Oprah’s Greatest Conversations with Authors: 30 Years of Oprah’s Book Club

BUY THE BOOKS! The Oprah Book Club storefront https://amzn.to/4j5y1xW In this special bonus episode Oprah celebrates the 30th anniversary of Oprah’s Book Club and reflects on how her lifelong love of reading became a cultural phenomenon. Oprah revisits some of her most treasured conversations with the writers she calls her “rock stars” and celebrates three decades of connecting readers with great books. We hear her conversations with Toni Morrison, Ocean Vuong, Wally Lamb, Anthony Ray Hinton, Abraham Verghese, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Strout, Tayari Jones, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Colson Whitehead, Elie Wiesel, Nathan Harris, and Oscar winner Sidney Poitier. Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey Listen to the full podcast: Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 #oprahsbookclub

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

• 0:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi and welcome to this special bonus episode of the Oprah Podcast. This year, we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of my book club, the Oprah Book Club. And I want to thank all of you for reading along with me for the last three decades.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Some books. Some books.

• 0:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Long before I started a book club, one of my favorite things to do was to share my love of books. And I remember when The Color Purple by Alice Walker was first published, I bought out every copy in the store in Baltimore at the time. And I used to hand them out on the bridge, walk into work to people. I would actually walk home. When I moved to Chicago, I had a backpack and I would walk across the Wacker Street Bridge with my backpack, handing out the book, The Color Purple. It didn't occur to me I could have had a book club and I'd have to be out there on the streets.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  I want to get the whole country reading again. Bring on the book.

• 1:05Oprah Winfrey?

  But back in the 90s, one of my producers, Alice McGee, and I used to trade books back and forth. And when we really loved a book, we would look up the author in the actual phone book. There was a thing called a phone book at one time. And then call the author to say how much their novel had meant to us. Because after you read a really good book, don't you just wish you could go talk to the author? Well, I thought, I'm gonna do that. Well, it was Alice McGee, my producer, who started out as an intern, actually, who said, if we are having this much fun together, why don't we just recommend the books to other people, to the audience? And I said, Alice, how are we gonna talk about books on television? And she said, well,

• 1:50Oprah Winfrey?

  if you tell the audience to read the book first, and then they read the book, and then we could all come back and talk about it. And I said, okay, let's try it. And we started out with like just five minutes because we were like scared. That scared that people wouldn't want to do it. And that, you know, and all, believe me, all the station managers were like, what? You're gonna talk about books on TV? At the time, this was a really radical idea.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Only I bought my first book and I bought it so I would have to read it.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  I love you for allowing me to be able to read something that helps me identify who I am.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  I live for the book club.

• 2:28Oprah Winfrey?

  And now, today, so many well-known people, hello Reese Witherspoon, hello Jenna Bush, have book clubs. And I celebrate them and I celebrate that because it means inviting more people to enjoy reading and believing and elevating great writers, who are my rock stars.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Our first book to read, it is a novel written by Jacqueline Machard. It is called Deep End of the Ocean.

• 2:57Oprah Winfrey?

  So in this episode, we are turning the pages through some of my most, most treasured conversations with some of my favorite authors. I have many more upcoming picks I'm reading right now. I'm always, always, always reading. I'll be announcing those new picks soon on the podcast. Our partner, Amazon, has created a storefront to make it so easy for you to browse all 120 book club selections, as well as 30 of my most memorable reads to celebrate these 30 years. So you can access it by scanning the QR code on your screen right now. And I say, thanks again for joining me for all of those books I like reading by the fire or reading under a tree.

• 3:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Or wherever you read, I'm happy that you've been reading with me. Thank you, everybody.

• 3:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I love all the books we've done in the book club. Obviously, I have to read them and then choose them. Some people love a lot of them. Some people don't. But The Bluest Eye, this month's election, is so special to me. Well, you know, I have this to say about The Bluest Eye. I remember when I announced it on the show, I was saying, if you don't appreciate, love this book, then I'm really, I have nothing to say to you. And I just, and I really do mean that. It is on my list of, you know, top five great books ever written of all time by living or dead people. And we're so glad you're still living, Toni Morrison. But I have to say, I was in an airport not too long ago and I saw an entire row of bluest eyes,

• 4:35Oprah Winfrey?

  like in a major airport. And I'm telling you, my eyes started to water because I thought, Pecola has her day. How do you feel about? I mean, I know this is the first. Does it feel like your baby has finally come into?

• 4:51Speaker 05

  I'm surprised how deeply emotional I am about this book and the characters. On the one hand, I still feel totally entangled emotionally, very vulnerable to them, to the characters in the book. And that's not good for a writer.

