“It’s been super,” Ebby Ihionu, shop owner of Elegance African Fashions, says. “Usually during winter, the business is slow, but it has been like up, up, up. You know, people come every day.”
Ihionu is originally from Nigeria and has run this business out of the basement of her home for 11 years. And for the first time, she ran out of some items. “I ran out of dashikis. I ran out. I had to go, and you know, start making more,” she explains.
The colorful printed dress shirts usually sell in the summer. And Ihionu isn’t slowing down. She’s already booked up with orders for custom-made clothes for the next two months. It’s all because of the bump from “Black Panther.
Diane Basemera from Uganda runs an online marketplace called Amooti, where African artisans sell their goods. Basemera, 30, started her business two years ago with the goal of being an “Amazon” for African products. Sales on her website have tripled since the movie came out. One artisan on her site even created a line of hoodies inspired by “Black Panther” for spring.
Some fashion experts already predict the film will give African designs even more influence in the fashion industry.
“This is a long-term trend,” says Caroline Daniels, who runs the fashion entrepreneurial initiative at Babson College. “The number of people that are becoming fashion consumers is growing, is more diverse. They want more choice, and they want clothing that expresses individuality as well as diversity.”
I work in a public library and there are times a book comes through circulation that is so awesome I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
Last week I came across this lovely children’s picture book called Why Johnny Doesn’t Flap: NT is OK! by Clay Morton, Gail Morton, and illustrated by Alex Merry. (Pardon the library barcode covering part of the title here.)
[Pictures of the front and back covers of the picture book. The back cover summary says: “My friend Johnny is different from me. We have fun together, but sometimes he acts pretty strangely. He is never exactly on time, he can;t seem to strict to a routine, he stares right into your eyes, and he often says puzzling things. Johnny is neurotypical. I like Johnny and I think being NT is OK.”]
The fact that I was seeing the term “NT” on the cover of a children’s book was enough to pique my interest. Upon further inspection, I discovered that the book is really quite lovely!
[Two page spread reads: “We have a lot of fun together, but sometimes he acts pretty strangely. Mom says it is because he is NT, or neurotypical. He doesn’t have autism, so his brain works differently from mine, but that’s OK.”]
It flips the typical “little Timmy has a special friend” narrative on its head. Instead, the narrator is an autistic boy who has an NT friend who he sometimes struggles to understand.
[Two page spread reads: It can be pretty interesting being friends with a kid who is NT. He has a lot of quirks that can be very frustrating until you get used to them. Mom says that everyone’s brain is different and different isn’t always wrong.”]
The book uses simple terms to describe a perspective not usually seen in any literature, let alone lit intended for children.
[Two page spread reads: “When something exciting happens, Johnny doesn’t respond like you would expect. He doesn’t flap his arms or jump up and down. He just moves the sides of his mouth up and slightly widens his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t know much about how to express emotions.”]
I think ultimately this flipping of the narrative is more effective in getting the message across that kids with autism are just like everyone else but with unique needs.
[Two page spread reads: “Johnny never has a meltdown when disasters happen, like a fire drill or art class being canceled. He is afraid of what people might think. It seems like he is bottling his feelings up, but he just has his own way of dealing with things, and that’s OK.”]
And this book is something autistic kids don’t usually have– it’s a book from their perspective! And it’s a non-offensive, matter-of-fact perspective, which is all the rarer.
[Two pages spread reads: “When he talks to you, Johnny looks directly into your eyes, which can make you pretty uncomfortable. He doesn’t mean any harm, though. That’s just the way he is, and that’s OK.”]
It talks about things that autistic people experience and can relate to.
[Page reads: “I like Johnny. I think that being NT is OK.”]
How awesome is that?
A book like this would have been so beneficial to me as a kid to help me not feel alien. If you want autistic people to relate to others in fiction, we need stories from our point of view too.
I NEED THIS BOOK
I love that it flips the narrative, that’s so clever.
Just passing on the message, Starting from Scratch is an ownvoices trans mlm book that’s free on Amazon for TDOV until April 1st! The author has another book with a trans mlm character coming up on April 20th, check out Second Chance while you’re at it. 🙂
If you’ve been following our release notes, you know that we have been working towards full HTTPS support on the Archive for a while now. Today, we’re happy to announce that beginning on October 4th, all connections to the Archive will use HTTPS by default.
