Amandla Stenberg is one of the brightest young voices in Hollywood and is now opening up about her self-discovery in a recent interview with Seventeen Magazine.
Stenberg, 19, revealed that after coming out as bisexual two years ago, she has found the strength to proclaim her sexual attraction to women.
“Gender and sexuality are so fluid—it’s okay to change your mind a million times and figure out what works for you,” Stenberg said.
She revealed all as the cover star for the magazine’s October/November issue. Stenberg is just one of many Black women in Hollywood who have publicly identified as queer, including Tessa Thompson and Janelle Monae.
“It’s okay to take your time… I’d been out as bisexual, and people have known I’m queer for a long time. I saw some comments that made me chuckle, like, ‘Girl, we been knew!’ But I wanted to make it very clear that I have romantic love for women.”
Stenberg credits “internalized homophobia” as the reason she was slow to accept her reality. She also said that within her sexual experiences, she felt safer with women than men. “It was the happiest I’d been in any sexual dynamic,” she said.
The “Hate U Give Actress” has been on the grind promoting the movie which drops on October 5, but she’s also found the time to maintain a romantic relationship with her girlfriend and fellow musician, Mikaela Straus, also known as King Princess.
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“I love that we have this umbrella term of queer, and so many things can exist underneath it, but I realized that part of my journey was hiding underneath that umbrella, because I was scared—on a personal and a public level—to confront what I was. It was easier for me to say ‘I’m bi’ or ‘I’m pan’ as I was figuring it out. But I came to a place where I felt really proud of my sexuality, and I decided I wanted to share that pride,” Stenberg said.
