Here For It: Oprah, 'The Chi' and the Power of a Protest Memoir

Listen, and I Mean, Really Listen Y'all: Oprah is An Orator, Not Your Next President

Oprah Winfrey gave a really good, pitch-perfect, beautifully cadenced speech at the 2018 Golden Globes last week. You might have seen it. The speech doubled-down on what we already know: Oprah is a brilliant orator. That is what she does and has always done throughout her career in film and television, and that is why she was honored with the prestigious Cecil B. Demille Award. Her speech did what all really good speeches do — turn you inside out, explode your heart, heighten your sense of purpose, and make you feel like you're in a movie when it's actually real life and you're just so grateful for both the feeling and the reality. You know what Presidents of the United States don't do? Any of those things (unless it's President Barack Obama, but whatever).

People jumped right quick to insist Oprah should run for president, though, and I get it, the bar for what it takes to be the leader of the free world has, shall we say, shifted. But listen, Oprah is a kajillionaire. She lives her best life, every day. She CREATED the term "best life" — why would she give that up to sit in an office and make policies and legislation, because despite what we're seeing with our current president, that is actually the job. Anyway, listen to Oprah's Golden Globe's speech on loop if you need to, because it's a galvanizing and critically important call to action for everyone in this #MeToo moment. But then let's go ahead and let Oprah do Oprah. 

Read: "When They Call You A Terrorist" by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele 

Most people are familiar with the Black Lives Matter movement, and some are even aware that it was founded by three young, queer black women — Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garzia and Opal Tometi. But one thing that is often overlooked, or perhaps just misunderstood, is that activists, people who make movements, commit to acts of protest, are also very human. They are not all driven by anger, they do not bleed boiling blood. And that's what comes through above all else in Khan-Cullors memoir, "When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir," which she co-wrote with award-winning author and journalist Asha Bandele. 

The book is written in quiet, moving prose. Khan-Cullors writes about her big, disparate, complicated family — both traditional and intentional — her love for them, each member integral to her development as a young, black, queer woman, a thinker, a leader, and an activist. She writes about love and loss, relationships and identity, politics and policies. "When They Call You a Terrorist," which includes an introduction by iconic activist Angela Davis, is ultimately the memoir of a bold and brilliant black life that matters because Khan-Cullors and her millennial tribe of self-invented activists insisted that it be so. 

Watch: "The Chi" on Showtime

I gotta be honest, I was going to watch "The Chi" no matter what. I love the show's creator, Lena Waithe — who she is, how she thinks, what she represents, her skill and grace and style. And I was prepared to maybe even pretend to like it if I didn't (although I am exceedingly bad at pretending to feel a way I don't actually feel — see: Everything I've ever written and said ever). But "The Chi" is objectively magnificent. It's a smart, compelling, kaleidoscopic storyline, with a hugely talented ensemble cast that includes Jason Mitchell, most recently of "Mudbound," and Sonia Sohn from "The Wire." 

It's also visually stunning to look at, and lovingly nuanced. It's fluid in almost every way — gender, character, language, the set and scenery. The city it honors, Chicago, known as "The Chi" to its natives, is also a living, breathing thing in the show, as the sky's chest heaves in and out, buildings stand still and tall and watch the movement below and around them. 

Coogie (Jahking Guillory), the bike-riding, free-spirited black teenager who opens the first episode, has got wild, flowing hair, and wears a turquoise T-shirt, yellow sneakers with pink socks. If the whole show was this kid riding his bike around Chicago neighborhoods, reading the police, and negotiating the cost of beef jerky with a bodega owner, that would be enough. But it's so much bigger than one character, or one plot. It's one loving portrait of a city often associated only with gang violence and poverty. "The Chi" has an unraveling depth to it, and I can't wait to see where it takes us throughout its debut season.