• 5:13Oprah Winfrey?

  As we just saw that piece where you're talking about, you know, why you wrote the book and we see all the images and the cartoons. I mean, the first time I saw that piece, you know, watching from my dressing room, I was very emotional about it and asking myself, is it, you know, some residue pain that I have? Or is it for all those girls? For the girl I once was, for all those girls?

• 5:34Speaker 05

  I think so, because I had the same feeling. I thought, why is this cutting so deeply now? I wrote the book. I lived the life. I did this. Why is it hurt? And I realized, whereas my eyes were filling up, whatever I was feeling, it was also for those girls.

• 5:52Oprah Winfrey?

  What started you to write it?

• 5:54Speaker 05

  I began to write this story ostensibly about an incident that took place when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, about this girl who said she wanted blue eyes.

• 6:06Oprah Winfrey?

  In your class?

• 6:07Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. And I, all I remembered about the moment was looking at her suddenly and seeing how extraordinarily beautiful she was. But when I looked at her and imagined her with blue eyes, suddenly the way she looked made me gasp. Oh, I thought it was, it was like a mutilation.

• 6:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 05

  The fact that she really wanted to look like a freak, which is what blue eyes would have made her look like. You know, the damage was already done for some of us.

• 6:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Correct.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  So I thought, nobody's gonna remember how it really was. Nobody's, and also, there was no book about it. Nobody had.

• 6:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Talked about it, touched it, went there.

• 6:56Speaker 05

  Yes, nobody went there.

• 6:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Nobody went there.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  And I've been told a number of times in public venues early on, I don't hear this anymore. You know, I really liked the book, but I was really angry with you for writing it and putting it, sort of putting our business in the street.

• 7:17Oprah Winfrey?

  The business of intra-racism, the business of self-hatred and self-loathing.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  And skin color fights and skin privileges.

• 7:24Oprah Winfrey?

  That we have with it, that a lot of people who are watching us right now in a lot of states don't even know exist because we all are just still black folks to them. And they don't know. Like, you all are fighting still amongst yourselves based upon grades of color.

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Right, the colors. Versus the other. And then the paper bags and.

• 7:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, the paper bag test.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 7:48Oprah Winfrey?

  No, you mentioned that in your letter, I think. I didn't, I don't know, I didn't know about that. There's a paper bag test?

• 7:53Speaker 06

  Not now, not anymore. But you know, in the 40s, in the 30s, in the black nightclubs in Louisiana.

• 7:59Oprah Winfrey?

  I never heard of that.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  If there was a black-owned nightclub and they wanted to keep the club, you know, above a certain hue. So they would hold a paper bag to entrance into the club. And if you were.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Darker than the paper bag.

• 8:13Speaker 06

  Paper bag or lighter you got in. If you were darker, you wouldn't.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  That was true.

• 8:16Speaker 06

  You know, that was a long time ago, but it seeps into the psyche.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  Oh, sure. Oh, yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  I get that. I think what I found too was, there were a lot of things. One thing was, I do, one of my daughters moved in with us when she was older and came with this message because she's dark complected, that she's ugly. And to try to tell her how beautiful she is.

• 8:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Of course.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  But I mean, the direct message.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  And that is hard because I don't know what to, you know.

• 8:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Toni says a beautiful thing about the messages that we get about who we are when a child first walks in the room. Can you talk about that?

• 8:52Speaker 05

  I said, it's interesting to see when a kid walks in the room, your child or anybody else's child, does your face light up? Or, and that's what they're looking for. When my children used to walk in the room when they were little, I looked at them to see if they had buckled their trousers, if their hair was combed, or if their socks were up. And so, you think your affection and your deep love is on display because you're caring for them. It's not. When they see you, they see the critical face. What's wrong now? But then, if you let your, as I tried from then on, to let your face speak what's in your heart.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  Because when they walked in the room, I was glad to see them. It's just as small as that, you see.

• 9:41Oprah Winfrey?

  That is what I think is so profound, because that is how you learn what your value is.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 9:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Not by what the person is saying to you, but what you feel. When I was growing up, my grandmother, because she had to work for a white family in Mississippi, and there's a photograph that I still have on my desk, or the only photograph I have of my grandmother is with her holding this white child. And when she would come home, you know, and whip me, chastise me, talk to me, you know, in not the most loving term, but every time she would ever talk about those white children.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  This was pleasure.

• 10:17Oprah Winfrey?

  It was, she was Pauline. There would be this, this sort of glow inside her about these white children. And that was when I read what you'd said, I thought, that's the message, that's when I first got it, that you are better if you are white. You can be loved more if you're white. If I were only white, she would love me more.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I read the book again last night, and when I got to the part where the berry pie falls, and here her own child is burned. And she goes, "Well, honey..."

