This special episode of the Oprah podcast is presented by Audible. So, I'm wondering what does it mean when all of you as writers you hit the bestsellers list?
I'm really, really grateful that readers have embraced my work and that they will follow me anywhere.
The opportunity to be a writer is a gift.
Oh, yeah. I am living in the whipped cream of my life.
Oh, absolutely. And yeah, I'm going to take that phrase and may or may not give it to you.
I've been saying I've been living my life like it's golden, but I like I'm living in the whipped cream of it.
I love it.
Hi everyone. This is an exciting day on the Oprah podcast because we're celebrating a milestone that's so near and dear to my heart. It is the 30th anniversary of Oprah's book club. Now when I was a young girl, books were a lifeline for me and I mean that in a very real sense. They were my friends. They allowed me to feel that I was not alone and also opened the window for me to dream about a life that was beyond my grandmother's front porch.
It's been one of my great, great, great joys to be able to create a book club and have it thrive now for three decades with millions of you just reading along with me and millions of books sold and being able to elevate authors that I have wanted to support and that I have loved reading their novels and their non-fiction books. And there's another thing that I'm also really excited about. It's that our partners at Amazon have created a storefront to make it super fast and super easy to find all 124 of my book selections. If you just scan the QR code right there on your screen, it will bring you right to it.
So, all of you who have read along with me for years, you know that for me, writers are my rock stars. So, this is my own version of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gathering. Let me introduce our authors today. President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal for his empathy in medicine and his renderings of the human drama. The Covenant of Water was my 101st book club pick by Abraham Verghese.
And I chose her novels twice. First I chose The Poisonwood Bible and then Demon Copperhead for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Barbara Kingsolver. And just 21 of my picks have been non-fiction in all these 30 years, but only one, Finding Me, was written by an EGOT. That's an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony winner. Hello, Viola Davis.
And he is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. His novel, The Emperor of Gladness, was my 114th book club choice. Hi there, Ocean Vuong. And I want to mention a woman who's also a Pulitzer Prize winner. I've also chosen her novels twice. Olive Again and Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout. I was hoping that Elizabeth could be with us today, but she's a little under the weather. So, we're sending you our love, Liz. And I think she is hands down one of the greatest writers of her generation. So this is a wow moment for me. Thank you.
Yeah. In my backyard. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So I have to say that it's just a great, I feel like it's a great privilege to be among people who can use words in the way that you do. I think it's a gift. Like some people can sing and some people can paint and some people have this gift of words. I wonder, do you consider it a gift?
I think I had to labor at it. I think it wasn't something that just came naturally. But I think in the reception and over time I've begun to feel that maybe yes, I had an affinity for this and I just didn't know it till later in life.
So when the words come and you've been able to finish the sentence the way you actually want to finish it, does that feel like a gift or does it feel like you work for it or that it came through you somehow?
You know, I think when I finally arrive at the finished sentence, it's after many, many iterations, but there are definitely moments when I think this couldn't be from me. This came from some part of me that I don't know or call it the muse, call it the right brain. It really seems that it didn't come from me, per se.
Well, I don't like the word gift. Describing our work because a gift is something that lands on your desk. You know, these books did not land on our desks. It's work. It's just like what you do is work. I remember in Alice Walker's The Color Purple, her dedication was 'I thank all these characters for showing up.'
You know what? I read that and said, 'Nope, my characters were pulled from the earth, from the air, from my heart. I made these characters.' Once in a while, I will write a sentence and think, 'Wow, that's a good sentence.' But most of the time I write a first draft that doesn't please me and then 20 more drafts or 30 more drafts. Every sentence is wrought.
Yeah. One of the things that I remembered that we talked about when we talked about Demon Copperhead, which I do think is just a perfect novel. And I think a lot of other people think so too, but you were saying that in the beginning Demon was too angry and that you had to tone down his anger. When did you realize that he was angry and that that was a problem with the character?
