Youth Guyana – Girls that rock, featuring Letitia Wright

Feb 10, 2019 Countryman, Features / Columnists

---

By Dennis Nichols

Our country’s reputation as a cultural haven of hospitality and potential wealth has taken serious hits over the years from local and foreign critics, even as sour political leaders continue to be mired in disunity, and even as our day of ‘Oil reckoning’ draws close.
We need a break from the gross sentiments that malign our nation and people. We need to see a more balanced and less benighted image of national ethos. And I for one will continue to embrace and lift up that which is still good, and those among us who see even better on the horizon.
Though acknowledging the injurious status quo in Guyana (and several regions of the world) I won’t despair of a turnaround, especially in our social and economic life. There are many small but hopeful rays of light bursting through the dark pall that seems to be descending over our land. I see them, not in extravagant splendour, but rather, in flashing glimmers that defect the oracles of darkness and gloom. They are Youth Guyana.
By youth I mean children and young adults. They are taking on the world in the spheres of social, political, economic, and cultural awareness and action. Many are Guyanese either native born, or whose parents/ancestors originated here. Since the 2016 vote-like-a-boss slogan, there has been a perceptible shift, locally, in such awareness, supplemented by a more established and more obvious cultural cognizance.
Outside of Guyana, young people, many of them children, are making or have made a difference globally; like Pakistani female rights activist, Malala Yousafzai, who, as a teenager, was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman but survived to become the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and Ryan White, the 1980s poster child for AIDS, who was victimized because he became infected with HIV from contaminated blood, but persevered to became a national spokesman for AIDS education/research.
I said there are also young Guyanese, by birth or descent, who are making waves locally, and abroad. How big a splash is arguable; I can only write from observation and limited knowledge. Today I will briefly feature four young women who, in my estimation, are making their mark on Guyana and the world. (Later for the boys)
The first is a young lady whom I came across by chance one day on Facebook. Her name is Renata Burnette, and she is a spoken-word poet. I don’t get all the nuances of her ‘girl-vibes’ when she recites her stuff, but I do get the underlying message, and the images, in at least two of them. In ‘My mask and I’ she expounds on the intimacy, and the fakery, of the masks people wear to hide their real selves from the world, using her own fears, insecurities, and faith as reflection of a wider societal phenomenon.
In another, ‘Dear Mr. President’ Burnette straightforwardly throws out to H.E. David Granger, the issue of joblessness among youths, many of whom would’ve been crucial to handing the APNU-AFC a slim victory in the 2015 poll.
Again she uses her own experiences to give voice to disillusioned young men and women, many of whom struggled post-election after the government gave itself a hefty salary increase shortly after gaining power, and then appeared to sideline them .In both pieces, there is a rawness to her words; a willingness to be vulnerable, and a whimsical cadence to an honest voice. I have heard several snatches of spoken-word poetry by artistes in the United States and Europe, and Renata Burnette’s rootsy elocution compares very favourably. Watch out for her.
Next are two young girls, of Guyanese descent, but born in the United States and Trinidad respectively, who have become published authors at a very young age, and are showing real promise of literary greatness. The first is Anaya Lee Willabus born in New York to Guyanese parents, who is said to have become at nine, the youngest published female author in the US for her Guyanese-flavoured book ‘The Day Mohan found His Confidence’.
She has since written two other books. Now 11, Anaya has become a Brooklyn Community Services (BCS) One Brooklyn Community Ambassador. She has been featured in several American newspapers and has appeared on radio and television talk shows. She has met Polish Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa and Guyana’s First Lady, Sandra Granger, and talks with elementary schoolchildren about her books. To promote reading and writing, she established the Stalwarts Youth Corporation which focuses on literary/academic improvement.
The other young author is Aurelia Sue-Ann, a Sixth Grade student of Mae’s Primary School who, according to a Stabroek News article last October, penned her first book of poetry entitled ‘A Little Poet’s World’ at age 10.The book was launched at her school where her class teacher commented on Aurelia’s vocabulary command and her love of reading. She has read books based on Greek mythology and Shakespeare among others, starting at four years old, and began writing poetry at five, according to her mother Susan Ibrahim.
Finally, there’s a young lady who was born in Guyana 25 years ago but moved with her family to the U.K. at age seven. A year ago, Letitia Michelle Wright exploded onto the global scene, and screen, in a movie role that helped earn the blockbuster film Black Panther a $1.3 billion box office draw, making it the highest-grossing superhero film ever. In fact Wright, who repeatedly references her Guyanese heritage, has become the highest-grossing box office star of 2018 with her four movies raking in a mind-boggling $1.5 billion.
Her role as Shuri, the teenage sister of the film’s title character, the king of fictional Wakanda, has people talking. That’s putting it mildly. Shuri is described as having ‘genius level intellect’ and is the mastermind behind her country’s most astonishing technological innovations. Letitia’s obvious intelligence, charisma, and beauty seem tailor-made for the part. As such, she is on par with the other actors including big names like Angela Basset, Forrest Whittaker, and Lupita Nyong’o. A Spokesman review called her acting ‘vibrant, funny, and cool’ and ‘the scene-stealer of the movie’.
Speaking to her ‘Guyaneseness’ Letitia said, “It makes me feel really, really proud that as a young Guyanese woman, you know, people are being inspired, and just for them to also know that I rep Guyana wherever I go, and … for any one back home that may say ‘I always wanted to be an actor … just to know that they can do it too … it’s an honour; it’s an honour, to do that for my country.” She also brings her faith into the picture, speaking of a bout of crippling depression in 2015 during which she turned to God, the one, she revealed, who actually told her she would get the Black Panther role.
Well, there you have it – Guyana’s youth rising, hopefully to help blunt the harsh criticism of backwardness that has been leveled against us and our touted motto of ‘One People’. I suspect there are hundreds of youths right here in our country that have the potential to do what Letitia Wright, Aurelia Sue-Ann, Anaya Willabus, and Renata Burnette are doing. To this article, and to them, I add the hashtag #Guyanesegirlsreallydorock!

---

---