Fan mail: what Wakanda means to Zimerican me

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Throughout this essay, I draw on my ethnic and linguistic heritage as a Shona speaker from the Zezuru community and a member of the Tembo Mazvimbakupa clan. But I want to acknowledge that this is a very small slice of Zimbabwean identity, which encompasses more than a dozen ethnic and linguistic groups too often rarely acknowledged. My references to my own identity should not be read in any way as an endorsement of the Shona-centric power structures of our national politics, nor a denial of the violence that communities in Matabeleland and the Midlands, in particular, have suffered in the past four decades.

² Danai Gurira, “‘Black Panther’ Star Danai Gurira on Embracing Her Zimbabwean Name: ‘I Realized I Didn’t Want to Fit In’.” Glamour, February 13, 2018.