• 10:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And she slaps her child down on the ground.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Picks her up and then slaps her again. And it was just like...

• 10:53Oprah Winfrey?

  And her leg curls underneath.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  And then we're concerned about berry juice on a dress. It's like, get a grip here. This is your child, this is your blood.

• 11:02Oprah Winfrey?

  No, you messed up my white folks' kitchen. You messed up my...

• 11:05Speaker 05

  Messed up my pie.

• 11:05Oprah Winfrey?

  You messed up my pie.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  But you didn't feel that was an exaggeration, did you?

• 11:09Oprah Winfrey?

  No.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  I mean, it's, it's... Oh, Lord. Theatrical and dramatic, but we've seen that.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 11:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Seen it and felt it. Seen it and felt it. I have, I have even felt it. How are you affected by the book, Diana?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  I think it opened my eyes. I cannot experience what you all have experienced. Even though little bits I have, I can remember being selected to be an angel in the church pageant, and being told that, "I don't think you should be an angel because you have dark eyes and dark hair." And you do know angels are blue-eyed and blonde.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  No, there is this hierarchy of race. And at the top, it's sort of a Christian figure. You know, sort of long hair, blue eyes, blonde. And then, everything else is down below, until you get to animals. So the farther away you are from that, the less value you have.

• 12:11Oprah Winfrey?

  That's right.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Thus, you have that, what we were talking about earlier, the paperback desk, the Creole lines of distinction and color.

• 12:21Oprah Winfrey?

  That we took upon ourselves.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, we took it.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  The ugliness.

• 12:24Speaker 05

  That's right. They cultivated it. They cultivated it.

• 12:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that chapter, when you talk about the breed loves and their ugliness.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  That was amazing.

• 12:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, every sentence is. You know, I read Toni Morrison a lot. Everybody knows I love Toni's writing. But I read it to open myself up. And there's not a time when I have come to your words when I have not been enhanced by the language. I mean, we were talking about, you're truly gifted. Do you not think so?

• 12:50Speaker 05

  Yes, I do.

• 12:51Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that you...

• 12:51Speaker 05

  No, I think I...

• 12:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, okay. Because you, okay, good. Really be surprised if you say, "Oh, no."

• 12:55Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  No, no, no, anybody can't.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  It just happened, I was just walking...

• 13:01Oprah Winfrey?

  No, I think that you are truly gifted.

• 13:03Speaker 05

  And I work hard at it.

• 13:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And she works hard at it. I love that.

• 13:10Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that, you know, we do lots of shows on child raising and how to handle your children. That's one of the most profound things I've ever heard. For all you moms who are worrying about dirty ears or ease your hair comb, the most important thing is, which we all felt when we heard her say it, is, do your eyes light up when your child walks into the room? Wasn't that big? That's profound. My 114th Book Club selection. We're here to talk about it today. And I just have to say, I have to stop myself from tearing up when I think about this book, because it is epic, it is poignant, it is hauntingly beautiful. And I read it back in October,

• 13:52Oprah Winfrey?

  and I still sometimes wake up thinking about the characters. The book is called "The Emperor of Gladness" by celebrated author Ocean Vuong. Welcome, Ocean Vuong.

• 14:12Oprah Winfrey?

  I want to talk to you about being this accomplished author with so many awards, hard to mention them all. At just 36, you have a wild list of accomplishments. New York Times bestselling author, a professor of modern poetry at NYU, a multiple award-winning poet, essayist, novelist, screenwriter. You also won a MacArthur Genius Grant. And English isn't even your first language. Where does this come from? This wellspring of creativity?

• 14:46Speaker 04

  I have to say, I was raised by women who were illiterate. And I think about this often. Where does it come from? I think even though they were illiterate, they were the first poets. Because they saw that when they came to this country with nothing, they realized that with language, they can make anything happen.

• 15:05Oprah Winfrey?

  So, I just want to say, you and your family immigrated from Vietnam to the United States when you were just two years old. And I know your mother worked in a nail salon for 25 years to support the family. And she watched the Oprah Show every day at 4 o'clock. That TV would be on. That's what you told me when I called you.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Sometimes, it's just us three. Me, you, and her.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  On slow days, I would answer the phone at the nail salon. And, you know, she would be there, working. And what's so interesting was that, when you called me...

• 15:39Oprah Winfrey?

  This is Oprah. How are you? What? This is Oprah. Wait, wait. How are you?

