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A review by beth_taggard
Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Exquisite. Since Viola Davis first landed on my radar, I have described her as “exquisite.” Far from ugly. My first memory of her is that of a criminal’s wife (that typecasting) in the film Out of Sight with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. It was 1998 — 16 years before the television show How to Get Away With Murder catapulted her into the mainstream after more than 20 years of her career as a working actress on both stage and screen.
This memoir is rooted in Viola’s childhood trauma and adult experiences of not feeling good enough or pretty enough because of her color and her features — and it rocked me — while simultaneously being both unsurprising and wholly educational about the black experience in America (and particularly in Hollywood). But I wasn’t raised in America. Though American, I was raised in East Africa — a translucent white, blonde-haired, green-eyed anomaly surrounded by black women of varying people groups. They were gorgeous to me, and I was envious of their rich ebony skin tones and non-stringy hair. I still see black women as exquisite. Perceptions are genuinely born of time and place.
Like a phoenix, Viola arose from adversity and then burned away to ash, only to rise again. She has done this with more grace and forgiveness than those around her may have deserved. “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given,” she writes. Her capacity to acknowledge the past for what it was and choose to live in the present is inspiring.
In the genre of celebrity memoirs, I have noticed a trend of unnecessary repetition to the point of using exact phrases or sentences a mere few chapters apart from one another. Finding Me also has this struggle. It’s the only thing that weakened the reading experience for me, but the contents are so powerful I don’t care. Like Viola, Finding Me is exquisite.
Find my full review at Dots and Beyond.
This memoir is rooted in Viola’s childhood trauma and adult experiences of not feeling good enough or pretty enough because of her color and her features — and it rocked me — while simultaneously being both unsurprising and wholly educational about the black experience in America (and particularly in Hollywood). But I wasn’t raised in America. Though American, I was raised in East Africa — a translucent white, blonde-haired, green-eyed anomaly surrounded by black women of varying people groups. They were gorgeous to me, and I was envious of their rich ebony skin tones and non-stringy hair. I still see black women as exquisite. Perceptions are genuinely born of time and place.
Like a phoenix, Viola arose from adversity and then burned away to ash, only to rise again. She has done this with more grace and forgiveness than those around her may have deserved. “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given,” she writes. Her capacity to acknowledge the past for what it was and choose to live in the present is inspiring.
In the genre of celebrity memoirs, I have noticed a trend of unnecessary repetition to the point of using exact phrases or sentences a mere few chapters apart from one another. Finding Me also has this struggle. It’s the only thing that weakened the reading experience for me, but the contents are so powerful I don’t care. Like Viola, Finding Me is exquisite.
Find my full review at Dots and Beyond.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Abortion