My relationship with my name is a serious one. I love my name. “Gabourey,” with its pretty little three-syllable melody and its French accent, has always sounded like a song to me. A flower. A perfume. A bridge. A chemical element found in the ground, in a cave, in Africa, at the birth of civilization. My name is special. It is my first gift from my father. Something he gave me.
Months after the premiere of Push at Sundance, and after Oprah and Tyler Perry joined our film, I finally got it: I was about to lose my name. At Sundance, people who saw the film really thought that Precious was my first name. Regular people, members of the media, and filmmakers alike were all surprised to find out that my name wasn’t actually Precious and that I was an actor. Really smart people! I was heartbroken when Lee called me to tell me that they had decided to change the name of the film from Push to Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. First, could the title be any longer? Second, I was sure that anyone who heard the title without knowing what the movie was about would assume it was a chick flick and wouldn’t be interested. Precious? For lack of a better word, it sounded too . . . precious. Was it the story about a cartoon puppy on a quest to find its favorite chew toy? A girl who falls in love and cries a bunch? That’s not interesting! Third, I knew that while this days-long title might be the official one the unofficial and most used title for the film, my first, would be Precious. I would now be synonymous with this word and this name forever. I’d be her name, her story. I figured that some people would understand I had a self and a name aside from Precious, but I knew that once they heard my African-ass name with its six syllables and accents, they’d prefer to go back to calling me Precious. Why? Because Americans are lazy. They’re also kind. Also condescending. They can’t pronounce my name, Gabourey, but don’t want to try in case they get it wrong and hurt my feelings, so they decide that my name is Gabby, something their lazy tongues can pronounce. I, as a person with a hard-to-pronounce name, should be understanding and chill about it. I should allow people to be comfortable calling me something other than my name. It’s the polite thing to do. Unfortunately for lazy people, I am impolite. I am an asshole, and my name is Gabourey Sidibe.
Dad named me Gabourey MaLingair Sidibe. I just found out that Gabourey means “the one with the beautiful cheeks.” Like, duh. Have you even SEEN my cheeks? All plump and round. You just want to bite them! My face ain’t half bad, either. MaLingair is actually two words that in Wolof mean “my queen.” All of Dad’s children have Senegalese names because all of his children are Senegalese. I am his second child and his first daughter. My name is a turendo, a word that in Wolof means namesake. I was named decades before my birth. Before Dad’s marriage to Mom and before he was even a grown man. My name is and has been Gabourey since his childhood; it’s the delivery of a promise Dad made to a woman who loved and helped to raise him. Gabouré.
I knew that Dad had an older sister from his father’s previous marriage to a woman who died during childbirth. His father was often gone, busy with politics and his other families. Much like Dad, my grandfather had several wives and families to attend to, just like the average Senegalese man. Dad was left to help his mother and watch over his younger siblings. I remember my grandparents very well as they died when I was in my early twenties, but I realized I knew very little about Gabouré.
“She’s ninety years old now!” Dad told me. “She uses a cane now. She asked me about you. She always wants to see you.”
“She’s your aunt or something, right?”
“Ahh, no. Not my aunt, but she took care of me like I was her child.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well . . . Maybe I shouldn’t say.”
Already this call was better than I had anticipated. Most things about Dad’s early life in Senegal he’d never shared with me. Maybe it’s because I was young or a girl. Or I wasn’t smart enough to ask aloud instead of wondering in silence who this man was.
“I shouldn’t say, but I was an abused child,” he continued. I listened quietly, the idea of Dad being a child at all—not so much the part about the abuse—blowing my mind.
“My father didn’t talk to us. He only talked about politics and we were children. My mother was very cold to me. She was a mean lady, so Gabouré took me in and cared for me.” I was now clearing my throat so that I wouldn’t sound like I was crying.
“Did you live with her?”
“No. I didn’t live with her. She lived in the neighborhood and she had kids and I would go to her house and she would feed me and take care of me and love me. She loved me like my mother didn’t. She was so kind to me and I said to her, ‘If I have a daughter, I will name her after you.’ She was so happy to hear that. Her sons, her family, everyone was so happy to hear that I wanted to name you after her, and when I grew up, I kept my promise. So! You are my daughter, Gabourey, after that lady I loved and who loved me so much. She took care of me when my own mother didn’t like me. I see her when I go back and she always asks about you.”
Dad is the first man I fell in love with and the first man I fell out of love with. Before I was done with him, he was my hero. He knew a little bit about almost everything. He spoke French and he drank tea. Somehow, while hardly ever smiling or laughing, he introduced me to comedy. I would watch The Benny Hill Show with him and see what made him and other people like him laugh. People on the other side of the world in Africa and Europe. People who weren’t like Mom and Ahmed and me. We were new people, but Africans were the first people, according to Dad. The rest of the world was young by comparison. America especially. Everything Dad did seemed fancy and correct.