30 Years of Oprah’s Book Club: The Authors Behind the Stories We Love

The Oprah Podcast

In this special anniversary episode, Oprah Winfrey celebrates 30 years of Oprah's Book Club alongside acclaimed authors Viola Davis, Barbara Kingsolver,

Key takeaways

• Authors Barbara Kingsolver and Abraham Verghese emphasize that writing is 'work' or 'labor' rather than just an effortless gift.
• Viola Davis describes her memoir, Finding Me, as an excavation of her past to find strength and justify her existence.
• Ocean Vuong discusses the tension between the desire for a voice and the fear of judgment in a surveillance culture.
• Abraham Verghese shares how his medical background informed 'The Covenant of Water' and his focus on the sacredness of the ordinary.
• Barbara Kingsolver details the editorial process of refining characters, specifically managing anger in 'Demon Copperhead'.

Main topics

• 30th Anniversary of Oprah's Book Club
• The craft of writing and character development
• Personal memoirs and trauma recovery

Notable quotes

I am living in the whipped cream of my life.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a moving tribute to the enduring power of storyt

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) This special episode of the Oprah Podcast is presented by Audible. Speaker 5 (0:04) So I'm wondering, what does it mean when all of you, as writers, you hit the bestsellers list? Speaker 2 (0:11) I'm really, really grateful that readers have embraced my work and that they will follow me anywhere. The Speaker 3 (0:19) opportunity to be a writer is a gift. Oh, yeah. I am living in the whipped cream of my life. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I'm going to take Speaker 5 (0:28) that phrase and may or may not give it to you. I've been saying I've been living my life like it's golden, but I like I'm living in the whipped cream of my life. I Speaker 4 (0:38) love it. Speaker 5 (0:41) Hi, everyone. This is an exciting day on the Oprah podcast because we're celebrating a milestone that's so near and dear to my heart. It is the 30th anniversary of Oprah's Book Club. Now, when I was a young girl, books were a lifeline for me. And I mean that in a very real sense. They were my friends. They allowed me to feel that I was not alone. And also, opened the window for me to dream about a life that was beyond my grandmother's front porch. And it's been one of my great, great, great joys to be able to create a book club and have it thrive now for three decades with millions of you just reading along with me and millions of books sold and being able to elevate authors that I have wanted to support and that I have loved reading their novels and their nonfiction books. And there's another thing that I'm also really excited about. It's that our partners at Amazon have created a storefront to make it super fast and super easy to find all 124 124 of my book selections, if you just scan the QR code right there on your screen, and it will bring you right to it. So all of you who have read along with me for years, you know that for me, writers are my rock stars. So this is my own version of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gathering. Let me introduce our authors today. President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal for his empathy in medicine and his renderings of the human drama. The Covenant of Water was my 101st book club pick by Abraham Verghese. And I chose her novels twice. First, I chose The Poisonwood Bible. And then Demon Copperhead, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Barbara Kingsolver. And just 21 of my picks have been nonfiction in all these 30 years, but only one, Finding Me, Finding Me, was written by an EGOT. That's an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony winner. Speaker 4 (3:14) Hello, Viola Davis. Yes. Speaker 5 (3:17) And he is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. Uh-huh. His novel, The Emperor of Gladness, was my 114th book club choice. Speaker 4 (3:27) Hi there, Ocean Bong. Yeah. Speaker 5 (3:30) And I want to mention a woman who's also Pulitzer Prize winner. I've also chosen her novels twice, Olive Again and Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout. I was hoping that Elizabeth could be with us today, but she's a little under the weather. So we're sending you our love. Liz, and I think she is hands down one of the also greatest writers of her generation. So Speaker 4 (3:52) this is a wow moment for me. Thank you. Wow for us, too. Yeah, Speaker 5 (3:57) in my backyard. Speaker 4 (3:58) Thank you. Thank you for Speaker 5 (3:59) being here. So I have to say that. Speaker 5 (4:04) It's just a great, I feel like it's a great privilege to be among people who can use words in the way that you do. I think it's a gift. Like some people can sing and some people can paint and some people have this gift of words. I wonder, do you consider it a gift? Speaker 1 (4:20) I think I had to labor at it. I think it wasn't something that just came naturally. But I think in the reception and over time I've begun to feel that maybe, yes. I had an affinity for this and I just didn't know it till later Speaker 5 (4:35) in life. So when the words come and you've been able