Five people we need to be listening to right now
by Cathy Buckmaster
In a recent article, ALHAUS vocalised our support for the Black Lives Matter movement and our promise to better educate ourselves, address our privilege and do better when it comes to giving a voice to BIPOC around the world. As such, we want to use our agency and our publication, ALHAUS magazine, as tools to #amplifymelanatedvoices.
Here we have highlighted a roll-call of people actively fighting for change and challenging racism; these are some of the people we should be listening to right now.
Akilah Hughes
Writer, comedian, podcaster and self-professed spelling bee champion Akilah Hughes began her career on YouTube. As a teenager, she saw the internet and wasn’t afraid, creating funny videos to post to her channel (It's Akilah, Obviously!) as a way to pass time in Northern Kentucky. Her video, Meet Your First Black Girlfriend, was the first to go viral (in 2012), and launched her career.
Since then, she has worked at MTV, HBO and Comedy Central and written for the likes of HelloGiggles, Femsplain and Refinery29. In October 2019, her daily news podcast What a Day (@whataday) debuted at number one — Crooked Media described it as “what ‘Fox & Friends’ would sound like if it were hosted by two people whose parents read to them as children.”
Nanjala Nyabola
Kenyan-based writer, activist and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola writes extensively on African society and politics as well as international law and feminism. Her work varies from academic publications to international journalism and opinion pieces. In 2010 she wrote a much-lauded article for The Guardian, entitled “Why, as an African, I took a Rhodes scholarship” which details her choice to accept money from a trust set up in the name of Cecil Rhodes — a well-known imperialist and colonialist (and particularly relevant in recent weeks as his statue in Oxford University has been a target for toppling). Nanjala has also written three books and sits on Amnesty International Kenya’s board. Accomplished would be putting it lightly.
Read more of Nanjala’s work on her website
Erica Cody
Hailing from Baldoyle in Dublin, Erica Cody is a singer-songwriter-producer at the forefront of the thriving Irish R&B and hip-hop scene. Never one to shy away from big topics, her debut EP, Leoness, tackles life in Dublin as a black Irish woman (Where U Really From) and new love (Lovin’ on me). Erica’s sound is reminiscent of old school R&B with confessional lyrics — think Aaliyah, Brandy and TLC — but she achieves her own sound with energetic electronic beats. She is also rightly sick of people asking to touch her hair, which is why she created the D.T.M.H (Don't Touch My Hair) campaign, a cause that will resonate with many.
Follow @ericacody on Instagram
DeRay Mckesson
Now a prominent civil rights activist and leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement, DeRay McKesson’s activism started early, when he became an advocate for youth and family issues as a teen. In 2014, he felt compelled to join street demonstrations in Ferguson after the fatal shooting by police of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American man. He also founded Campaign Zero, a comprehensive platform for research-based policy solutions to end police brutality in America. Alongside those immense achievements, he wrote On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, a memoir about his life as a Black Lives Matter organiser.
Bernardine Evaristo
British writer Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize in 2019 — an award famously shared with Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. Bernadine was both the first black British winner and the first black female winner and her work, which ranges from novels, poetry and literary criticism to radio and theatre drama, explores class, gender, sexuality and race.
She is also vocal about intersectional feminism; in an interview with the Financial Times she said: “One of the problems with the discussion about the gender pay gap of late is that it doesn’t acknowledge the (mostly undisclosed) racial pay gap. A female identity is an intersectional experience. If we throw class, ageing, disability, sexuality and trans identities into the mix, then the experience of womanhood, from a feminist and trans-aware perspective, becomes a helluva lot more complicated.”
Follow @bernardineevaristowriter on Instagram
Make sure to follow #amplifymelanatedvoices and #blacklivesmatter and to support, listen and learn in any way available to you.