Eva on Diversity

When I’m walking between stations on the Tube, I’m always looking out for movie and film posters showing diverse casts. It’s become something of a reflex, I don’t often realise I’m doing it until an image makes me stop. In a sea of posters featuring predominantly male, white faces, a poster highlighting women or people of colour – or both! – will always catch my eye.

That's why I'm already excited about two films coming out in October: Queen of Katwe and A United Kingdom. Both films are directed by women of colour and based on true events. Queen of Katwe, about a Ugandan chess prodigy, is a film I will be writing more about over the next few months. As both a scholar of Uganda and a Ugandan myself, finding compelling, grounded depictions of Africans (particularly African women and girls) in mainstream media is rare and important.
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While Africa has long been essentialised as a continent of disease and death, my years of studying just one African country has shown me some of the many other stories that can – and should – be told. Stories of courage and ingenuity by ordinary and extraordinary people alike. This is what diversity means to me. It means welcoming new stories, encouraging people on the margins 

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