to finish the sentence the way you actually want to finish it, does that feel like a gift or does it feel like you work for it or that it came through you somehow that you were... Speaker 1 (4:46) You know, I think when I finally arrive at the finished sentence, it's after many, many iterations. There are definitely moments when I think... This couldn't be from me. This came from some part of me that I don't know or call it the muse, call it the right brain. It really seems that it didn't come from me. Really? Barbara, you're nodding. Speaker 2 (5:07) Well, I don't like the word gift. Yeah. Describing our work. Because a gift is something that lands on your desk. You know, these books did not land on our desks. It's work. It's just like what you do is work. Speaker 2 (5:25) I remember in Alice Walker's The Color Purple, her dedication was, I thank all these characters for showing up. You know what? I read that and said, nope. My characters were pulled from the earth, from the air, from my heart. I made these characters. Once in a while, I... we'll write a sentence and think, wow, that's a good sentence. But most of the time, I write, you know, a first draft that doesn't please me, and then 20 more drafts or 30 more drafts. Every sentence is wrought. Yeah, one of the Speaker 5 (6:04) things that I remembered when we talked about Demon Carpahead, which I do think is just a perfect novel, and I think a lot of other people think so too, but you were saying that in the beginning, Demon was too angry. and that you had to tone down his anger. When did you realize that he was angry and that that was a problem with the character? Speaker 2 (6:25) First draft. I got to page, I don't know, 100, about page 100, and I just did, out of curiosity, a word search to see how many F-bombs he had dropped in 100 pages, and it was about 175. Speaker 2 (6:43) I can dial that back. Understand, I mean, first you write, first you want to get it on the page. You have what you want to say. You feel the voice. You're channeling the voice, but you're also making the voice. But there comes a time when you start thinking about readers. And I, you know, at some point early on, I realized I can't, this pissed off kid can't be too off-putting. I have to make him lovable. Once I get the reader on his side, he can drop all the F-bombs he wants. All the F-bombs he wants, Speaker 5 (7:21) yeah, yeah. Because Speaker 2 (7:21) then the reader will be dropping them with him. Speaker 5 (7:24) Yeah. And so when did you feel sparked to this calling to write? Me? Yes, yes, Barbara. Speaker 2 (7:32) I never thought I could be a writer. For me, books were exactly as you described just now. My friends. They were my friends. They were my refuge, my hiding place. I had a tree, a willow tree outside on our farm that I could go and Speaker 5 (7:51) hide. Speaker 2 (7:51) Oh, you were one of those girls Speaker 5 (7:52) with a willow tree. Well, Speaker 2 (7:54) just because in the house, if I opened a book, then somebody, my parents or somebody would say, oh, you're not doing anything. Speaker 5 (8:04) You can put you to work. That happened in my house too. Speaker 2 (8:06) I had, as you say, they took me to a world beyond the farm I lived on, beyond the very little town I lived in. They were my friends. They helped me feel connected with other people. You feel so alone with your sadness, your loneliness, your struggles. And then in a novel, you feel... other people share those troubles and you're not alone. Speaker 5 (8:35) So Speaker 2 (8:35) I loved books. I thought it was amazing what books did for me, but I didn't imagine they were written by ordinary people like me. I never thought I could grow up to be a writer. I lived in a place where nobody was a writer. You had to do practical things where I came from. So I, you know, I studied other things. I was lucky enough to get to college. Almost nobody I knew got to do that. So I thought, oh, I better study, you know, science so I can get a job. But I just kept writing because I love to do it. But it was a secret. I didn't tell anybody. And it's sort of like in my 20s, like my friends outed me. and said, you know, we know you're writing poems. You should Speaker 5 (9:23) start it with poetry. Speaker 2 (9:25) Yeah, poems and short stories. Short Speaker 5 (9:28) stories. Speaker 2 (9:29) Yeah. And I started, you know, sending them off to magazines and, you know, writing came to me. It sort of came and got me. Got it. At Speaker 5 (9:37) what Speaker 2 (9:37) age? In my late 20s. Got it. So how about you, Viola? Speaker 4 (9:44) Oh, well, you know, I'm an actor, too. Yes. So, words. Yeah, you're that, too. Yes, yes. And the other gig I have, words Speaker 5 (9:52) are extremely important, too, because words are a portal. Speaker 4 (9:56) They're a way into your why. Yes. I find in telling stories, it's like the great Sanford Meisner quote, is the most important question an actor can ask is why. Speaker 5 (10:10) Yes. And Speaker 4 (10:11) you do that when... Of course, when I wrote my book, the hardest chapter to write was the first chapter. Yeah. Because I always, I had to be curious about me first. So I had to explore my why. And for me, with words, it's an excavation. Yes. It's