Currently mired in controversy over the Emily Pankhurst quoting "I'd rather be a rebel than a slave" t-shirt she donned to promote Suffragette - see Roe McDermott's damning opinion piece elsewhere on hotpress.com - Meryl Streep is the narrator of Shout Gladi Gladi, a documentary about women's health in Africa which hits US screens this weekend.
According to the production company behind it, the film "celebrates the extraordinary people who rescue African women and girls from obstetric fistula, a medical condition that can turn them into reviled outcasts. Directed by Adam Friedman and Iain Kennedy, and filmed in Malawi and Sierra Leone, it spotlights the quest of Ann Gloag, the indefatigable philanthropist and former nurse who drives the movement to save these vulnerable women, and presents the patients as they tell stirring tales of their struggles and triumphs."
Streep had previously joined New York's Fordham University in promoting education for refugee children, many of them arriving in the US from Africa.
Streep and her Suffragette co-stars Carey Mulligan, Romola Garai and Anne-Marie Duff have yet to respond to the "racial insensitivity" charges that have sent social media into overdrive today. Says civil rights activist and We The Protesters member DeRay McKesson: "Meryl Streep has to know better. And if not, her publicist should have."
The actress was also widely criticised last week after saying that she considered herself "a humanist" rather than a feminist.
While many are furious about Streep's actions, others point to the long history of social activism, as well as the acting achievements, that earned her a Presidential Medal of Freedom last year.
"They've made extraordinary contributions to our country and the world," the White House said of her and her fellow 2014 recipients Tom Brokaw, Stephen Sondheim, Marlo Thomas and Stevie Wonder.
Expect this one to run and run...