Viola Davis

I turned the page and I was at the end and I was all, "Wait!? That's it!" I hope that Viola Davis graces us with a second memoir. This was the third memoir in my unintentional reading of memoirs this year. I've read Britney Spears, Barbra Streisand, and now Viola Davis's Finding Me.

I've been a fan of Davis's work, but it was her portrayal of Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom that clinched it for me. She strode onto that screen and manifested Rainey. I've been reading August Wilson's Century Cycle of plays with a group at the Seattle Athenaeum and reading her memoir, Davis has appeared in several of Wilson's plays including playing Rose on the big screen in Denzel Washington's Fences.

This quote about playing Rose:
"Because I had to start finding me in How to Get Away with Murder, the making of the film Fences was perfect. Perfect material for the screen based on the play by August Wilson, who exhumed and exalted ordinary people. To me, the original Troy was my father Dan Davis, born in 1936, who groomed horses, had a fifth-grade education, and didn't know how to read until he was fifteen years old. These characters in Fences were real to me, they were my life. August's material is great because he lets us bleed and he lets us talk. Rose was a fully realized character....

In ten cycles of plays that August Wilson wrote (often referred to as his Century Cycle), he portrayed Black American life in every decade in the twentieth century. So, you get a history lesson, but you also get to sit with us as human beings and see how that time period affected us. In Fences, Rose is a housewife who just wants to keep her family together. She is an absolute produce of the 1950s, suppressing her own dreams, even being cheated on after she gives her whole life to her family."

The book takes us through Davis's journey from her childhood poverty and abuse, to her discovery of acting, through her acting education, and various roles she has played up until about Fences. It also includes her love story--and I love a love story that happens in later life. I hope the next book will cover the roles she had next and may she have a long career. Ultimately, it is a memoir about finding oneself, working through trauma, making art, and the power of family love.

I also thought Davis's description of the privilege that exists in the acting profession to be a lesson for those hiring in the arts. She writes about it in Chapter 15 but I'll sum it up here with a one-sentence quote, "He who has choices has resources." If you are in the Arts, or hiring for the Arts, you should at least read this one chapter.

So my tally so far on my memoirs...
1. Viola Davis has moved into the top spot because she deftly blends her life and her art and left me wanting to learn more. I also have now been watching Viola Davis clips and interviews on Youtube, I've included a few below.
2. Barbra Streisand moves into second place simply because she said too much.
3. Britney Spears--entertaining, but not even in the same intellectual league as Streisand and Davis.

Links to trailers for two August Wilson plays that Ms. Davis appeared in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spCxVd9ctFs&ab_channel=ParamountPictures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ord7gP151vk&ab_channel=Netflix

And her appearance on Hot Ones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKZNM2Ir8A&ab_channel=FirstWeFeast
Appropriately titled, Viola Davis Gives a Master Class While Eating Spicy Wings.
I love Hot Ones!… (meer)