnection — once you throw [plastic] in the bin you get disconnected from it.

So I always ask people, if we’re in a meeting and they have a plastic bottle, I say, “After you use that bottle, can you imagine ever meeting that bottle again? Like if you had your name on that and you met it inside an animal or, you know, in the most awkward place, in a fish, in a beautiful lake when you’re swimming with your family and then you see your bottle just wash up on the shore toward you. How would you feel?” So getting people to be aware that waste has a life-cycle and we are part of that life cycle to the end of it.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/08/29/1119941550/whatever-happened-to-the-malawian-anti-plastic-activist-inspired-by-goats