• 15:47Speaker 04

  I recognized the voice right away. I just didn't believe that you were talking to me for any, any real reason. But when I heard your voice, I said, "This is the voice I heard all my life at 4 o'clock when I answered the phone." And you know, I wanted to tell you this, that your voice was a kind of mediation for all of these women in the nail salon, both the workers and the people who went there to get their nails done. Because I saw them when they came in with their husbands, and the husbands would wait for a while, and then they would leave. And after a while, it would just be all women. And I found that their voices changed with your voice among them. And as a child, I was so interested. It was so interesting to hear speech.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  Everyone talking differently. They were more vulnerable, they were more open with each other. And I got to see my mother kind of use the show as a way to open up for herself and to learn the language. She would not always understand what was happening, but she would have this little trick where she... Every time there was like an inflected moment in the show with your voice, my mother would work on a client, she'd go, "Oh, boy."

• 17:02Speaker 04

  And then the client would, it always works. You could, any given time, you could just say, "Oh, boy." And then the client would say, "Isn't that right?" And then she would learn what was happening from them, because her voice, her head is down, she couldn't hear it. But I saw this kind of town square that your voice created, and the themes, and what was really touching for me, and I didn't understand at that time, for a community that I grew up in, working poor immigrants, reading was very intimidating. We didn't step into bookstores or libraries. It felt like an impenetrable world that was not for us.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  And it was aligned with elitism and power and institutions and higher learning that we thought, that ship has sailed for us. But when you held up the books in your show, my mother recognized that and says, "Oh, this is accessible." You're making the act of reading both accessibly dignified, but also fruitful for people who are outside of these realms of institutional elitism. And I saw the women talk about books in your show. And then they would walk across the Barnes & Noble, across the mall, and they would have languaged. And they would come in and they would say, "This is the book I want. I know how to talk about it." And there's a kind of dignified confidence to literacy.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  And I don't know if anyone has talked about that, but I think that was the major byproduct that your show did, is that it made working-class people who don't have access to centers of knowledge, they don't get to be in a classroom and have, you know, high philosophy around craft or what have you. They get to participate in the vehicle of culture. And you made culture legible to them who often don't have that chance. So I just want to say thank you so, so much for that.

• 18:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, my God. Now I'm going to cry.

• 19:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I think your mother is with us in spirit today. She would be so proud that it is now your book that I'm holding up and telling the world about her son. In 1985, 29-year-old Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with the brutal murders of two fast-food restaurant workers in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, his moving, awe-inspiring memoir, "The Sun Does Shine," is my latest book club selection. I just want to tell people who aren't familiar with "The Sun Does Shine," I hope you will get the book and read it. It's the reason why I've chosen it is this summer's book club selection,

• 19:50Oprah Winfrey?

  because I just think every person should read it. So congratulations on getting this book done. And I love that you call it "The Sun Does Shine."

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yes, ma'am.

• 20:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Because those were your words when you came outside for the first time after being held behind bars for 30 years.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yes, ma'am.

• 20:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And everybody was expecting you to say something.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yes. And you said, "The sun does shine." I never will forget that morning exactly the judge had ordered me to be released at 9:30. And it seemed as though the sun was shining on no one but me. And I looked over at Mr. Stevens, and he was saying, "Shining on him as well." And I couldn't say it. And then, as I walked a little farther, it was just as though the sun was following me. And I got up to the podium, and I said, "The sun does shine." Because I had been in pure hell and darkness for all those years. And I don't think I can even put in that book or tell you today what it's like to be on death row for something that you know you didn't do.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And to put up with everything you have to put up with.

• 21:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you know, in every story, I think people try to imagine themselves in that story or imagine themselves, you know, what would you do or have done? I mean, just how it just would eat you up inside to know that justice was not served, and now you're behind bars. So I want you to take us back, actually, to the day you were mowing your mother's lawn. And you're out there cutting the grass for your mom, because you were living at home with your mom. You were 29 years old at the time.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:31Oprah Winfrey?

  And would you say you were Mama's boy, because you sure did love your Mama?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  I am, and I still love her. And although she's not here, she will always be in here.