First draft I got to page, I don't know, 100, about page 100 and I just did a, out of curiosity, a word search to see how many f-bombs he had dropped in 100 pages and it was about 175. So I thought I can dial that back. I mean first you write, first you want to get it on the page. You have what you want to say. You feel the voice. You're channeling the voice but you're also making the voice. But there comes a time when you start thinking about readers and I, you know, at some point early on I realized I can't, this pissed-off kid can't be too off-putting. I have to make him lovable. Once I get the reader on his side, he can drop all the f's he wants.
Yeah. Cuz then the reader will be dropping them with him.
And so when did you feel sparked to this calling to write? When did you... Yes. Yes. Barbara,
I never thought I could be a writer. For me, books were exactly as you described just now. My friends. Books. They were my friends. They were my hiding place. I had a tree, a willow tree outside, you know, outside on our farm that I could go.
Oh, you were one of those girls. Yeah, the willow tree.
Well, just because in the house if I opened a book then, you know, somebody, my parents or somebody would say, 'Oh, you're not doing anything. I can put you to work. You can come.'
That happened in my house, too. I had, as you say, they took me to a world beyond the farm I lived on, beyond the very little town I lived in. They were my friends. They helped me feel connected with other people. You feel so alone with your sadness, your loneliness, your struggles, and then in a novel, you feel other people share those troubles, and you're not alone.
Yeah. So, I loved books. I thought it was amazing what books did for me, but I didn't imagine they were written by ordinary people like me. I never thought I could grow up to be a writer. I lived in a place where nobody was a writer. You had to do practical things where I came from. So, I studied other things. I was lucky enough to get to college. Almost nobody I knew got to do that. So I thought, 'Oh, I better study, you know, science so I can get a job.' But I just kept writing because I loved to do it, but it was a secret. I didn't tell anybody. And it's sort of like in my 20s, like my friends outed me and said, 'You know, we know you're writing poems.'
So it started with poetry.
You should... Yeah. Poems and short stories.
Yeah. And I started, you know, sending them off to magazines and, you know, writing came to me. It sort of came and got me.
In my late 20s. In my late...
So, how about you, Viola?
Oh, well, you know, I'm an actor, too.
Yes. So, that gig you have.
Yes. Yes. And the other gig I have, words are extremely important, too, because words are a portal. They're a way into your why. I find in telling stories, it's like the great Sanford Meisner quote is the most important question an actor can ask is why. And you do that when, of course, when I wrote my book, the hardest chapter to write was the first chapter. Because I always, I had to be curious about me first. So I had to explore my why. And for me with words, it's an excavation. Yes. It's like, what do I say? Especially about myself, what do I say? What do I want to say? And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, 3, 4:00 in the morning, not turning on any lights in my house because something would hit me, a memory. You know, the book is my life. And I remember this specifically that a memory, a story hit me. Once again, a story, right? It's all... I don't know why of the story, you know. It's just the story.
So it was a story of my mom and dad fighting and me holding my baby sister in my arms who was a year old and it was an extremely violent fight and I kept thinking why is this story, why does it keep knocking on my door? So I wrote it, took me three hours literally to write the story and I went back and I changed some words and I wrote it again, changed some words and I realized the reason why I wrote the story is because I was going through something then, the pandemic. Oh, little depression, little anxiety. And the reason why I wrote it is because it was a story, the first story that made me feel capable.
Oh, but I didn't know that that was the point of the story when you wrote it. You didn't know that?
No. I had to keep you like, cuz at first I was like the actress saying it's going to be so dramatic. It's going to be a dramatic story, dramatic story until the word came out. I remember the sentence came out that said, you know, something hit me that day. And I'm thinking to myself, what hit you that day? What hit you that day is that I had it in me. That's it.
Yeah. And I find it's why I love when I first started reading Richard Wright. Is I find that the simplest words sometimes strike the most powerful effect of opening up a person's life.
And I think that's why I love words too because that's what you have to have as an actor. You always have to excavate till you get to the truth of it all begins with the words.