ICYMI: We had to, quite literally, turn HTTPS off and on again a few times over the past several months as we fiddled with server settings to get us through times of peak traffic. With new frontend servers in place and whirring happily away, HTTPS is now officially the standard for connecting to the AO3! If this doesn’t work for you, we still provide HTTP access through insecure.archiveofourown.org. 👍
holy shit i just learned about the “proxy strike” tactic in france in which radicals blockade or occupy a workplace, allowing workers to strike without losing their wages. that’s brilliant, wow
How does that work, exactly?
if you and your coworkers say “we’re striking” and occupy your workplace, your boss won’t pay you, but if your friends and your coworkers’ friends occupy it for you, you say “sorry boss shit’s occupied” and you still get paid because you’re not the ones striking
So to reiterate, just to nip it in the bud before people start freaking out about this:
The movie coming to Netflix in February is NOT “Netflix Fullmetal Alchemist”. It’s the 2017 Japanese FMA live action movie, made lovingly in Japan by dedicated fans of the series, with input from Hiromu Arakawa. Netflix may have obtained the rights to license it in the U.S., but they did not make the movie itself. It’s the same movie we’ve been hearing about since early 2016.
Netflix often buys the licensing rights to foreign shows, and then markets them as “Netflix originals”, but contrary to what it implies, that doesn’t always mean they were made by Netflix. Rest assured that this is not Death Note. I actually saw the FMA live action at its New York premiere back in November, and I can tell you that although the plot is different from anything we’ve seen before (think of it as an AU), it’s a fantastic Japanese movie that stays true to the spirit of FMA, with a great cast as well. So don’t miss it!
Ever wonder how big wolves are and why running from them is a really bad idea?
This had me so fucked up the first time I worked at the zoo. Because honestly they just look like big German-Huskies when they’re not wild. They look like big puppies. And then… they get close to you… And it’s suddenly kinda fucking terrifying. Like “oh this is the animal that used to scare people shitless.” “This is the animal that used to run through nightmares and poems so much.” And you suddenly fucking get it. As cool as these animals are far away, as important as the animals are in their natural environment, as much as we need them to survive… they’re still pretty fucking terrifying
can you believe these things became our friends
And then people domesticated them and now sleep with them in their beds.
We’re not a species meant to last
I’d actually argue the opposite!
We took these super efficient killing machines and befriended them and now they love and protect us as much as we (ideally) love and protect them
Cats basically domesticated themselves so that they could share in our food, medical care, and affection
In urban spaces, prey species know that there’s a higher likelihood that humans will help you if you’re stuck or injured than them killing or maiming you
It’s just, over time we see trends of our species overcoming environmental pressures that would and do lead to extinction in other species by sharing and forming close bonds with other sentient organisms and just kinda… aggressively community-bonding our way out of it?
For a long time there’s been this pervading idea that we, as a species, are just innately violent and terrible and “sinful” and it’s been that violence that let us survive (see the hunting hypothesis of human evolution). But that’s not what we see
We are, at our core, a species that looks into the face of something other, and thinks “I wonder if they want to be friends?” so long as the individual isn’t actively trying to kill us. Sure, tons of people do awful things every day, but for every terrible act or thought on this Earth, there are a dozen acts of kindness that people do casually for complete strangers
So yeah. We looked at these massive fluffy monsters with the sharp claws and crushing jaws rooting in our garbage just beyond the campfire and thought, the way no other species before or after us has done to the same extent; “They look friend-shaped!”
And they were. And that is how we got to be the dominant species on this planet
My Christmas tree! Every year I do a themed tree, and this year’s was fun to create! I made the rocket out of shiny poster board, the ornaments I got from the thrift store and repainted with glittery tempura paints to look like planets. The “exhaust” was created using some battery powered LED lights I already had, with polyester pillow fluff that also came from the thrift store. Total cost was about $3. I hope you all are having a lovely holiday season!
SliceOSunshine 