( In a key moment in Amma Asante’s British heritage film Belle (2013), Chief Justice Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) asks his great-niece Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a wealthy multiracial woman born to a Black African slave mother and a white British naval officer father in eighteenth-century England, about the book she is reading. She re-plies that it is A Gentleman Named Thomas Day, which “speaks of a slave who agrees to marry an English lady; a voice for people, people like my mother, who do not have one.” When Lord Mansfield asks whether she finds herself in such writing, Dido replies: “I do not know that I find myself anywhere.” )

( My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who will carry me as their shame - as I have been required to carry my own mother. […] Since I wish to deny her no more than I wish to deny myself, you will pardon me for wanting a husband who feels ‘forgiveness’ of my bloodline is both unnecessary and without grace. )

Reposting a bunch of gifs and graphics from this post.

So happy littlemermaid and I are doing this watchparty before my Gugu/Belle/Dido icon expires!

I'd love to buy this book from amazon. :)
( My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame. )

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