The internet was good this week! Highlights: Remembering Cicely Tyson, Black Lives Matter nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, breaking up with white supremacy, DaniLeigh’s racial opportunism, Black veganism, the Arab Spring, trading GameStop, why we can’t comprehend the climate crisis, Miley Cyrus’s Tiny Desk Concert, and an oral history of The Emperor’s New Groove.
1. New York Times: Cicely Tyson, an Actress Who Shattered Stereotypes, Dies at 96
Actor Cicely Tyson died on Thursday. She was 96. I think the first memory I have of Tyson in a movie was Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. It is not the role she was most known for, but I would soon learn those. Tyson performed in more than 100 roles in film, TV, and stage, “including some that had traditionally been given only to white actors. She won three Emmys and many awards from civil rights and women’s groups, and at 88 became the oldest person to win a Tony, for her 2013 Broadway role in a revival of Horton Foote’s ‘The Trip to Bountiful.’”
Her career and impact were extensive, as this obituary makes clear, but I’m interested to read the pieces on her that will be published in a week or month, the writing that is more meditative. I can’t stop thinking about when Toni Morrison died—and the pieces that captured her legend and her myth took time after she died.