A Love Letter to Quvenzhané Wallis

25 Feb 2013
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Gif of Quvenzhané Wallis flexing in her seat at the Oscars.

The Amazing Quvenzhané Wallis!

give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right. (via warsanshire)

Dear Quvenzhané,

Hi! My name is Moya. I am a big BIG fan of yours! I thought you were such a great actress in Beast of the Southern Wild. I planned to watch the Oscars and even started watching but I really hated to the jokes host Seth MacFarlane was making at your expense. You had the Oscar before the show even started in my mind.

He wasn’t nice.Some of the people who have interviewed you and are talking about you have been really disrespectful. You’ve done such a great job telling people how to say your name. It makes me mad that people still can’t get it. People think it’s funny to make fun of Black girls with names like ours. When I was little people would say my name wrong on purpose. Even now, people hear me say my name and think I’m saying something that’s more familiar to them. How folks hear “Gwen” from Moya, I will never understand.

Dog purse

You are great! I love your name! And your puppy purses! How do you find them?! I am so excited that you will be in more movies!

Anyway I just wanted to send you some love! You have so much greatness in store for you!

So much love to you!

Your friend,

Moya Zakia B.

P.S. I thought I’d include some books you might like below and some really cool folks on Tumblr looked up some puppy purses you might want to check out too! I hope you had fun last night!

Thank you to So-Treu, Guyanapeace, Alexcess, Writeswrongs, Fyeahquavenzhanewallis, Afrikkana, and Quixxotica for your Tumblr commentary last night and reminding us that Black girls are in fact girls and should be honored and loved as such.

To Oscar Host Seth MacFarlane and to the person at The Onion who tweeted that horrible thing and deleted it,