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

BUY THE BOOKS! The Oprah Book Club storefront https://amzn.to/4j5y1xW To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Oprah’s Book Club - Oprah is joined by four multiple-award winning, best-selling authors including: Viola Davis, Barbara Kingsolver, Abraham Verghese and Ocean Vuong. In her backyard under the oak trees Oprah and these masterful storytellers have a thoughtful conversation about the craft of writing, their processes and the significance the reader brings to their work. Among their works they discuss these Oprah's Book club picks: Finding Me, Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, The Emperor of Gladness and The Covenant of Water. 00:00:00 - Welcome authors Barbara Kingsolver, Abraham Verghese, Viola Davis and Ocean Vuong 00:04:30 - Finding characters 00:06:50 - Becoming a writer 00:09:00 - How Viola became a writer 00:12:48 - Viola reading her memoir 00:17:20 - What writers are noticing about right now 00:22:30 - What does being a bestseller mean 00:28:00 - Greatest compliments about their work 00:39:50 - The magic of writing 00:43:00 - When is a sentence done? 00:47:30 - Finding your title 00:52:00 - Is writing personal therapy? Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Oprah Winfrey?

  This special episode of the Oprah Podcast is presented by Audible.

• 0:05Oprah Winfrey?

  So I'm wondering, what does it mean when all of you, as writers, you hit the bestsellers list?

• 0:12Speaker 02

  I'm really, really grateful that readers have embraced my work and that they will follow me anywhere.

• 0:19Oprah Winfrey?

  The opportunity to be a writer is a gift. Oh, yeah. I am living in the whipped cream of my life. Oh, I love that.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 0:28Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm gonna take that phrase and 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 love it.

• 0:41Oprah Winfrey?

  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

• 1:22Oprah Winfrey?

  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.

• 2:04Oprah Winfrey?

  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.

• 2:48Oprah Winfrey?

  First, I chose "The Poisoned 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. "Hello, Viola Davis". Hi, Oprah. And he is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. Uh huh. His novel, "The Emperor of Gladness", was my 114th book club choice. Hi there, Ocean Vuong. Yeah.

• 3:30Oprah Winfrey?

  And I want to mention a woman who's also Pulitzer Prize winner. I've also chosen her novels twice. "Oliver 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 this is a wow moment for me. Thank you.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Wow for us, too.

• 3:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, in my backyard. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So I have to say that 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?

• 4:20Speaker 03

  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 in life.

• 4:36Oprah Winfrey?

  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...?

• 4:47Speaker 03

  You know, I think when I finally arrive at the finished sentence, it's after many, many iterations. But 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, per se.

• 5:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Barbara, you're nodding.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Well, I don't like the word "gift",

• 5:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  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.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  There's, 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 will 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.

• 6:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, one of the things that I remembered that when we talked about "Demon Copperhead", 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?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  So I thought, 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.

• 7:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Because then the reader will be dropping them with him.

• 7:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And so, when did you feel sparked to this calling to write? When did you...?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Me?

• 7:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, Barbara.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  I never thought I could be a writer. For me, books were exactly as you described just now.

• 7:40Oprah Winfrey?

  My friends.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  They were my friends. They were my refuge, my hiding place. I could, I had a tree, a willow tree outside, you know, outside on our farm that I could go and hide.

• 7:52Oprah Winfrey?

  You had a willow tree.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Well, just because, because in the house, if I opened a book, then, you know, somebody, my parents or somebody would say, oh, you're not doing anything.

• 8:04Oprah Winfrey?

  You can put you to work. That happened in my house, too.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  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.

• 8:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  So 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 loved 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

• 9:20Speaker 02

  and said, you know, we know you're writing poems. You should...

• 9:24Oprah Winfrey?

  So it started with poetry?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, poems and short stories.

• 9:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Short stories.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Got it. At what age?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  In my late 20s.

• 9:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Got it. So how about you, Viola? Oh, well, you know, I'm an actor, too. Yes.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're that, too.

• 9:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes. And the other gig I have, words are extremely important, too, because words are a portal. 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." Yes. And 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,

• 10:37Oprah Winfrey?

  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. Once again, a story, right? It's always a story. I don't know why of the story. You know,

• 11:09Oprah Winfrey?

  it's just the story. Yeah. 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 extremely violent fight. And I kept thinking, why is this story? Why is it keep? Why is it keep? Why does it keep knocking on my door? So I wrote it. Took me three hours, literally, to write the story. Then I went back and I changed some words and I wrote it again. 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.

• 11:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh.

• 11:59Oprah Winfrey?

  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. Yes. 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.

• 12:31Oprah Winfrey?

  That's it. Yeah. And I find, it's why I loved when I first started reading Richard Wright. Yeah. Is I find that the simplest words sometimes strike the most powerful effect of opening up a person's life. And 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. It all begins with the words. In case you all didn't know this already, Viola narrates the audiobook of Finding Me on Audible.

• 13:14Oprah Winfrey?

  And hearing her memoir read by the Viola Davis is something to behold and a whole nother elevated experience. Let's take a listen. The imperfect but blessed sculpture that is Viola is still growing and still being chiselled. 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 in their silence in a way that is hyper-focused because of my past.