And in case you all didn't know this already, Viola narrates the audiobook of Finding Me on Audible. And hearing her memoir read by Viola Davis is something to behold and a whole another elevated experience. Let's take a listen.
The imperfect but blessed sculpture that is Viola is still growing and still being chiseled. My elixir, I'm no longer ashamed of me. I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel. I see people the way they walk, talk, laugh, and grieve and their silence in a way that is hyper-focused because of my past. I'm an artist because there's no separation for me and every human being that has passed through the world, including my mom. I have a great deal of compassion for other people, but mostly for myself. That would not be the case if I did not reconcile that little 8-year-old girl and find me.
That's why the novel, it reads like a novel, but that's why this memoir is called Finding Me. And did the process of that excavation, that writing actually help you to find you in a way that you had not imagined?
Yes. I had to reset. You know, it's like when your phone is messing up and you have to unplug it and turn it off and turn it back on or whatever. I don't know. It's the thing about it is when you grow up with so much dysfunction and so much poverty, so much everything and you know, you meet people in life and everyone in life tells their best story. Come on, let's be honest. You know, you feel wrong. I spent too much of my life feeling wrong. And then it was during the pandemic and you know now you're still, you're not running around. And so I always say the two C's and the M: courage, curiosity, and memory. That's what it challenged. I had to go back. I had to go back to the reset. I had to go back to a time when the thing about six-year-old Viola is she never failed herself. She didn't know how to. So instead of always trying to heal her, I decided to help her to heal me. So that's why I went back and I went back to the bad Viola. The person who was called the bad Viola because I think somewhere in the bad Viola was actually the honest Viola. Was actually the truthful Viola. And instead of being so afraid of the fact that she wet the bed and the fact that she wasn't considered pretty and she was unkempt and she was growing up in such dysfunction that maybe she had the answer for 54-year-old Viola.
And so it was the curiosity that brought me back. Now I always say with the book that's only 30% of who I am. The rest, there's certain memories that I couldn't bear to share still and there's certain things that I couldn't remember anyway. And then there were certain things that I remembered wrong.
So what I had was what I had. And I have to say the first sentence of the book for me busted it wide open.
Wow. The first, I can't say... I remember that first sentence. Wow. I remember that first sentence and I remember going, 'Wow.' And then there were so many after that.
Sucker mother was my favorite expression. And at 8 years old, I used it defiantly. I was a spunky, sassy mess. And when I spewed that expression, one hand would be on my hip, my middle finger in vast display, and maybe my tongue would be sticking out. I remember that sentence. I remember that.
It's why I mean I think it's, you know, I read a lot of books. People always ask me, 'How do you have time to read so many books?' Because I don't do a lot of other things. I'm not, you know, consumed by a lot of other things. I read, I read, I read. And this is by far the best memoir I've ever ever read. You did your thing on here. You did it.
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This year, we're celebrating a milestone that's so close to my heart. I have to say the 30th anniversary of Oprah's Book Club. Books continue to be one of my greatest pleasures in life. As a young girl, I have to tell y'all, books were my lifeline. They allowed me to know that I wasn't alone and opened a window into other worlds. And it's been one of the great joys of my life to create a book club that has endured.
There would never have been a book club had there not been you as an author, really, and thrived for three decades from the river.
Millions of readers have come along with me reading selections that just immersed us in other people's lives and hopefully ignited something within us. That same spirit lives in every conversation we have here on the Oprah podcast. Our friends at Audible are helping honor our big 3 by featuring our official Oprah's Book Club selections along with the 30 books I love as audiobooks. Audible doesn't just keep you entertained with incredible audiobooks and podcasts. It genuinely enriches your life. You take something away from every story. And because it's audio, you can listen to these stories wherever you are. Stuck in traffic, on a walk or a hike, winding down before bed. When you find a story that speaks to you on Audible, it stays with you. That's the whole idea. My deepest, profound, heartfelt thanks to Audible for presenting this special episode of the Oprah podcast. Audible, stories that speak to you. New members can start listening to Oprah's Book Club audiobooks and more with a 30-day free trial.
