Actress Talks Growing Up In Poverty and the Journey To Triumph In Her Latest Memoir
With over 100 awards and an Oscar win, legendary actress Viola Davis has proven a force to be reckoned with in the Hollywood entertainment industry. From her groundbreaking role as the dynamic, mysteriously sexy lawyer Annalise Keating in the legal drama series “How to Get Away with Murder,” to her supporting role as Mrs. Miller alongside actress Meryl Streep in the movie “Doubt,” Davis has captured the hearts of many on screen and now off screen. Releasing her first book entitled “Finding Me” the memoir serves as a tell-all to her journey from her “crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond.”
Davis has long captured the hearts of many, such as myself, with her ability to not only bring characters to life but also to be a beacon of hope. From serving as the 2019 commencement speaker at Barnard College, to sharing words of wisdom and motivating millions with her 2015 Emmy speech, Davis has continued to represent a pillar of inspiration for many young dreamers and artists who, like me, come from people who have been kicked to the margins. Davis has risen above and beyond the limitations placed on her race, class, and gender to be not only a force of good in this world but a force of representation.
Chosen to be a part of Oprah Winfrey’s book club, and #1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books, Davis’ memoir is reaching many and changing hearts, too. The book, Davis shares, started off as a means to explore her inner child. “I needed to find that inner child and my inner child was one that needed both healing and needed to be celebrated. She was a survivor as well as someone who you know held a lot of trauma. But I felt like I had to explore it,” Davis shared in an interview with the Breakfast Club. Written during the time of the pandemic and the racial injustices of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, the book served as a means to create meaning in Davis’ life, she continued. “The George Floyd of it all. The Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor of it all. Everything. Dealing with COVID, with the election, I felt like I was having a crisis of meaning…it was my way of pressing the reset button. To understand ‘man Viola, what are you supposed to do from here on out?’ It just was a big wake-up call personally and culturally. That’s why I wrote the book. I had to go back to the beginning of me,” shared Davis.
Davis’ story allows the world to see her incredible journey and understand her difficult past. But to her, it is more than just her road map that is visible, but rather her legacy. “I saw Viola as a survivor. I keep telling this story ad nauseum…but I’ve always said you got to leave a legacy. Life is like a relay race; it’s what you do with your dash of time and what great runner you pass that baton off to…those great runners are you at a different age.” In writing the book Davis was able to view herself at different ages and stages of her life. “The six-year-old who survives it then, may survive it really messy may have been inappropriate but she ran her leg of the race and passed the baton onto the 14 year old Viola, who said ‘I want to be an actor’ in the midst of all the poverty, the abuse, the bedwetting, the sexual abuse… she wanted to be an actor – she saw a way out. And the 14 year old passed it onto the 28 year old who said ‘you know what, I need therapy because I want healthy relationships in my life. I want to be happier and I don’t know how to do that.’ She passed it onto the 34 year old Viola who got married, to the 45 year old Viola who then became a mom. Now I’m 56 and I have the baton in my hand,” said Davis.
The memoir leans into much of Davis’ traumatic past dealing with extreme poverty, bullying, racism, misogyny and abuse, and while many could see that as too dark for Davis, it’s part of telling her life’s story and, moreover, the story of life itself. “I think the pain, the trauma, is equal to the joy and the peace in your life. I think that they’re one and the same. I don’t think that the pain and the trauma and the hard times are a detour from life, I think it’s a part of life and I think that when you refuse to lean in to all of it , you refuse to become connected to yourself.” It is this connection to self and the totality of one’s story that Davis felt, in sharing, would change the way we connect with one another and shed light on the true struggles we all face at one point in time. “No one can connect with anyone else because the only time we want to meet is with great stories of overcoming and winning. Then when someone feels like they’re not overcoming and they’re not winning and they’re not waking up happy every day, then they feel like they need to hide in the closet, not come out, not open their mouths, not say anything. There’s no one to share with, there’s no sacred space to be you. I count it all joy…I do believe that it’s all a part of life,” shared Davis.
Davis shares many lessons in her book, from the effect of self determination, agency and the power of believing in one’s self, to the most powerful one, being that of forgiveness. For forgiveness served as the groundwork to receiving the things she wanted out of life. “I feel like forgiveness and faith are equal in terms of they’re the hardest things to achieve. They’re so abstract, so it comes down to choice. I forgive for myself. I forgive because I don’t want to carry that weight. The weight, the vengefulness of regret and all of that, for me it blocks everything from coming into your life… At some point your life becomes yours,” shared Davis.
“I think that once again the only person you could save is yourself. That’s the only thing that you could do. You can’t keep backtracking as what wrong someone did to you or whatever. You got to figure out how to heal that,” said Davis. Davis’ book joins powerful memoirs like Cicely Tyson’s “Just As I Am” and Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” by speaking to the little girls that lie behind such powerful Black women. Oftentimes one only sees the success but never the story of the path to success. Davis, through a memoir as transparent and truthful as this, highlights not only her own story, but inspires us all to bravely tell our stories in totality.
“Finding Me: A Memoir” is available on Amazon, Target and in Barnes & Noble.