• 13:58Oprah Winfrey?

  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. Oh, 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? Yes, I had to reset. You know, it's like when your phone is messing up

• 14:41Oprah Winfrey?

  and you have to unplug it and, you know, turn it off and turn it back on or whatever. I don't know. It's, 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. You know, you feel wrong.

• 15:05Oprah Winfrey?

  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 Cs 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.

• 15:35Oprah Winfrey?

  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. So 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. Was 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. And so it was the curiosity that brought me back. Now, I always say with the book,

• 16:20Oprah Winfrey?

  that's only 30% of who I am.

• 16:24Oprah Winfrey?

  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. Wow. So what I had was what I had. And I have to say, the first sentence of the book, for me, busted it wide open. Wow. And which I can't say because I'm trying to be a lady. Well, I remembered that first sentence and I remember it going, wow. And then there were so many after that. Sucker, mother was my favorite expression.

• 17:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And at eight years old, I used it defiantly. I was a spunky, sassy mess. And when I spewed that expression, one hand would be on my hip, my middle finger in vast display, and maybe my tongue would be sticking out. I remember that sentence. I remember that. It's what, I mean, I think it's, you know, I read a lot of, I read a lot of books. People always ask me, how do you have time to read so many books? Because I don't do a lot of other things. I'm not, you know, consumed by a lot of other things. I read, I read, I read. And this is by far the best memoir I've ever, ever read. You did your thing on here. You did it. Our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you and is serving as a bright spot in your day. That means a lot to me.

• 17:50Oprah Winfrey?

  So here's the thing. I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube or wherever you podcast. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button. And that way, you won't miss an episode in your queue. You don't have to pay anything. I know subscribe usually means you're paying something, but this time, it means you just are notified when there's something new. There are many more to come that we're excited about. So thank you for watching and listening. This year, we're celebrating a milestone that's so close to my heart, I have to say. The 30th anniversary of Oprah's Book Club.

• 18:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Books continue to be one of my greatest pleasures in life.

• 18:30Oprah Winfrey?

  As a young girl, I have to tell y'all, books were my lifeline. They allowed me to know that I wasn't alone and opened a window into other worlds. And it's been one of the great joys of my life to create a book club that is endured.

• 18:44Oprah Winfrey?

  There would never have been a book club had there not been you as an author. Really?

• 18:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And thrived for three decades.

• 18:51Oprah Winfrey?

  From the river!

• 18:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Millions of readers have come along with me reading selections that just immersed us in other people's lives and hopefully ignited something within us. That same spirit lives in every conversation we have here on the Oprah Podcast. Our friends at Audible are helping honor our big 3-0 by featuring our official Oprah's Book Club selections along with the 30 books I love as audiobooks. Audible doesn't just keep you entertained with incredible audiobooks and podcasts. It genuinely enriches your life. You take something away from every story. And because it's audio, you can listen to these stories wherever you are. Stuck in traffic? On a walk or a hike?

• 19:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Winding down before bed? When you find a story that speaks to you on Audible, it stays with you. That's the whole idea. My deepest, profound, heartfelt thanks to Audible for presenting this special episode of the Oprah Podcast. Audible, stories that speak to you.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  New members can start listening to Oprah's Book Club audiobooks and more with a 30-day free trial.

• 20:02Oprah Winfrey?

  And listening to the excerpt of your memoir sparked this question for me that I'm going to ask you, Ocean, now.

• 20:11Oprah Winfrey?

  You say in there that you pay attention to other people. And one of the things that I admire most about all of you as writers is your attention to detail. Whether that is of other human beings who eventually, obviously, become characters in your stories or whether that is the landscape. I mean, the first chapter of your novel, The Emperor of Gladness, the landscape is its own character. And I'm curious what it is you're noticing about being human right now that the rest of us are overlooking?

• 20:52Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh. Thank you so, so much. I, I think there's a lot of self-fear. There's a lot of self- Self policing, you know, there's this. We live in an age of perennial judgment. We don't know when we're going to be filmed, who's filming us. And especially for young people, it's created a lot of hesitation about acting and acting as a human being. And I think what requires of us, especially when you you take a chance to be a novelist or an actor, you're daring something into reality. You're rolling the dice. And I think our surveillance culture around social media

• 21:37Speaker 05

  has stopped a lot of us. And it's not just young people. It's adults, it's older people. It's now, how will I be judged forever? And human endeavor is about the endeavor of risk. Will I risk being a fool in order to go after the thing? And I really related to that excerpt by Viola's book because it really is, you know, about can you push through shame to realize that there's something beyond it? And I think on my best days as a writer, I don't always have these days. On my best days, I get the work done because my desire to have a voice

• 22:22Speaker 05

  outpaces my terror of being alive. It's just one foot ahead. Not every day you get that. Sometimes the terror wins and you have to lay down. But I think right now, we have built a culture that has induced more terror than desire to take risks.

• 22:45Oprah Winfrey?

  And you were saying, you shared that with me, that your students, you're teaching at the university, and that so many times the students don't even speak up now because they're afraid of the risk.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. They, you can see it in their body posture. There's a shame embedded in even being an artist, in trying something.

• 23:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Because afraid of what, being canceled? Afraid of being?

