I once called him during a break in my freshman year of university, to ask him to pick me up from our home, because I’d gotten into an argument with our mother about my sexuality. This was the first moment in cinema I had seen a black man reassuring a potentially gay, black male that his existence was worth taking pride in.įor years we retreated away from one another. Ultimately my brother and I not only struggled with the homophobia that was embedded in Jamaican culture, and with the larger culture’s media that failed to empathetically portray our realities - we also struggled simply to love and support each other. When my mother received the news I watched her cry on the basement floor, begging for God to change us. Everything that I’d been told about my future as a “good black kid” shattered when I was 15 years old, and came out to my mother months later my older brother would come out as well. As a child, I was considered gifted because of my love for books and conditioned to think that obedience equaled safety in America. With every viewing since then, I see both the glaring differences and similarities between my journey and Chiron’s. When I saw Moonlight as a gay, black man at the age of 22, I was shaken to realize that this was the first moment in cinema I had seen a black man reassuring a potentially gay, black male that his existence was not only valid, but also worth taking pride in.
Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.”
Juan responds, “At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you gone be. Chiron then asks Juan if Blue is his truer name. During an outing to the beach Juan recalls a woman in Cuba giving him the nickname, Blue. Young Chiron is dealing with the homophobic bullying of his peers, a mother battling drug addiction, and uncertainty about his sexuality, when Juan, a neighborhood drug dealer, decides to become his mentor. Even two years after its release, there is a scene in it that still reaches me. The 2016 film Moonlight is about Chiron - a black boy gradually becoming a man in America’s ghettos - coming to terms with his sexuality in three chapters. When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here.
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