like... what do I say? Especially about myself. What do I say? What do I want to say? And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, three, four o'clock in the morning, not turning on any lights in my house because something would hit me, a memory. You know, the book is my life. And I remember this specifically, that a memory, a story hit me. Speaker 5 (11:02) Once again, a story, right? I don't know why Speaker 4 (11:05) of the story, you know. It's just the story. Speaker 5 (11:10) Yeah. Speaker 4 (11:10) So it was a story of my mom and dad fighting and me holding my baby sister in my arms, who was a year old. And it was an extremely violent fight. And I kept thinking, why is this story, why does it keep knocking on my door? So I wrote it. It took me three hours, literally, to write the story. Then I went back. And I changed some words and I wrote it again, but changed some words. And I realized the reason why I wrote the story is because I was going through something then, the pandemic, a little depression, a little anxiety. And the reason why I wrote it is because it was a story, the first story that made me feel capable. Speaker 5 (11:54) Oh. Speaker 4 (11:58) But I didn't know that that was the point of the story. When you wrote it, you didn't know that? No, I had to keep, you know, like, because at first I was like the actress saying, it's going to be so dramatic. It's going to be a dramatic story, dramatic story until the word came out. I remember the sentence came out that said, you know, something hit me that day. And I'm thinking to myself, Viola, what hit you that day? What hit you that day is that I had it in me. Speaker 4 (12:30) That's it. Speaker 5 (12:31) Yeah, and Speaker 4 (12:33) I find It's why I loved when I first started reading Richard Wright Yeah, Speaker 5 (12:40) as Speaker 4 (12:40) I find that the simplest words sometimes strike the most powerful effect of Speaker 5 (12:48) opening Speaker 4 (12:50) up a person's life. Speaker 5 (12:53) And Speaker 4 (12:53) I think that's why I love words too, because that's what you have to have as an actor. You always have to excavate till you get to the truth of who you're playing. And it all begins with the Speaker 5 (13:05) words. And in case you all didn't know this already, Viola narrates the audio book of Finding Me on Audible. And hearing her memoir read by the Viola Davis is something to behold and a whole nother elevated experience. Let's take a listen. Speaker 4 (13:25) The imperfect but blessed sculpture that is Viola is still growing and still being chiseled. My elixir, I'm no longer ashamed of me. I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel. I see people the way they walk, talk, laugh, and grieve, and their silence in a way that is hyper-focused because of my past. I'm an artist because there's no separation from me and every human being that has passed through the world, including my mom. I have a great deal of compassion for other people, but mostly for myself. That would not be the case if I did not reconcile that little eight-year-old girl and find me. Speaker 5 (14:22) That's why the novel, it reads like a novel, but that's why this memoir is called Finding Me. And did the process of that excavation, that writing, actually help you to find you in a way that you had not imagined? Speaker 4 (14:37) Yes, I had to reset. You know, it's like when your phone is messing up and you have to unplug it and, you know, turn it off and turn it back on or whatever. I don't know. The thing about it is when you grow up with so much dysfunction and so much poverty, so much everything, and, you know, you meet people in life and everyone in life tells their best story. Come on, let's be honest. Yeah. Speaker 5 (15:00) You know, Speaker 4 (15:01) you feel wrong. Speaker 4 (15:05) I've spent too much of my life feeling wrong. And then it was during the pandemic. And, you know, now you're still. You're not running around. And so I always say the two C's and the M. Courage, curiosity, and memory. That's what it challenged. I had to go back. I had to go back to the reset. I had to go back to a time when the thing about six-year-old Viola is she never failed herself. Speaker 4 (15:35) She didn't. She didn't know how to. So instead of always trying to heal her, I decided to help her to heal me. Speaker 1 (15:45) So Speaker 4 (15:45) that's why I went back. And I went back to the bad Viola, the person who was called the bad Viola, because I think somewhere in the bad Viola was actually the honest Viola, Speaker 3 (15:55) was Speaker 4 (15:56) actually the truthful Viola. And instead of being so afraid of the fact that she wet the bed and the fact that... she wasn't considered pretty and she was unkempt and she was growing up in such dysfunction that maybe she had the answer for 54 year old Viola. Wow. Speaker 5 (16:15) And Speaker 4 (16:15) so it was the curiosity that brought me back. Now, I always say with the book, that's only 30 % of who I am. The rest, there's certain memories that I couldn't bear to share still. And there's certain things that I couldn't remember anyway. And then there were certain things that I remembered wrong. Speaker 5 (16:36) Wow. Speaker 4 (16:37) Wow. So what I had was what I had.