Hush Puppy Love

Knowing that he's dying and needing to know that his girl will stand strong after he's gone, Hush Puppy's daddy (Dwight Henry) reminds her that she is tough enough. 
"Who da man?!" he asks his daughter. 
"I'm the man!"Hush Puppy yells back, like a prize fighter.

 She's just a child, and not a man at all. But we're not mad about that, are we? 
This week, Quvenzhane Wallis became the youngest Oscar nominee ever, for her heart-stealing role as Hush Puppy in "Beasts of the Southern Wild." She was 6 years old during the filming. 
I was weak for Quvenzhane the moment I saw her on the screen, scrounging around in her underwear and white rain boots, the cutest and smartest and strongest of all the wild things living on this sinking bayou island called The Bathtub. A face that a grandmother would want to wash, and then kiss all over, and a head of hair an aunt would want to put a comb to. Hush Puppy, a little girl sensing first and then seeing the only world she knows suddenly falling down. Her small world, the larger world, everything: shifting, drowning, drifting, failing, accelerating. Her small known world becomes suddenly big and intimidating, and not just out of her control but out of her Daddy's, too.

In the end, Hush Puppy stands down the big, beastly world, knowing that it may have its way, that things will come to pass, but that her mark on the universe is indestructible: "In a million years, when kids go to school, they're gonna know that once there was a Hushpuppy and she lived with her daddy in The Bathtub."     - ADM