Olivia: Most celebrity memoirs are a victory lap. This one is a war story. It argues that the very things that were meant to destroy you—shame, poverty, abuse—can become your greatest source of power. But only if you're willing to stop running. Jackson: Wow, that’s a heavy way to start. Not the usual "and then I became famous" narrative. It sounds more like a survival guide. Olivia: It absolutely is. And that's the heart of the book we're diving into today: Finding Me by the one and only Viola Davis. Jackson: Who is, and this is just incredible, the first Black woman in history to win the “Triple Crown of Acting”—an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony. That alone is a staggering achievement. Olivia: Exactly. And this memoir, which was a huge Oprah’s Book Club pick and is massively acclaimed, reveals the almost unbelievable journey she took to get there. It wasn't a smooth ride; it was a fight for survival from day one. Jackson: When you say 'survival,' what are we actually talking about? I think people see the Viola Davis of today—poised, powerful, a titan of her craft—and can't imagine the backstory. How bad was it?

Olivia: It was brutal. The book opens with one of the most visceral stories I've ever read in a memoir. She frames her entire life around this one recurring memory from third grade. She calls it "The Chase." Jackson: The Chase? That sounds ominous. Olivia: Every single day after school, a group of eight or nine white boys would chase her. They would scream the most vile, racist things you can imagine. They'd call her ugly, they'd use the n-word, and they would throw things at her. Rocks, bricks, anything they could find. She describes having to run for her life, dodging projectiles, just to get home. Jackson: Hold on. Bricks? At an eight-year-old girl? Every day? Olivia: Every single day. It was a ritual. And there's this one moment that defines everything. After a snowstorm, her shoes are so worn out she can't run fast enough, and they catch her. The leader of the group, a Cape Verdean boy who identifies as Portuguese, gets in her face and calls her a "Black fucking nigger." Jackson: That's just gut-wrenching. What does an eight-year-old even do with that? Olivia: This is where you see the fighter in her, even then. She looks him dead in the eye and calls him out, saying he's Black too. It stuns the whole group into silence for a moment before he gets enraged, punches her, and throws her in the snow. She goes home and tells her mother, expecting comfort, maybe a call to the school. Jackson: Right, that’s what a parent is supposed to do. Protect their kid. Olivia: Her mother's response is a product of her own hard life and the reality of their situation. She listens, and then she hands Viola a crochet needle. She tells her, "You walk home tomorrow. And if they mess with you, you 'jug' 'em." Jackson: She gave her a weapon? That’s… intense. Is that tough love or something else? Olivia: It’s survival. Her mother knew the world wasn't going to protect her Black daughter in Central Falls, Rhode Island in the 1970s. She had to learn to protect herself. And the next day, Viola walks home, holds that needle, and when a boy grabs her, she threatens him. And they never chased her again. One act of defiance broke the cycle. Jackson: That’s an incredible story. But the trauma of being hunted like that, it doesn't just disappear. Olivia: Exactly. And that's just the outside world. Her home life was just as harrowing. Her family was, in her words, "po," which she says is "a level lower than poor." They lived for a time in a condemned apartment at 128 Washington Street. It was so infested with rats that she remembers them eating the faces off her dolls. Jackson: Oh, come on. That's the stuff of nightmares. Olivia: It was their reality. No consistent heat, no hot water, faulty wiring. She said she became an expert at flushing the toilet with a bucket of water. This wasn't just poverty; it was a complete breakdown of basic human dignity. And all of this—the chase, the rats, the violence she witnessed at home—created this deep, pervasive sense of shame that she carried for decades. Jackson: It’s hard to imagine how anyone comes back from that. When you're steeped in that much trauma and shame from such a young age, where does the hope even come from? How do you even begin to dream of something different?