And listening to the excerpt of your memoir sparked this question for me that I'm going to ask you, Ocean. Now, you say in there that you pay attention to other people. And one of the things that I admire most about all of you as writers is your attention to detail. Whether that is of other human beings who eventually obviously become characters in your stories or whether that is the landscape. I mean the first chapter of your novel The Emperor of Gladness, the landscape is its own character and I'm curious what it is you're noticing about being human right now that the rest of us are overlooking.
Oh gosh. Thank you so so much. I think there's a lot of self-fear. There's a lot of self-policing. You know, there's this, we live in an age of perennial judgment. We don't know when we're going to be filmed, who's filming us. And especially for young people, it's created a lot of hesitation about acting and acting as a human being. And I think what requires of us, especially when you take a chance to be a novelist or an actor, you're daring something into reality. You're rolling the dice. And I think our surveillance culture around social media has stopped a lot of us. And it's not just young people, it's adults, it's older people, it's now how will I be judged forever? And human endeavor is about the endeavor of risk. Will I risk being a fool in order to go after the thing? And I really related to that excerpt by Viola's book because it really is, you know, about can you push through shame to realize that there's something beyond it. And I think on my best days as a writer, I don't always have these days. On my best days, I get the work done because my desire to have a voice outpaces my terror of being alive. It just beats. It's just one foot ahead. It's not every day you get that. Sometimes the terror wins and you have to lay down. But I think right now we have built a culture that has induced more terror than desire to take risks.
And you were saying you shared that with me that your students, you're teaching at the university and that so many times the students don't even speak up now because they're afraid of the risk.
Yeah. Yeah. You can see it in their body posture. There's a shame embedded in even being an artist in trying something because afraid of being cancelled, afraid of being judged for the attempt at sincerity. I think sincerity is a tricky thing in our culture because the person who is sincere has believed in something. And only someone who has been duped believes in something. So cynicism is a kind of fake intelligence. So you perform cynicism. You say, 'Ah, that can't be true. I don't believe. I'm going to stay on the line and judge everybody else.' But the artist has to put the step forward and run forward. But it's easy to judge people who run ahead of you and say, 'Oh, look, they all bought the idea and now they're trying too hard.' So to be a tryhard is to be a kind of loser who's been duped into the endeavor.
Wow. And as Barbara said, I think the hardest thing I've ever done is try to write a book. You know, it's like when I sit down, I'm like, ancestors, grandma, mama, please come. I'm going to need everybody in the world.
So, you don't see it as a gift. You don't see it as a gift either.
I tell you the opportunity to be a writer is a gift.
Oh, yeah. Yes. I am living in the whipped cream of my life.
Oh, I love that. And yeah, I'm going to take that phrase and may or may not give it to you.
I've been saying I've been living my life like it's golden, but I like I'm living in the whipped cream of my life.
You get, you order a sundae, it comes, you don't expect the whipped cream, but then when you get it, it's that extra. And I don't know about y'all, but I'm the kind of person if there's some sand in my whipped cream, it's going down, right? So, as tough as you know, life as a writer is, it is a gift to be able to do it. But the vocation itself, I agree with Barbara, is not a gift. It's hard work. It's honoring your family, bringing dignity to your community, and you can't do that carelessly. Yes. But the opportunity to wake up and say, I get to dream.
Well, it's so interesting you mentioned it's tough as a writer because I read some place. It's like 89 to 92% of the books that actually get published. Oh, yeah. We don't even hear about them. We don't even know who those people are. So to be known as a writer, to be awarded as a writer, to make a living as a writer, extraordinarily rare.
It's pretty extraordinary. Yeah.
So I'm wondering what does it mean when all of you as writers you hit the bestsellers list? What does that mean?
