I have been a fan of this woman’s work since the very beginning. I first fell in love with Beverly Jenkin’s historic fiction because so few people take the time to research and write historic fiction featuring complex and interesting African American protagonists.  I even got my Mama, Aunties and cousins into Ms. Bev’s world even though some of them tended to skip past the “hoppin’ in the bed” parts. 😏 Now she has several more modern day novels in addition to the historic fiction and I love them all!

For YEARS this fan base has been hungry for a BJ movie to bring the characters we’ve grown to love for decades to screen life and now that dream is close to becoming a reality. But here’s the thing, we can’t and shouldn’t have to do this alone and we need everyone’s help.

This campaign is about more than raising the money to make a book into a movie. This is a chance to show black women that you love them. These characters that Ms. Bev has created for us show us a world where strong, intelligent women can work hard and succeed in life and love and for many of us this is an important ember of hope for these things to manifest in our own lives because main stream media does not afford us many of these images.

Black women wear this mantle of being strong and self sufficient (and no doubt, we are) but we pour a lot of ourselves out in the pursuit of lifting up others to make their dreams become a reality. We also have trouble asking for help sometimes because after giving so much it can be heartbreaking to have others choose not to reciprocate towards you. 

This is also about learning how to support indie filmmaking. Stories like this one tend to get passed over by big production houses because they don’t think that they have crossover appeal. The sad part is that these stories DO have cross over appeal in addition to tremendous potential to help bridge some of the cultural divides that continue to plague America because they don’t SEE the range of black culture that truly exists through the media they consume on a daily basis.

So, if there is a black woman in your life, someone who has or continues to pour into you, do this for her, please. She needs to see others investing in positive representations of black women. She needs to see that YOU care. No amount is insignificant and every dollar will be appreciated. And yes, I have most certainly contributed to this worthy cause myself.

If you’re still on the fence because you aren’t sure about using GoFundMe I can tell you that I have donated to many causes using this tool and never had a problem.  So, please, take a minute to give to this worthy cause.

Donate to support the movie Deadly Sexy at https://www.gofundme.com/ds-themovie.

~ Marta C. Youngblood