• 23:12Speaker 05

  Being judged for the attempt at sincerity. I think sincerity is a tricky thing in our culture because the person who is sincere has believed in something.

• 23:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 23:24Speaker 05

  And only someone who has been duped believes in something. So cynicism is a kind of fake intelligence. So you perform cynicism. You say, ah, that can't be true. I don't believe, I'm gonna stay on the line and judge everybody else.

• 23:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  But the artist has to put the step forward and run forward. But it's easy to judge people who run ahead of you and say, oh, look, they all bought the idea and now they're trying too hard. So to be a tryhard is to be a kind of loser who's been duped into the endeavor.

• 23:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  And as Barbara said, I think the hardest thing I've ever done is try to write a book. It's like when I sit down, like ancestors, grandma, mama, please come. I'm gonna need everybody in the room.

• 24:11Oprah Winfrey?

  So you don't see it as a gift? You don't see it as a gift either?

• 24:13Speaker 05

  I tell you, the opportunity to be a writer is a gift.

• 24:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  I am living in the whipped cream of my life.

• 24:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, I love that.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 24:24Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm gonna take that phrase and may or not, 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.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  I love it. You get, you order a sundae, it comes, you don't expect the whipped cream, but then when you get it, it's that extra. And I don't know about y'all, but I'm the kind of person, if there's some sand in my whipped cream, I'm going, it's going down.

• 24:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  So as tough as, you know, life as a writer is, it is a gift to be able to do it. But the vocation itself, I agree with Barbara, is not a gift. It's hard work, it's honoring your family, bringing dignity to your community, and you can't do that carelessly.

• 25:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  But the opportunity to wake up and say, I get to dream.

• 25:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, it's so interesting. You mentioned it's tough as a writer because I read someplace, it's like 89 to 92% of the books that actually get published, we don't even hear about them. We don't even know who those people are. So to be known as a writer, to be awarded as a writer.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  To make a living as a writer.

• 25:32Oprah Winfrey?

  To make a living as a writer.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Is extraordinarily rare.

• 25:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Is pretty extraordinary.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:38Oprah Winfrey?

  So I'm wondering, what does it mean when all of you as writers, you hit the bestsellers list? What does that mean?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  You know, it's a moment of disbelief. Do I really belong? I think it's, again, that sense of shame is prevalent. And you think, am I a pretender? Am I, did I just?

• 25:59Oprah Winfrey?

  How could you be a pretender? You have it. How could you be a pretender?

• 26:03Speaker 03

  But I think, you know, there's a lot of us walking around in the world with a sort of elemental wound that says, you don't quite belong, you don't have what it takes. And speaking for myself, I went into medicine because, like many people that go into medicine, to heal your woundedness by caring for others. So you have this sense that you're never quite there. And so I think the moment when you called me, the moment when this book hit the bestseller list, it's a bit overwhelming. And you have to actually rise up and realize that you need to own this. You are now, you can't sort of make excuses for yourself. And, you know, they're all shock stuff.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  This is you, you did it, and you should celebrate and take that moment, which is something I didn't do often enough, I think. I was too self-effacing for reasons I don't even understand.

• 27:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Barbara, when that happened to you, and it's happened to you many times, when you hit the bestsellers list, what does it mean? And now there's the expectation that you're gonna hit the bestsellers list. So that's even.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  It's daunting. It's scary. I'm an extremely introverted person. I'm gonna say that most fiction writers, most people who choose to spend eight to 10 hours a day alone in a room.

• 27:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  With their keyboard are introverts.

• 27:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  So the success for me is that I get to do this for a living. I get, this is the most fun job in the world. I get to get up in the morning, go to the coffee machine, go to my desk, that's my commute. I get to make up stories for a living. I get to excavate for meaning, as you say. That's what I get to do for a living. And if I do my job right, I'm gonna have this conversation with millions of people and our lives together will somehow, we'll have this communion. That's success to me.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  In the same way that I never thought I would be a writer when I grew up, I never wanted to be famous. You know, that was never my idea of success because I'm so, I mean, I was the person who never spoke in class. I hate to have my picture taken. When we were kids and we all pretended that we could have a superpower, the one I always chose was invisibility.

• 28:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 28:41Speaker 02

  I still would choose it. So for me, the public part of writing is the hard part. And I don't want to sound ungrateful or ungracious. I'm really, really grateful that readers have embraced my work and that they will follow me anywhere. I don't write about the most commercial things, the heart of darkness, you know, child abuse, whatever, that readers will trust me and trust my earnestness. I love what you said about the risk of belief, that I can be earnest on the page and take that risk and people will follow me there. So I didn't hitch my wagon to those stars of bestseller

• 29:26Speaker 02

  or this or that. I was just so happy that I got to, you know, got enough royalties from the first book to write the second one and so on. It just seems too good to be true, that this whipped cream life keeps going on.

• 29:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Living in the whipped cream of our lives.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  I doubt me. Actually, I'm lactose intolerant, but that's okay.

• 29:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, me too. But there's coconut cream.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  We'll go with it. But, you know, it's just like, I can't believe it's real. And I don't want this to be about me, to shine it on something else. What the book is about. If I could write a book that helps outsiders understand Appalachia.

