What Grounded in the Stars Revealed About Us
By D. Gilmore
I came to write about art.
But I stayed to witness a war.
Not a war of bullets—but of ideas. Not waged with fists—but with feelings. And the battlefield? A 12-foot statue. A Black woman in bronze. Her hands on her hips. Her back straight. Her gaze fixed. Unapologetic.
Her name is not known. Her figure is not famous.
And that is exactly why people can’t stop talking about her.
When Grounded in the Stars landed in Times Square, it cracked open a cultural fault line. TikTok lit up like a confession booth. Critics screamed, “Why her?” Defenders whispered, “That’s me.” The statue wasn’t controversial. We are.
“She looks like my auntie at the laundromat.”
“She’s too big.”
“She looks mad.”
“She looks like somebody nobody thought was worth sculpting.”
British sculptor Thomas J. Price didn’t sculpt a woman. He sculpted a mirror. And millions didn’t like what they saw.
Black men called her “ghetto.”
White platforms mocked her “angry stance.”
But Black women—lined up for photos, mimicked her pose, and said: “That’s me.”
This wasn’t about art. It was about value.
About who gets to be seen without needing to be perfect.
About how the everyday Black woman—the one holding families together, taking up space without permission—could suddenly be cast in bronze, in the most visible place in the world.
“Malcolm X said it in ‘62: the most disrespected person in America is the Black woman.”
2024 proved that statement still holds weight—12 feet of it.
What Price created wasn’t a statue. It was a disruption. A diagnostic. A conversation starter that asked: Why do we only celebrate Black women when they’re styled, slim, and silent?
From London to Los Angeles, from Fox News to street preachers, everyone had something to say. But the most powerful words came from the women who saw themselves and finally felt seen.
“Not Beyoncé. Not Oprah. Just me.”
“She’s not running. She’s not broken. She’s just there.”
Let her be. Let her stand. Let us rise with her.
Read the book, commentary, and cultural reflection now. (https://shop.beacons.ai/gorelentless/65ab0a48-35c7-4d95-a698-c56bd8adbdd0)
