MOVIES
How Zola made space for Black sex workers’ tales
O
by Radheyan Simonpillai
ne October evening in 2015, A’Ziah Wells King, a.k.a. Zola, flexed her Twitter fingers and wrote something revolutionary. Zola’s words—“we vibing over our hoeism”—rang out like a mantra for sex workers who were finally finding online spaces to tell their stories. In the crazy viral Twitter thread, which is now a movie, Zola recounted how she met a white exotic dancer named “Jess” at Hooters in Detroit who lured her on a wild trip through Florida involving a pimp, a stooge, several johns, a lot of stupidity, and very real danger, with abductions and shotguns. (Jess has challenged aspects of the tale.) What made #TheStory resonate weren’t the hair-raising events but the way they were told. Zola’s voice cut through the murk with humour and shaped the narrative with her authenticity, attitude, observation, and insight. According to Ellie Ade Kur from Maggie’s Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, every Black exotic dancer remembers when they read the thread for the first time. “It spoke to so many workplace dynamics that a lot of us were used to,” says Ade Kur, who was a dancer at the time that #TheStory dropped on Twitter. “It was so
Black sex worker A’Ziah Wells King (right), a.k.a. Zola, put out a 148-tweet Twitter thread in 2015 that ncluded a lively tale about a woman named Jess (left), whom she met in a Detroit Hooters.
exciting because it was a narrative told from the perspective of another Black sex worker. That’s what made it so relatable.” “I like to find people who relate to me,” Zola says, speaking to the Straight over the phone from Los Angeles. She says she recognizes the sense of community her thread
forged. She felt the connection with Black women, Black sex workers, and even the LGBT community, which she identifies with as someone who is bisexual. “I found all of them in one space. I got to really get my whole sense of community in one space and really run with it.”
Zola tells the Straight about how much has changed for her and for sex workers since the world was introduced to her raw and candid storytelling in the historic thread. The movie version of those tweets, Zola, drops June 30 wherever theatres are open. In it, director Janicza Bravo’s sticks dutifully to Zola’s tone and plot, even re-creating those moments the author admits were exaggerations. The filmmaker recognizes that Zola’s voice is why we will be watching. The way people receive Zola’s storytelling has been eye-opening. “Drama, humor, action, suspense, character development,” filmmaker Ava DuVernay wrote on Twitter. “There’s so much untapped talent in the hood.” Zola, though, is quick to point out that she’s not from the hood. She grew up in the suburbs. Her mom’s a paralegal. On more than one occasion, Zola had to correct observers on social media who confused her Blackness for being ghetto and automatically assumed that her choice of occupation made her a victim of circumstance. She went viral. The stereotypes and easy assumptions she subverts showed up in the replies. Zola is a hilarious and intuitive writer, see next page
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JULY 1 – 8 / 2021
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