• 30:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Appalachia, yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  And to stop making fun of us, to stop seeing us as a joke. Understand what was done to us. That's about my people, and I can feel proud of that. I just am not a person who can, I don't know, strut around and say, "Look at me." It just doesn't work.

• 30:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, that's good. That's a good thing. One of the greatest compliments, I think, I remember receiving is, Ocean, when you were telling me that you and your mother, who was a manicurist and ran a manicurist shop, would sometimes, I would be the third person in the shop on the days where there wasn't a lot of business, or on Mondays. And that the women in the shop, when the Oprah show was on, would leave and go to the bookstore when I was announcing a book. That was just one of the greatest compliments. And I'm wondering, what's one of the greatest compliments you've had from people who've read your story and shared what your story meant to them? I'll ask you that first, Ocean, and then you, Violet.

• 31:17Speaker 05

  The greatest compliment, I think, is when someone says, "You've articulated a sentence which is available." Words are available to all of us. They weigh nothing, and yet all of us are here because of it. You know, it's a kind of a magical thing.

• 31:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 05

  When a reader says, "You used a sentence to confirm my life."

• 31:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  And I never sit down with that goal because I'm not presumptuous enough to believe I can confirm anybody's life. But what you realize is that when you build a book, you kind of build a town square where everyone can embody. And a reader can stand in the place that you've built and say, "This feels like a confirmation of the life I've led." It truly feels miraculous. And I think that it's not about, you know, craft or how well you've done something, but that simply, "You've made my life feel realer to me than I thought was possible." And again, that's not something one sits down at the desk to do.

• 32:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I call that, for you, poetic literature. You have this great ability to capture life on the fringe for people and to look at people who have been marginalized in a way that makes them feel like they're not just leading ordinary lives, but that there's something extraordinary in their humanness. That's, I think, one of your gifts.

• 32:39Speaker 05

  Well, I relate to what you said, you know, in your book club and on the show, because I think, on the most fundamental level of being a novelist, you can talk about craft all you want, and that's great. But at the fundamental level, I don't think you can be a successful novelist if you're not interested in people. You have to truly be invested in human beings.

• 33:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:01Oprah Winfrey?

  The same thing for an actor. Same, I was about to say that.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  And that's what you've done on your show and now. And I think it's the same work, it's just a different medium.

• 33:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. So what's been the most gratifying for you? When people just say, "Me too."

• 33:16Oprah Winfrey?

  That's it. That's the hook. You know, the thing about, um... I never want to say anything that's full of crap.

• 33:28Oprah Winfrey?

  But I also a little bit want, don't want to make myself look bad.

• 33:33Oprah Winfrey?

  But the thing about, um, writing a book that I feel lands and getting accolades for it. You're always driven by this incredible imposter syndrome when you're in the public. You are. You're afraid of being misunderstood, you're always misunderstood. People want to put greatness on you, and you always want to. Yeah. It's like, really? Am I great, or am I really crappy? All right? So you get the accolades, and you're like, phew, they didn't find me out.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:11Oprah Winfrey?

  But then, then there's another peel that's underneath that. Okay? Because once again, it goes back to the constant asking of the why. Why do you feel such a need to not be an imposter? Why do you feel the need to get the accolades? And it goes back to Icarus, right? Who wants to be as close to God as far, and then he gets burned up. All right?

• 34:36Oprah Winfrey?

  We want to justify our existence. We want to believe that we were wonderfully and divinely made as just who we are. We want to feel worthy. Listen, I can't go back to the past and change the fact that, you know, I wore soiled underwear for weeks, and I would never comb my hair, and all of my teeth were rotten. I can't change that by getting an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. So I have to have some sort of reconciliation that God loves me too.

• 35:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Even with the soiled underwear. You know, it's like Joseph Campbell said. He said, "I never met a human being that wasn't extraordinary."

• 35:32Oprah Winfrey?

  I have to believe that I am extraordinary without all of that stuff. I think that's what... So when someone even says, "Me too," I'm like, oh, okay. So you're going through that too? So it's a connection, it's a connection to feel not alone. Yeah. And it's a connection to feeling like that extraordinariness of life comes from just being you. You. That simple. I know that's a hard thing for people to embrace. I always say, when I won the Oscar, when I won the Oscar, I always compared to buying a car. I say, "As soon as you buy a brand-new car, you drive it off the lot, it starts to depreciate in value."

• 36:17Oprah Winfrey?

  That's what it felt like. I'm like, oh, man, I got an Oscar. Okay, okay. What am I supposed to do with this now?

• 36:26Oprah Winfrey?

  But that's what I'm supposed to do with it. Yeah. That it's just a physical manifestation of something that I should already feel inside. Yeah. I don't need the gold statue to be able to justify that. How about you, Barbara? The greatest compliment from your readers? How you make them feel?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  I think we're probably all going to say about the same thing. That when someone says, "You saw me."

• 36:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  And that has, over the years, taken so many forms. After Demon Copperhead, I got letters from kids who came up through the foster care system.

