BY SYLVIA BROWN AND THABIE SIBANDA

Lupita Nyong’o, the 39-year-old actress of Kenyan origin, winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Black Entertainment Television’s Best Actress Award, became literally overnight seven years ago the talk of the town. “This is the year of Lupita” became a refrain in the entertainment world back then. The Kenyan starlet, who was named People Magazine’s “Most Beautiful Person of the Year,” and appeared twice on the cover of Vogue, and more recently on the cover of the October 2019 issue of Vanity Fair, officially joined the cast of “Star Wars: Episode VII” on June 3, 2015, exactly a month after her stunning red carpet appearance (among many others) at the annual White House correspondents dinner alongside hundreds of Hollywood stars and the cream of the cream of Washington, with President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama in attendance.

That is not to mention her more recent role as Nakia in Black Panthers, a record-breaking cinematic smash with a $218 million box office take. During an appearance on a popular American tv show, The View, and speaking as a spokesperson of Africa as she often does, Lupita said Wakanda, the setting of the movie, is what Africa would be if it had never been colonized: “We come from a continent of great wealth, but a continent that has been assaulted and abused very often. What colonialism did was it rewrote our history and our narrative, and our global narrative is one of poverty and strife, and so the wealth of the continent is very seldom seen on such a global scale.”

Which takes us back to the memorable night when the Mexican-born African star who grew up in Kenya before rising to stardom in America, truly rose to stardom.