Lisa Bonet

This weekend is Lisa Bonet’s birthday, just the perfect opportunity to highlight her for a Famous Friday!  Lisa Michelle Bonet was born on November 16, 1967, to a white mother and an African-American father.  Bonet is an American Actress.  She was born with performing arts in her blood.  Her father Allen Bonet, was an opera singer while her mother, Alerene Litman was a music teacher.  Bonet’s first appearance was in the seventh episode of a show called St. Elsewhere as a character named Clara.  However, she really got her breakthrough with The Cosby Show.  Here she starred as the character Denise Huxtable from 1984 to 1992.  Lisa Bonet also had many other roles in television and films.

Lisa Bonet now has a multiracial family of her own!  Her daughter, Zoë Kravitz with whom she had with her ex-husband Lenny Kravitz, is both white and black.  Bonet also has two other children with actor Jason Mamoa who identifies as Native Hawaiian and Polynesian.  Together they have their daughter, Lola Iolani Momoa, and their son Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa.

While although Lisa Bonet has a great multiracial family of her own, she still remembers the hardships of growing up biracial.  In an interview with Porter Edit, she said, “The world wasn’t ready for what I represented—the merging of these two races.  I didn’t always feel welcome- in my mom’s family, in my school.  So I sheltered myself by always withholding a bit, because I didn’t always feel safe.”  I feel what Bonet is saying in this quotation.  I can sometimes feel like not many of my friends or classmates can relate to me because I am multiracial.  I don’t know many multiracial people in my school and I can feel isolated in that way.  I also don’t think many people at my school really know much about the multiracial community, which is something I want to change.  I remember talking to my friend about Project RACE and how we advocate for multiracial people.  But the way she answered made me realize, that she didn’t know what I was talking about!  When Lisa Bonet talks about how “the world wasn’t ready for what she represented…”  I relate to that in the sense that I feel like my community doesn’t know much or talk much about the multiracial population and so my family and I coming into their community may have been different from what they’re used to.  However, I like that.  Everyone needs a change, and if my family is that for the people in my community, I am honored!

 

Madelyn Rempel

Project RACE Kids President

 

Sources: https://toofab.com/photos/ad6f442f-d078-45e2-98b0-7ff450213790/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6452811/Zoe-Kravitz-30-mom-Lisa-Bonet-51-look-like-twins-selfie-celebrates-birthday.html