“Orange Is The New Black” star Uzo Aduba Glamour Magazine’s The Girl Project shared that the ignorance of others is no excuse to disown your identity or culture.
At the event Aduba revealed that she wasn’t a fan of her name “Uzoamaka” and at one point wanted to abandon it altogether until her Nigerian mother advised her that uniqueness is nothing to be ashamed of:
“I came home from school one day as my mom was cooking in the kitchen, as she was wont to do, the mother of five children. And I said to her, ‘Mommy, can I ask you a question? Can you call me Zooey?’ And she stopped and gave that mother look that only mothers have, and said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because no one can say Uzoamaka.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, then they can learn to say Uzoamaka.’”
Watch her narrate the story below;
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