Arnora hosted our November Book Club. Here we are, already winding down the year. Halloween is behind us; Thanksgiving is a couple of weeks away. My tree is already up!
For me, this has been the best year for books that I can remember in a long time. We are coming into the home stretch with another winner.
Viola Davis gives us an in-depth and deeply personal look at her life. She was born on a plantation in South Carolina, raised in poverty in Rhode Island, and went on to become an Oscar-winning actress.
This is not a gossipy, Hollywood "tell-all." This is the unvarnished, vulnerable story of a girl growing up in extreme poverty and all that it encompasses. There was hunger, domestic and sexual abuse, and she was severely bullied in school. Though Viola did not engage with drugs, many of her family members did, and she dealt with the fallout.
Viola knew from an early age that she wanted to act, being inspired by Cicely Tyson. She saw someone who looked like her making a name for herself as an actor. It gave her hope, even though, given her circumstances, it seemed unlikely. Somehow, she saw, in those early days, that becoming someone else when you were acting could have the power to heal you emotionally. She could channel it all into acting.
Ron Stetson, an actor and coach, came into Viola's life when she was 14 and helped her get into a summer program called Upward Bound, and from there she received a scholarship to Rhode Island College. Then she auditioned and was accepted into Juilliard.
She saw something in Cicely Tyson that inspired her, and Ron Stetson saw something in her. The chain of events did not happen overnight. Nothing changed in her dysfunctional family, but she was determined, worked hard, and it all paid off.
It is, no doubt, difficult to read about the harshest of human behaviors perpetuated on children. Viola did her best and continued to help her family as she could. She showed a lot of grace in the end as her father was dying.
Viola exposed herself in the most vulnerable way as she narrates her path to radical self-acceptance, healing childhood trauma, breaking generational cycles, and finding herself in an often indifferent world.
I would describe it as well-told, compelling, and inspiring. The book rated 5.
We will meet in December at Laura’s, and our book is Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame.
I also believe we landed on The Calamity Club for January. Correct me, please, if I am wrong. This is a long novel, so we thought we’d push it out to have enough time to finish.