• 37:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Right, I'm sure.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Who said, "How did you know? I didn't think anybody knew what this was like." Or from people who had gone through addiction or who had lost a family member. People who have been through really hard things that I, in fact, haven't... I mean, I was not, I didn't grow up in the foster care system and so forth. But when people with these very specific painful experiences tell you, "You got it, you saw me," that is, that's a remarkable compliment because I don't know whether you, you know, you say, "We're not setting out to do that." Maybe not specifically. And there's so many specific ways that people do feel seen. But there's a quote from James Baldwin that I really love,

• 37:48Speaker 02

  and I'll try to get it almost right. He said, "It was through books that I first understood that the same things that tormented me tormented all the other people in the world and all the other people who've ever lived." It's that torment. It's interrogating our torment. The things that worry us the most are the things that connect us. So when somebody says, "You saw me,"

• 38:20Speaker 02

  I feel like I've done my job. I've reached through that portal, understanding that everybody who reads a book is having a different experience. And they're bringing their own experience and their own torment, and their own dreams and wishes and regrets. But they've found something in there that validated what they needed the most.

• 38:45Oprah Winfrey?

  How would you answer that, Abraham?

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Well, one of the nicest compliments I ever got was for my first nonfiction book, set in the territory Barbara writes about so nicely. Someone said to me, "You know, I lived in this town all my life, and I never saw the things that you saw. I mean, I was just blind to them, and you brought them out." And I always thought that the very thing that had made me feel inadequate, being an outsider, you know, never quite getting all the rituals of Friday night, pass some pie, or whatever it was, were also an advantage. I always had this sense that being an outsider was a disadvantage. But as a writer, I think I saw things that others were blind to.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  And this was just a good feeling, that I got that right. And maybe I was blessed to be able to see it. But the other great compliment that I've received, I think, is when someone writes to me saying, typically a college student saying, "Because of your book, your novel, I want to go into medicine." And that just, I mean, that, to me, is worth more than anything. Because my calling to medicine came from a book. It was one book. You know, and I think that's what books can do. One book, as someone says, can break the ice of the frozen sea. One word. It was that sense of one book that just launched me into medicine. So when I can do that for somebody, I save those letters.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  They're very precious. It's the reason I set out to write a novel in the first place was to write a book like the one that brought me to medicine.

• 40:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you know, you started in, was it East Tennessee? Was it East?

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. And you ended up writing because you weren't able to put into the medical journal what you needed to say about the AIDS patients you were treating at the time. Is that how you became a writer?

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, very much so. I think, you know, all of us in medicine are deeply embedded in story. I mean, the word "story" is in the history that we take from the patient. It's a story. So stories are all around us. But the story of that small town in the 80s, where suddenly we had more HIV patients, HIV-infected patients, than anyone predicted for a town of 50,000, the mystery of why, which turned out to be gay men coming back from the big cities after many years. But I wrote a paper describing why these numbers were so high, this phenomenon of, you know, emigration to the big city and then this tragic return. But I always felt that the scientific paper

• 41:27Speaker 03

  didn't do justice to the tragic nature of the voyage, to the heroism of the families. And it was really the desire to tell that story and recognizing the inadequacy of the language of science that made me become a writer, aspire to become a writer, try to tell that story.

• 41:47Oprah Winfrey?

  And so you ended up writing a book about that experience instead of just the medical paper about it?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Yes, indeed, yeah. And, you know, I think that was the moment that made me feel like, well, maybe I can write. But I still must confess I feel like a pretender in this company because really, these are the writers I look up to.

• 42:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Please, I don't know how you did it. I mean, Barbara, you say you go from your coffee to the writing table every day. Ocean is obviously teaching and writing. You are doing rounds and then coming home and sitting at your kitchen table at night? And you came up with this novel? I think that's extraordinary.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  I almost feel like I can't claim it because it does feel extraordinary. And when I, you know, look back at some portion--

• 42:36Oprah Winfrey?

  And that is your name on the book, okay? And that's a big book. And that's a big book.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  I was gonna say that.

• 42:41Oprah Winfrey?

  And that's a big book.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Absolutely. But I don't want to be too much aw shucks, but really, it does feel extraordinary. And that's the thing about writing, I think we'll all agree. It's hard work, but there are also moments when we're tapping into something that wasn't ours, at least for me.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  This feels like magic.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  It's just completely magical.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like a novel is 95% just sweat and 5% magic. And you never, and that thing that comes and you say, "Where did that come from?" And I know Alice Walker notwithstanding, I know it came from inside me, you know, a dream or something. But--

• 43:20Oprah Winfrey?

  But when Alice thinks-- I remember that, obviously, "Color Purple." I have the first edition. I remember reading about it as a book review, reading it as a book review in "The New York Times" in '82, getting up, putting on my shoes, galoshes, because it was a rainy Sunday, and going out to get the book. And then reading the book and then going back and get every copy that was in the store. So I passed out a lot of copies of "The Color Purple" long before I had a book club. But I think what she and so many other authors I've spoken to are talking about is that it feels like a visitation at some point when the characters remain. Do you, you don't have that feeling?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Yes, but I feel like I put them there.

• 44:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, you put them there.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  I mean, because of the-- because it doesn't--

• 44:06Oprah Winfrey?

