Young Black Girls Are Going to Rule the Screen in 2018

Between ‘A Wrinkle in Time,’ ‘Grown-ish,’ ‘The Hate U Give,’ and more, 2018 marks a welcome resurgence of leading roles for black teen girls.

When I was around 6 years old or so, my mom made it a point to buy me a black girl doll. She took to me to the toy store and feverishly scanned the endless rows of white girl dolls until she happened upon the one brown-faced doll that I could call my own. She yanked it off the shelf immediately before another mother also seeking a toy that looked even remotely like her impressionable daughter snatched it up. That’s how it is when it comes to young black and brown girls and the desire to see themselves reflected, even in the face of a plastic doll—it’s desperate, disappointing, and too often futile.

That same yearning for representation carries over to the screen, where this year, for the first time in a long while, we’ll see a plethora of black girl characters leading major films and TV series. This resurgence of young black and brown leading ladies, a throwback to the days of TGIF on ABC, will find these actresses at the center of a movement spurred in part by social media, where the distance between audience demand and Hollywood has become far easier to bridge. They’ll be discussed and at the very least supported in a way they hadn’t been before—not only for their performances but their social impact in today’s world.

Just last year, the inspiring documentary Step spotlighted young girls struggling to navigate Black Lives Matter and their college dreams. And in March, young black and brown bookworms will witness A Wrinkle in Time, Ava DuVernay’s hungrily anticipated big-screen adaptation of Madeleine L’Engel’s young adult sci-fi novel. Its preview images alone have whet the appetites of so many young audiences. They boast a narrative that has a 14-year-old black female heroine (Storm Reid) who travels through space and time! She’s not the token black girl. She’s not the black best friend. And she doesn’t represent three of the most popular Hollywood tropes when it comes …

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