Paper Magazine

Lena Waithe And The New Black Renaissance

Triumphs aside, it doesn't mean Waithe hasn't had trials. Specific or not, sometimes characters just haven't resonated with an audience the way she might have liked. It's hard to have missed the Discourse™ around her film Queen & Slim. Written by Waithe and directed by Melina Matsoukas, the film generated some startling criticisms that seemed less than generous. Some read her heroine Queen as a shrew who the story insisted on humbling. Others took umbrage with the apparent mea culpa of the positive depiction of Black police officers. Many more fussed over the film's climactic scene in which a violent protest is intercut with the consummation of the couple's relationship. But Waithe says it's all part of the job now.