  They didn't just show up on their own.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  They don't just show up, no. Because, you know, we invent them. We all do, we all approach it in different ways. But we invent characters who will serve our story. And they need to be very specific. They have to have just the right kind of damage. Sometimes I feel like we're psychologists in reverse. We start with character and then back up and give them all the damage that they need, you know, in order to behave the way they do. But we also, and I wonder if this is similar, I imagine that it's similar to acting. Once we have this character, we really have to get into that character by imagining what parts of our own experience

• 44:50Speaker 02

  would inform this kind of, this obsession or this animosity or this fear. I feel like I have to be as fully invested in my villains as in my heroes. I don't even believe there are real villains because everybody believes they're doing the right thing, you know? They all think, well, even if it's a vile and awful thing, they think, well, these people don't know it, but this is what I need to do. Even if it's self-serving, they say, "I have to do this." And in order to create that character believably, so that they don't just look cardboard on the page, they can't just be a bad guy.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  I have to really spend time inside the mind of someone who would do that bad thing. And inevitably, and I love redemption stories. Usually, I can come up with, you know, something in the background that twisted them, that made them this way. So by the time I've done all of that work, imagining all of this stuff that's in a life that's not even gonna go on the page, then it is a visitation, but I feel responsible for it.

• 46:02Oprah Winfrey?

  How do you know when a sentence is done, Ocean?

• 46:09Speaker 05

  I don't think it is, don't I?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. When the editor cries it from your cold fingers. That's how I know, yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 05

  Well, a book is an artifact of consciousness. And in a way, I always felt a book is like a photograph. It's a photograph of the author's mind on a certain day, usually the day when the editor pulls it out of your hands.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 46:32Speaker 05

  And says, "It's now or never, kid. You know, we're going to the factory. We're gonna print. You can't keep putting red marks on this." So I think there's a kind of friction between handing something off and also accepting that, like a photograph, a photograph captures you in time. But the day after that photograph is taken, you've changed, you've grown. And so a book feels that way. And so when I read from the-- even on the last tour, there's notes all over. And I said, "The oral tradition is my chance to redraft this sentence." I'm always taking that chance up. And I've made peace with that. I just felt like maybe the best way to write the best sentences as you grow

• 47:17Speaker 05

  is to write the next book.

• 47:19Oprah Winfrey?

  One of the things you said that I was so moved by in our conversation when we first talked about "The Emperor of Gladness," you said, "Kindness without the hope of return." Kindness without the hope of return is a theme that runs through your writing. Please explain that.

• 47:38Speaker 05

  I think, you know, growing up in tough poverty, witnessing violence, experiencing being raised by women who escaped war and having them be storytellers, they were my first teachers, you know? And they had to gesticulate. They had to change their tone. They were both actors and storytellers, all at once. And so I think for me, seeing that function, that attention is a kind of kindness, knowing that we don't know where it will go, we don't know if it can really rescue us. And I think it's easy and maybe even predictable to experience harm and tragedy and then be cruel.

• 48:23Speaker 05

  Of course, right? The world broke me, so I'm gonna break everything around me. The tough part, the really, I think, special part is to see, witness--

• 48:35Speaker 05

  Great pain and humiliation and then choose kindness, dignity and joy amongst each other. That's difficult work. And I think I want to celebrate that in my own fiction. I ask my characters, what, who will you become after this?

• 48:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 48:54Speaker 05

  And it becomes a reflection of oneself as an author. Who will I become after this tragedy, this difficulty? So the toughest thing is to be kind without expecting anything back. But the kindness itself becomes the achievement. That's the hardest act. It's so easy to be cruel. It's, it's easy to be bitter and hate the world. But the work, that internal work of saying, I'm gonna absorb this, but then turn it into a type of healing for myself, my family, my community. That's a life, a lifelong work. And I think it's still the great mystery of my life as an author. I'm not, you know, any higher than anybody else. I'm not great at it.

• 49:38Speaker 05

  On some days, I don't know how to be kind. But I think that, that mysterious ambition to absorb hurt and then give out healing and love is an extraordinary human mystery. Because it's not logical. Often, you, you, you want to be able to consolidate and protect yourself, but to then become courageously soft after tremendous harm is, it feels counterintuitive. And yet, when you meet that person, you know you've met something extraordinary. Right? We, we, we recognize it. The challenge is actually making that work. And I think it's a lifelong work. I think it's also, I'm really grateful that books take so long to write.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  If they were quick, we might, we might miss that opportunity.

• 50:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, I've noticed in a lot of my book club's conversations that authors can write the book and then have trouble with the title. Does the title, did this title come easy?

• 50:36Speaker 03

  No, not at all.

• 50:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Not at all.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  It was a very late title. But when we stumbled onto it, I remember being very excited because that word covenant, which, you know, is a sort of an unusual Old Testament kind of word. As I kept thinking about it, it, it occurs three or four times in the Hippocratic oath. It's very much in the Bible, you know? And it had this echo that felt just right for the period, for the characters, for the backdrop of the story, the setting in that Christian community. So, once I got it, it was, it was, I knew that that was it.

• 51:13Oprah Winfrey?

  You knew it?

