Don’t sleep on Amandla Stenberg, because she’s still working hard and being a young visionary.
If you don’t remember, Amandla Stenberg first got her big break when she was cast in the role of Rue in the first Hunger Games movie. And in that role, Stenberg was faced with her first bit of controversy.
Courtesy of Lionsgate Films
A lot of fans seemed to have completely misread the book’s description of the character.
And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that's she's very like Prim in size and demeanor…
Most missed this passage or assumed the little girl from District 11 was white (which is worth a whole article on its own).
So, when a little black girl came on screen most were confused, and some were angry. (And as Jezebel reported, the angry people, of course, went to Twitter to express themselves).
This incident led to Amandla Stenberg becoming very aware of race conversations in our country (if she wasn’t already). And then, three years later she popped up again to talk about race in a video that went viral.
For a while, the media couldn’t get enough of Amandla Stenberg. She went on photo shoots, hung out with Will Smith’s kids, and was in talks for movie deals. Stenberg was a young, black visionary willing to speak her mind and look good while doing it.
And as if having the black community behind her back wasn’t enough, she then later came out to the world as bisexual and fully gained the LGBT community’s support as well.
But then, suddenly, she disappeared. Media coverage of her stopped and she went under the radar.
But the thing is, she didn’t stop working. The great thing about Amandla Stenberg is that she’s a girl who works for the joy of what she does. She has several projects in the making, and shows up in others like Beyonce's Lemonade. All of it will keep people happy.
Like last year, she wrote, produced, directed, and edited a short film called Blue Girls Burn Fast about an orphan girl who was struggling with a cute boy in her class, a cute girl next door, and the feeling that she wants to run away from her foster home.
And while she’s spreading her wings behind the camera, she’s still working in front of it too.
Her next movie to come out is Everything, Everything, in which she plays an 18-year-old girl living with an illness that has kept her stuck indoors all her life. But when a new, and cute, boy discovers her, she finally finds the courage to explore the outside.
As if that wasn’t enough, she’s also working on making music and recently released a music video on Youtube two weeks ago. The video’s a little weird, but she’s an artist so we’ll let her have a weird side.
And lastly, yes there’s still more, she’s also getting herself, literally, into the comic book business.
Since 2015, Amandla Stenberg has been working with Sebestain A. Jones to create the Niobe series, which follows a half-elf (who looks like Stenberg) through perils in a Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings-esqe world.
Courtesy of Stranger Comics
Back then, the series was the first internationally distributed comic to have a black female author, artist, and central character.
Jones and Stenberg have been releasing volumes of the comic regularly since then, but are now getting ready to release the latest installment, Niobe: She is Death.
Amandla Stenberg is still a young, black, bisexual visionary. She is making art that represents both the black community and the LGBT community, and most of us are sleeping on it.
Wake up! And keep watch of Amandla Stenberg. Watch a young artist work.