Viola Davis bares soul in memoir
Brutally honest and honestly brutal, actor Viola Davis looks back on her childhood like the victim of a disaster still dazed by the experience but remembering every terrible moment.
Her alcoholic father routinely beat and bloodied her mother. Viola and her five siblings lived in a rat-filled house that lacked dependable heat and plumbing. Often unwashed, they attended school in dirty clothes. Lunch at school was their only reliable meal.
Other children in the predominantly white town of Central Falls, Rhode Island, tormented Viola, shouting anti-Black epithets as they chased her after school and threw rocks. All the school kids watched the day the fire engines came to save her home from a blaze. The humiliations were unending. Later, sexual abuse joined the list.
Today, Davis is a celebrated actor — winner of an Oscar, two Tonys, an Emmy and many other honors. Yet her self image as a fleeing 8-year-old — ugly, stupid and unwanted because she was told so — never left. What changed for Davis was how she looked back, seeing that child now as a survivor and appreciating the adult she became as one who had found joy, love and accomplishment.
To an observer, Davis had courage even if she didn’t know it at the time. The introvert made a place for herself in school theater. The troublesome student earned a scholarship for college and then a place at Juilliard. The small-town girl endured life in New York with all the auditions and rejections facing an actor. Working with the best when she was unsure of herself — Meryl Streep! — took some pluck. And when love finally opened
its door, she stepped inside.
And now Davis writes a blistering memoir, not a rueful remembrance told in the kind of polished prose that suggests, well, it wasn’t all that bad. “Finding Me” is raw in its anger, shocking in its frankness, often downright vulgar — and wonderfully alive with Davis’ passion poured into every page. — Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press
In recounting her family’s struggle to carry on
after her father’s unexpected death, Zain E. Asher has written a handbook for hope when none seems possible.
Asher’s face is familiar around the globe as the anchor of CNN International’s “One World.” So is her brother’s, actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, the star of the Oscar winner “12 Years a Slave.” Their sister, Kandibe, a medical doctor, and brother, Obinze, an entrepreneur, have made marks in their own fields.
However, the star of Asher’s memoir, “Where the Children Take Us,” is their mother. Obiajulu Justina Ejiofor was raising a family in London when a car accident killed her husband, Arinze, and critically injured son Chiwetel, then 11. With a baby on the way, she had to cope with the loss of her childhood
sweetheart, running a neighborhood pharmacy and, most importantly, the care of their young children. Grief-stricken and exhausted, even with help from relatives, she feared she was failing them.
In the wake of tragedy, Asher’s mother became her family’s uplifter by wielding the firm hand of a parent who would not allow her children to let themselves down. She established the commitment to get ahead in the world through education and intense discipline.
Asher was pushed to visit Oxford University at 13, her mother pointing to students and telling her, “That could be you someday.” When her studies fell short of Oxford-worthy grades because of the distractions of television and telephone, Obiajulu took away the TV set and installed a pay phone in the hallway. In time Asher was accepted into Oxford — and later to Columbia University to study journalism. The lessons from her mother helped her forge a successful career in TV news.
With “Where the Children Take Us,” all can learn from Asher, whose memoir adds her name to the newest of uplifters.