Age: 48
female
Danai Jekesai Gurira (/dəˈnaɪ ɡʊˈrɪərə/; born February 14, 1978) is a Zimbabwean-American actress, playwright, and activist. She is best known for her starring roles as Michonne on the AMC horror drama series The Walking Dead (2012–2020, 2022) and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (2024), and as Okoye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero films, including Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). Gurira is the writer of the Broadway play Eclipsed, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. Gurira received two nominations for The People's Choice Awards in 2019 and 2020 for her role on The Walking Dead, and she was also nominated for a 2024 Black Reel Television award for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series for her work on The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. Description above from the Wikipedia article Danai Gurira, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them. Moore’s intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. “If she was not a woman,” the wind says of Gbessa, “she would be king.” In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States.
