Brooke Obie Interviews India.Arie and Amandla Stenberg on #BlackGirlJoy
When 17-year-old ‘Hunger Games’ actress and activist Amandla Stenberg spoke out on Instagram against reality star Kylie Jenner’s cultural appropriation of black hairstyles in 2015, her activism garnered mainstream attention. Soon afterward, her YouTube video on the topic, “Don’t Cashcrop My Cornrows,” went viral and she starred as the February 2016 cover girl of Teen Vogue’s #BlackGirlMagic issue and video series.
Now, Oprah’s tapped Stenberg to join the second installment of her popular Super Soul Sessions speaker series, along with world-renown spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Grammy-winning singer/song-writer India Arie.
In their sessions, which air in May on OWN and SuperSoul.TV, both artists/activists Stenberg and Arie expressed the pain and frustration that comes from being boxed into identities and ideas of being, due to systemic oppression and how they each got free.
Stenberg shared why living authentically as a bisexual young black non-binary person is activism. India Arie’s session “Songversation: Worthy” expressed Arie’s 20-year journey as an artist/activist in an industry that sought to limit who and how she could be. From breakdown to breakthrough, Arie shared how she learned her worth using songs from her chart-topping 2013 album Songversation.
Backstage at a media round-table for the Super Soul Sessions part 2 taping, NBCBLK caught up with Stenberg and Arie to discuss how to find your purpose and how to maintain joy in the midst of oppression.
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