Viola Davis (HarperOne), “Finding Me: a Memoir.”
Viola Davis, a brutally honest and truly brutal actress, looks back on her childhood as if she were the victim of a disaster. She remembers every horrible moment, but she’s still stunned by everything.
His alcoholic father often beat and bled his mother. Viola and her five siblings lived together in a dirty, rat-infested house with no heating or running water. They often went to school in dirty and often unwashed clothes. His only food was school lunch.
Viola was bullied by other children in Central Falls, Rhode Island. They yelled anti-black epithets and chased her after school. The schoolchildren watched as the fire trucks arrived to save Viola’s house from the burning house. The humiliations never end. Later, sexual abuse was added to the list.
Davis is a famous actress nowadays. She won an Oscar (“Fences”) and two Tonys (“King Hedley II”), as well as an Emmy (“How to Get Away with Murder”) and many other awards. Her eight-year-old image of herself as an ugly, stupid, unwanted child ran away from home. She was told that she was. Davis’ perspective changed. She saw her son as a survivor and came to appreciate the adult she became as someone who found joy and love and achieved success.
Davis was a brave observer, although she didn’t realize it at the time. Davis, an introvert, found a place in the school theater. The troubled student won a college scholarship and a place at Juilliard. A theater-loving small-town girl endured auditions and rejections in New York. Meryl Streep was the one she trusted when she wasn’t sure of herself. She took some courage. She jumped when she finally found love.
Now Davis has written a brilliant memoir. It’s not a sad memory told in polished prose to suggest it wasn’t so bad after all. “Finding Me” is raw and brutal in its fury, at times downright vulgar, but incredibly alive with Davis’s passion pouring out on every page.
Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: newstars.edu.vn