Finding Me — Viola Davis

That scene is the best evidence I can offer to show that Viola Davis’ craft is not merely “acting’, nor is it “performance”. It is Art.

There is a scene in August Wilson’s Fences — a broadway play adapted for the screen where Viola Davis, who features as the long-suffering wife of Troy (played by Denzel Washington). With snort, tears, vein-popping rage, she finally stands up to her bullying mercurial husband’s finger-wagging — as if he is the only person whose sacrifices for his family are worth considering and thus justify his sordid behavior.

Her recent autobiography Finding Me- is an exercise in raw revelation and the kind of rare honesty we have increasingly become unaccustomed to in a heavily filtered world.

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full of overcoming it” — Hellen Keller

A remarkable story of overcoming a life of stable and enduring trauma from childhood well into middle age. Racism, sexism, colorism, Lookism, ageism you name it, she has been through it.

But carrying through on the hero’s journey is the reader’s reward for crying through her pain.

This book is stylistically brilliant in that it has no spare and or colourful language (unlike this blogger), and so the words hit like bricks. [The first two words beneath chapter one are “cocksucker motherfucker”]. Moreover, it is teeming with “real talk”, delving deep into difficult subjects like domestic violence, abortion, child sexual abuse, fibroids, and all forms of discrimination.

This is a story of resilience and its unfortunate precursor-suffering. But it is also the story of courage, of growth & discovery, and of conquest. It doesn’t seem like an explicit aim of the book, but it winds up being rather inspiring in the end. On a personal level, it has deepened my love affair with Viola Davis. I certainly enjoyed it and hope you get to read it too.