• 51:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Did you know Finding Me before, was it called Finding Me before you found you? No. No. I don't know what it was called, but I, I actually wanted the word home in there. I did, I wanted the word home, but it didn't. Coming home to yourself? But then I was like, Finding Home. And then I was push, push, push, Finding Me, because home was me. I, I, I was trying to find a safe place of belonging within myself. So then I just sort of settled on it. And, and it worked for me. It did.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  It's a good title.

• 51:58Oprah Winfrey?

  It's, and it's perfect. And the cover is perfect.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  It is.

• 52:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and the cover was perfect. And the cover was perfect for it, looking inside yourself. Demon Copperhead.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  I come, I come to titles early, generally. Because a title is so important to me. A title of a novel is like this key that opens. It needs to be a key.

• 52:24Oprah Winfrey?

  So you knew it was gonna be called Demon Copperhead?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, the day, the minute I understood that I was going to do an Appalachian translation of David Copperfield. Well, okay, I was gonna call it Copperhead. A novel was published called Copperhead and.

• 52:42Oprah Winfrey?

  You didn't wanna confuse people.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  I just, well, I didn't wanna do this to that person, you know, that writer. I didn't wanna step on his title. So, I, I thought, okay, Demon Copperhead. Demon Copperhead, and, and that was, that was that.

• 52:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that, you know what? That's a tough title, actually. I thought that was, you know, when I first heard it, I, I literally, I read so many books, I'm like, Demon Copperhead, what is that?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's fine. All my titles are sort of.

• 53:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Poisonwood Bible, what is that?

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Everybody, I, you know, so many, even my own relatives will say, I love that devil copper. Actually, on the plane today, somebody walked by me saying, I loved your devil copperhead. I, my titles are, I love a title that has some cognitive dissonance in it. You know, a little friction, like Poisonwood Bible, to opposite things. And, you know, friction or movement. And I love a title that really goes all the way through the book, that it opens doors inside the book. So, yeah, I need to have a title early. If I don't, if I get to the end of a book and I don't have a title, I'm in deep, deep trouble.

• 53:55Oprah Winfrey?

  This came from where?

• 53:59Speaker 05

  Early on the first draft. I don't have titles when I draft, because I just don't wanna be haunted by that. So I just go into the story, but I figured, I say.

• 54:07Oprah Winfrey?

  I love how all of you work so differently.

• 54:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I said, I'm just gonna go into the story and the title will come. But when Emperor Gladys came, what, what I hope for my titles is that the meaning of the title is one thing when you see it, and that meaning should change by the end of the book.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:25Speaker 05

  So the same phrase should have a completely different meaning. And that's the poet in me. It's like the, the alchemy of language. It's the same words, it's very triumphant when you see it in the bookstore. But when you read, the process of the book should change language itself. And I think after, at the end of this book, you'd be, oh, wow, Emperor Gladys is not what I thought it would be. And so the, the book becomes a process of distortion of language, which is what language is. It distorts, it keeps changing, even though we think it's fixed. And so when, when a title could have a different resonance, a different impact at the end of the book, then that really excites me as an author.

• 55:04Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm gonna ask this of all of you. I know this is true for you, Viola. So let's begin with you. Did you discover a truth about yourself through your characters? Well, my characters. Of yourself. My life, but. Was, was it personal therapy to write it, is really the question? It's absolutely personal therapy. For you, yeah. You know what? I, I keep going back to the saying that, you know, on your last day on earth, your, your last image being the person you became meets the person you could have become. I think that's what guides me.

• 55:47Oprah Winfrey?

  The person you became meets the person you could have become.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  For better or for worse?

• 55:53Oprah Winfrey?

  That last image. And the, the reason why I'm saying that is because, listen, I'm an, I'm a mediator, according to Myers-Briggs. I'm in a very existential phase in my life. I just feel like you have to burn when you're going through any sort of anxiety, depression, which I definitely was going through with the book. I just finished a television show, you know, I'm in my late 50s. I'd gotten a whole bunch of accolades, all of that, and felt empty. The disillusionment of not really hitting that final ceiling, which was,

• 56:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I remember you said this to me once, transcendence. I feel like you have to burn. I feel there's something in you that has to like, sort of reset, to be like a phoenix and reborn, redone everything. And so I go back to the story of my father when he's beating my mom. And I had so much social anxiety at that time. That's how I see myself, even now, social anxiety, shy, introvert. You know, not as pretty as, not as whatever as. So this story keeps coming at me, right?

• 57:20Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm looking for something to sort of, once again, justify my existence, justify that, Viola, you got it, you, you got some, girl. Okay? So the story's coming, coming, coming. And in the story, I stopped my dad from splitting my mom's head open.

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 57:38Oprah Winfrey?

  And I screamed at him at 14 with my, with my baby sister in my arms, who was a year old. And I screamed with the authority of a Goliath. I just said, stop, and you give me that glass, you stop. And I made him do it. I made him give me that glass and I bashed it on the table and said, don't you ever do that. Okay, silence in me when I was writing it. And then I wrote, what I discovered is, I had it in me. I had it in me. It's the biggest discovery about myself.

• 58:23Oprah Winfrey?