Olivia: For her, the first glimmer of hope came through a television screen. It’s a powerful moment in the book. She’s a kid, watching TV at a neighbor’s house because theirs doesn't work, and she sees Cicely Tyson in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Jackson: I know that film. Tyson's performance is legendary. Olivia: Viola describes watching Tyson transform from a young woman to a 110-year-old, and in that performance, she saw artistry. She saw a path. She writes, "It was like a hand reached for mine and I finally saw my way out." It wasn't just entertainment; it was a lifeline. It was the first time she realized that you could use performance to create a life, to make your life meaningful. Jackson: So seeing someone who looked like her, being that powerful and transformative on screen, literally gave her a map for her own life? That's the power of representation right there. Olivia: Absolutely. It planted a seed. It gave her a "why." And that "why" fueled her through high school, through the Upward Bound program, and eventually to Juilliard. But art was only one half of the equation for her healing. The other half was learning what real, safe love felt like. Jackson: Which, given her childhood, must have felt like a completely foreign concept. Olivia: Completely. She talks about being in her 30s, successful on Broadway, but still feeling deeply lonely and attracting the wrong kind of men. She was in therapy, but something was still missing. A friend of hers, seeing her loneliness, gave her some advice. He told her to pray for a husband. Jackson: Like, literally make a list and pray for it? Olivia: Exactly like that. She was skeptical, but she did it. She got on her knees and prayed for a man who was, in her words, a "big Black man from the South," someone who had a family, who had maybe been married before and had kids, someone who went to church. She was incredibly specific. Jackson: That is very specific. And did it work? Olivia: Three and a half weeks later, she's on the set of a TV show, and she meets an actor named Julius Tennon. He was a former football player, a big Black man from Texas. He had been married before, had two children, and was a man of faith. Jackson: You’re kidding me. He ticked every single box. Olivia: Every single one. And she says meeting him and building a life with him was what finally gave her a sense of home and safety that she never had. He and his children became her family. They later adopted their daughter, Genesis, and she says it was in creating her own family that she truly began to heal the wounds of the one she came from. It was about building a new foundation of love and stability. Jackson: Okay, so she has the career, she has the love. It sounds like the happy ending. But what about that little girl who was being chased? The one who was told she was ugly and worthless? Is she still there?

Olivia: That is the central question of the entire book, and it’s what makes this memoir so profound. For years, even with the Oscar, the Emmy, the Tonys, she was still, in her own mind, that little girl running from the boys. She tells a story about being on the set of a movie with Will Smith, who asked her, "Viola, who are you?" And her immediate, gut-level answer was, "I’m the little girl who would run after school every day... because these boys hated me because I was... not pretty. Because I was... Black." Jackson: Wow. So even at the height of her success, that was her core identity. Olivia: It was. And the final, most difficult part of her journey wasn't winning another award. It was learning how to deal with that little girl. She describes a breakthrough moment in therapy, which is just stunning. She's in her fifties, and she's telling her therapist that her goal is to "heal" her eight-year-old self, to fix what was broken. Jackson: That makes sense. That’s what we all think healing is, right? Fixing the broken parts. Olivia: But her therapist stops her. She says, "Viola, you don't need to heal her. You need to honor her." And then she yells, with all this passion, "That little girl SURVIVED!!!!!!" She tells Viola that the eight-year-old girl doesn't need fixing. She was a fighter. It's the fifty-three-year-old Viola who needs to stop running from her, to turn around, embrace her, and let that little girl finally experience the joy and success she fought so hard for. Jackson: Wow. That's a huge shift. It’s not about erasing the past, but integrating it. Not fixing, but embracing. Olivia: Precisely. The therapist asks her to physically open her arms and imagine hugging that little girl, inviting her in. And Viola admits she couldn't do it at first. She had spent a lifetime building walls to protect herself from that pain. But that moment was the turning point. It was the beginning of true self-acceptance. Jackson: That’s what the title means, then. Finding Me. It’s not about becoming someone new. Olivia: It’s about finding the person who was there all along, the survivor. And that’s the most powerful message in the book. She says she had to learn to own every single part of her story—the good, the bad, the ugly. And in one of the final, most moving lines of the book, she says something that I think will stick with me forever. Jackson: What is it?

Olivia: She writes, "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." Jackson: Warrior fuel. That’s incredible. So the book isn't just about 'making it' in Hollywood. It's a manual for how to alchemize your deepest wounds into your greatest strengths. It’s about realizing that the things you're most ashamed of, the things you've been running from your whole life, might actually be the source of your power. Olivia: That’s the whole journey. It’s a story of radical self-acceptance. It’s not about forgetting the past or pretending it didn't happen. It's about looking it straight in the eye and saying, "You are a part of me. You made me a fighter. And now, we're going to enjoy this life together." Jackson: That is an incredible message. It’s so much deeper than a typical celebrity story. We'd love to hear what resonated most with you from her story. Find us on our socials and share your thoughts. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.