Actress Lupita Nyongo’o has finally received her Daytime Emmy award, which she won for reading from her book, Sulwe.
She won the award for the Outstanding Limited Performance in a Children’s Program for her role as The Storyteller on Netflix’s Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices.
Lupita’s Sulwe won the award at the 48th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony.
The actress who was not present during the mostly virtual ceremony, which instead used a clip of her from the program as she read her children’s book Sulwe, finally got her award.
Lupita taking to her official social media handle on Wednesday 1st September 2021, shared photos of herself posing with the award, thanking her team and Netflix.
The educational series premiered on the streamer back in September, and Nyong’o was invited to read from Sulwe on Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices. Hosted on Netflix and produced by Tiffany Hadish, Bookmarks is a collection of twelve, five-minute episodes featuring prominent Black celebrities and artists reading children’s books by Black authors. By so doing, Bookmarks looks to “spark meaningful conversations about empathy, equality, justice, self-love and anti-racism.” Alongside Nyong’o, other readers include Misty Copeland, Jacquelien Woodson, Common and Marsai Martine.
What Is Sulwe?
In October 2019, Lupita Nyong’o published Sulwe: a gripping children’s book on colourism. By asking what it truly means to be beautiful, the book encourages children to cultivate self-love.
In an interview with Barnes & Noble, Nyong’o said one of the reasons she decided to write a children’s book was “to heal grown-up wounds. I wanted to give myself the book I never had… Children the world over face colorism from a very young age, but it is not often directly addressed. And so the character of Sulwe was born to tackle the issue head-on.”
Since then, the book has received considerable commendations. These including a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Award and a forthcoming Netflix adaptation of the book.