Born and raised in a small town in Massachusetts, New England, the award-winning, Nigerian-American actress, Uzoamaka Aduba is our woman crush today. Popularly known as the queer character, Suzanne “crazy eyes” on the Netflix series, Orange Is The New Black, Uzo has sculpted herself into a role model for young African girls.
Our first crush on the starlet, off-screen, stemmed from a video with The Improper Bostonian. In the video, Uzo could be seen addressing young girls on her experience growing up. It was a funny, yet an insightful story of her resolve to embrace her very traditional name after her mother wisely told her: “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky, and Michelangelo, and Dostoevsky, then they can learn to say Uzoamaka.” Oh! We love her mother too. Below are more reasons she’s our crush today.
Her shameless love for her roots
In the past, popular personalities have chosen to absolve themselves from every tie that connects them to their African roots, but not Uzo. With her culturally inclined lifestyle, one can say she’s more Nigerian than Nigerians.
Her unquestionable support for black women
It is a known fact that blacks have been marginalised and unfairly treated in the United States, thanks to the social cancer, colonialism and neo-colonialism, springboard from racism. Nevertheless, black women have had to experience one of the worst kinds of segregation – beauty. But recently, as Africans, we see the standard of beauty change and look a lot like us, this is what the actress celebrates.
She’s a natural hair enthusiast
While we cannot hold anyone against their decision to have chemically altered hair – neither is it less beautiful, it’s just a breath of fresh air to see a celebrity with hair like the rest of ours embrace the natural hair movement.