The Next Penelope: Race to Odysseus

“The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not,” actress Lupita Nyong’o has said in response to the vitriolic and often racist backlash she’s received from Elon Musk and some corners of social media over her casting as Helen of Troy in director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. (It was recently revealed that Nyong’o also plays Helen’s sister Clytemnestra in the epic.)Homer’s epics The Iliad and The Odyssey depict Helen as the most beautiful woman in the world whose face launched a thousand ships and sparked the Trojan War. But as Nyong’o told Elle Magazine (via THR), “You can’t perfo