  It's, you know, you talk about cognitive dissonance. I, I think that so much of what I was looking for is sort of, it's like people say, don't go back to the past, it hasn't changed, there's nothing back there for you anymore. Okay? But I never thought that shame, even if it never goes away, the pee in the bed, even if it never goes away, the social anxiety, even if it never goes away, okay? That there cannot be anything beautiful that can grow in that garden. And what I realize is, you can count it all as beauty. All of it. Every last bit of it.

• 59:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Every last bit of it is a connective tissue that makes up you. That's the hardest thing about acting, actually. Because it's close proximity to Hollywood. Hollywood is about selling tickets, putting butts in the seat, being beautiful all the time. You know, you gotta love scenes, so you gotta get thin, go to the gym, scan, face beat or whatever. And then you have your art, which has nothing to do with that. It's gotta do with the stretch marks. It's gotta do with the lines under your face. The more honest you are, the most beautiful you are.

• 59:48Oprah Winfrey?

  That's what I had to discover in that book. The beauty of the imperfection.

• 59:56Oprah Winfrey?

  And that's what stepped out at me. And especially, well, it stepped out with [BLEEP] sucker mother [BLEEP]. Because I just... Because everybody, when they write kids, kids are always beautiful in movies. You know, kids never say [BLEEP] sucker mother [BLEEP]. Get it, you know, get an F on a test, you know. But, um, yeah. Yeah. If that makes any sense. It makes all the sense. How would you answer that question? Did you discover a truth about yourself through the characters?

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  I think the thing I discovered was something that I couldn't articulate. But as I kept writing more and more, especially this book, The Covenant, and the character of Big Amachi, is my conviction that the ordinary was sacred. And, you know, it was something that I sort of kept coming back to. That the ordinary, that the goodness in an ordinary person like that, if you managed to capture it well, it was sacred. And so I felt like I...

• 1:00:57Oprah Winfrey?

  But you do that throughout the book and in all of your writing. There's no difference between the leper and the physician.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  I didn't quite get it until I was writing and shaping these characters. The sense that, you know, in their ordinariness was something precious and sacred.

• 1:01:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  You know, was something really consequential. And, you know, then the second insight was I was finding redemption. That there was no character in there that I saw as villainous.

• 1:01:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, just like Barbara said.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Because I felt like everybody has regrets.

• 1:01:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Wasn't there a critique of yours? Somebody critiqued you in saying all your characters were too good.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  I know. Which I thought was great, because then I had accomplished, in a sense, what I didn't know I was trying to, which is to say that we are sacred. And we're all looking for redemption in one way or another. So that was a profound insight that I carry with me. The sense of the sacred and the ordinary, the sense of, you know, anybody has a side that, even if they don't know it, is on its path to redemption or seeking it, they may not know it yet.

• 1:02:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And your answer to that, sir?

• 1:02:08Speaker 05

  Well, I learned a lot about relationships, being a novelist. Because I think you're called the author. You have authority. You can make people do things and move them about. But if you are a careful author, you give every character a matrix of inevitable traits. They wouldn't do this, they wouldn't do that, where they come from. And when you do it well enough, you get to a point where you say to yourself, I need this character to go cuss out her mother.

• 1:02:46Speaker 05

  And right away, you realize she wouldn't do that, though. I've led her up to this point, and I'm now, if I force her to do this, I will betray both her and the art I've made. And I started to realize, because I started as a poet. And when fiction writers used to say that, I thought, oh, come on, guys. You know, when they say things like, all the characters tell me what to do, right? And I said, oh, come on, but you wrote it. But only until I became a novelist that I realized, no. After a while, you've given them enough traits, enough background, and they start to do things that maybe you yourself wouldn't do. But that is who they are. This woman would not go and cuss out her mother

• 1:03:29Speaker 05

  because she's built into this matrix. And if I did, I would betray her. And I started to look at the people around my life. And I realized that love was about meeting people where they are. I can't change and force that change just because I think it's the better thing. I have to meet my brother, my family, where they are, in this matrix of who they become. And love, then, is a kind of grace, rather than, you know, forcing a better reality into it.

• 1:04:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I can't thank you all enough. This is like heaven for me, being able to sit with you. Thank you. Barbara Kingsolver, Abraham Vergees, Viola Davis, Ocean Bong. Thank you for being a part of this. And for our friends at Audible for presenting today's very special anniversary episode of Oprah's Book Club. A reminder, our partners at Amazon have created a storefront to make it so easy for you to find all 124 selections. Just a quick scan of the QR code right there on your screen. And thanks to all of you readers who have been with me, many of you, for 30 years. Yay! 30 years. Here's the... See you on the next episode. Go well, everybody.

• 1:04:48Oprah Winfrey?

  I hope you all have enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. To buy a copy of my book club selections by Abraham Vergees, Barbara Kingsolver, Ocean Bong, Viola Davis, and all the Oprah's Book Club selections, head on over to our very own Amazon storefront by scanning the QR code on your screen. Our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you and is serving as a bright spot in your day. That means a lot to me. So here's the thing. I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube or wherever you podcast. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button,

• 1:05:31Oprah Winfrey?

  and that way, you won't miss an episode in your queue. You don't have to pay anything. I know subscribe usually means you're paying something, but this time, it means you just are notified when there's something new. There are many more to come that we're excited about. So thank you for watching and listening.