Why Lupita’s mother, Dorothy Nyong’o is the hero in Lupita’s book Sulwe.
The Oscar award-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o has released her childhood memoir: Sulwe, a Dholuo word meaning “Star.” The children’s book is illustrated by Vashti Harrison, a renowned filmmaker, and graphic designer.
Lupita’s book addresses her struggles with colorism, her dark skin, the loneliness she experienced seeing her sister make friends while she did not, and her earnest prayers to God to brighten her skin to no avail.
While every girl struggles with an issue about their looks, Lupita’s narrative poses a rhetorical question: Should all girls have a mother like Lupita’s?
To accurately respond to the question above, one must understand who Lupita really is. She was born in an affluent Kenyan family who moved to Mexico where her father was a university professor. Lupita moved back with the family to Kenya where she grew up, before leaving to study Spanish in Mexico and later film studies in the United States.
Lupita’s father, Professor Anyang Nyong’o is a renowned Kenyan politician and scholar. You get loads of information about him but very little is written about his wife. I struggled to get even a basic bio of Dorothy Nyong’o, Lupita’s mother except where Lupita cites her mother’s support in media interviews.
In Sulwe, Lupita describes her mother as “beautiful and bright,” a description that speaks loudly about Dorothy. She must have depicted that image to her daughter: confident, beautiful, bright and undivided attention and duty towards her daughter. Looking closely at Dorothy’s photos, she could be darker, yet Lupita thinks she was brighter.
While Professor Nyong’o taught at the university, Dorothy was that quiet professor to her child, imparting in her an education she could not learn in school. She instilled in Lupita a value needed long before she ventured into college and the hall of fame:
“Brightness is not in your skin my love. Brightness is who you are. ‘You are beautiful.’…Real beauty begins with how you see yourself not how others see you”. These words have defined who Lupita is. They were spoken to her by the most important person in her life- her mother.
Studies have proven that a young child’s home environment plays a key role in determining his or her chances for survival and development. Lupita is not oblivious of the role her mother has played in her life, which she highlights in the debut sentence of the acknowledgments:
“To Mummy and Daddy, who enveloped me with the unconditional love that led to my light.”
Sulwe is a children’s book. But it is also about gender. It is about the role of women in shaping societies right from their make-up tables, from their kitchens and living-rooms.
Dorothy Nyong’o stands tall to receive the accolades a mother hardly gets. Our silent salute echoes louder on Hollywood’s stage of fame. She granted Lupita the stage to speak about Sulwe way long before it was published.
