Like We Never Existed: Interview with Newcomer Sheyi Cole and Steve McQueen’s Alex Wheatle of the ‘Small Axe’ Anthology

“If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.”-An African Proverb The summer of 2020 spotlighted an existing fight in America during the uprisings over the senseless and unprovoked deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by the hands of police. As art imitates life, no one would be surprised at an increase in the entertainment industry revisiting these events and dictating others in popular television shows and movies. When it comes to on-screen evidence of racial divides, police brutality and Black folks doing whatever is needed to do to survive & thrive, art need not imitate a thing. No stranger to the telling of these stories, 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen’s latest work is an ode to Black resistance across the pond. Small Axe is an anthology series of five original films spanning a timeline from the late 1960s to the 1980s. These stories tell of real-life accounts from the West Indian community in London. For myself, and possibly others, Small Axe is a focused look at racism and discrimination against Black bodies in England. Black folks being terrorized is a global atrocity and direct effect of colonization that isn’t unique to the United States. The fourth film in the anthology is Alex Wheatle, the true story of award-winning author Alex Wheatle, and stars Sheyi Cole in his silver-screen debut. Alex Wheatle covers the award-winning author’s life from a young boy growing up in a mostly white institutional/foster care home to a young adult finding communi…