Finding Me: An Oprah's Book Club Pick

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She highlights the brutal racism she had to deal with as a child, the abuse she faced from family members, what it was like to grow up in poverty, and her deep desire to make something more out of her life.

I would assume that it wouldn't be that way because most actors seem to begin there; however, based on commentary and financial gains from each I understand the differences more. The descriptions of the living conditions of her home are hard to wrap one’s head around, but despite her parents having their hands full with their own demons, Viola managed to get some support from siblings and programs offered to her which helped to build her self-esteem, incentivized her to change the course of her life, propelling her toward achieving her dreams. She tells her extraordinary journey filled with poverty, love, hatred, racism, and achievements in her life in this book. But thinking about it from the perspective of the entire universe, distilling the novel to its aching soul, it could be the story of many other women, women who still need to make peace with their past, women who struggle to put an end to the abusive streak they're enduring. When Viola did succeed, she sometimes experienced self doubt, with industry standards, in part, to blame.Can we all exude a bit more kindness and compassion and freaking assistance when someone is struggling? I honestly have no words- One simply must experience this memoir for themselves to truly appreciate it. I cried reading about Viola's childhood and the way her trauma shaped her into the woman she is today. I can say so much about how our life events sorta overlap but this is her story so I will leave it there. In the past, we've been used as chattel, fodder for inhumane experimentation, and it has evolved into invisibility.

But when she saw Cecily Tyson on TV, she was inspired to take up acting, first succeeding in small sketches at school and later earning a college scholarship. Most of the people in Central Falls were white, and Viola was the butt of vicious racist slurs since she was a child. She provides the bleak statistics surrounding the film industry and how few actors and actresses are actually able to make it in this space.All the attributes that are attached to being a woman-desirable, vulnerable, needing to be rescued-don't apply to us. If there is anything that I learned from each of these moments, it's that you can never tell what someone has been through by just looking at them. As an adult, when the economy crashed, I was at the mercy of my family, especially my grandmother; things could have been a lot worse without her.