• 21:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, in your heart.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. There's not a day that go by, not a night that I don't take her photo and kiss and say, "Goodnight, Mom." In about 20, 25 minutes into cutting the grass, I happened to look up, and there stood two white gentlemen that I didn't know. Then they identified themselves as two detectives. And I said, "Okay, how can I help you?" They said, "We have one for your arrest." And I said, "For what?" And they said, "We'll tell you that later, but right now, we want you to put your hands behind your back." I complied, put my hands behind my back. We proceeded to go to jail. And I asked the detective at least 50 times, "Why am I being arrested?" They would not respond, would not say a word.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  And he finally turned around, the one that wasn't driving, and he said, "You want to know why you're being arrested?" I said, "Yes." He said, "We're charging you with first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree attempted murder." I said, "Oh, I ain't done none of that." And he kind of yelled at me. "Let me tell you something right now. I don't care whether you did it or didn't do it, but I'm gonna make sure you found guilty of it." And as we drove a little farther down the road, if that wasn't, I guess, insult enough, he turned around, and he said, "By the way, there's five things that are going to convict you. Would you like to know what they are?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Number one, you're black. Number two, a white man is gonna say you shot him.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Whether you shot him or not, he said, "Believe me, I do not care." He said, "Number three, you're gonna have a white prosecutor. Number four, you're gonna have a white judge. And number five, more than likely, you're gonna have an all-white jury." He said, "Do you know what that spell?" And he repeated the word, "Conviction, conviction, conviction, conviction, conviction."

• 23:38Oprah Winfrey?

  This is the police officer?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  This is the police officer.

• 23:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. Were you terrified? Did you realize the magnitude of the severity of what had just happened to you? Did you?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I didn't, because, you know...

• 23:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Or are you still in, you're just still in disbelief?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I'm in disbelief, because as I talked to the detective, the detective said something profound to me that... He looked at me, and he said, "Let me tell you something." He said, "I really believe you didn't do it." He said, "But since y'all is always taking up from one another..."

• 24:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Y'all?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Y'all, he used to work. He said, "Take this for your homeboy." And with tears down my eyes, I said, "Detective, I don't have a homeboy in this world that I would take a rap like this for." And I've always been brought up, Miss Winford, to believe that the police wanted to get the right person.

• 24:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  But this day, for some reason, they just wanted a body.

• 24:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Because your mother raised you to... She's one of those strong black women, southern women.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Believes in authority.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Believed if you worked hard, showed up, things would turn out all right for you. Just tell the truth, tell the truth, and everything will turn out all right. "Go to the police, the police will help you," is what she believed. That the police were the people to help you.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Based on what I read in the book, you never went back home.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:15Oprah Winfrey?

  I want you to take us to the courtroom. After a year and a half has passed, and you're sitting in the courtroom, and after the ballistics expert, who turns out to be blind in one eye and incompetent that your lawyer had hired, messes up so terribly on the witness stand, you knew then that you were going to be sentenced.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely. The prosecution crucified him. And when they asked him, "Did he know how to turn on the machine?" He said, "No, I had to ask for help." He said, "And once they helped you, what did you see?" He said, "I didn't see anything but my fingers." He said, "You never seen the bullets?" He said, "No, I finally seen them later on, but I seen just my fingers."

• 26:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Where did they get this guy who sounded like a buffoon?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Off the street, I believe. The DA asked him, said, "How much are you getting paid?" He said, "Well, I might get $50, I may get $100, I don't know. I may not even get anything. I just come did the lawyer a favor." And Miss Winford then, I swallowed.

• 26:21Oprah Winfrey?

  You knew it, you knew.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  I said, "They're gonna find me guilty," because my case revolved around nothing but ballistics. Either they match or they don't match.

• 26:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Can you take us to the day you heard that the jury comes back in and they say guilty? Can you take us to that moment?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Well, when they said guilty, I really lost sight for a few seconds. I was just totally in shock. I wanted to know what did they find me guilty on? And to me, it wasn't nothing but a high-class lynch. And I often tell people, two white men came and arrested me, three white men prosecuted me, a white judge sentenced me, and a white jury found me guilty. Nothing but a lynch. And everything that I ever believed in...

• 27:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Take your time.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Everything that I believed in and was taught as a child left me. I just somehow wanted to protect my mom. I didn't quite know whether she understood that I had been found guilty of capital murder and what that meant. And I didn't know that she fully understand that more than like this prosecutor was seeking the death penalty. And I kept saying, "I need somehow to protect my mother."

• 28:08Oprah Winfrey?

  There was something you said around page 65. "I wondered who would I be when this was all over? Everything good was being taken away, one small chunk at a time. Belief, family, truth, faith, justice. I wondered who I would be when this was all over? How could I be the same person? Would there be anything left after this trial? And what if they actually found me guilty? What then? Nobody believed me? And some days, it felt like the whole world, except for my mom, was conspiring against me."

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, I had taken a polygraph test and passed, and...

• 28:46Oprah Winfrey?

  And the polygraph test was not admitted?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Not admitted. And I'm saying...

• 28:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And the man who gave the polygraph test said, "This guy is innocent, this guy."

• 28:55Speaker 01

  FBI, retired FBI agent. And he said, I never forget, the lieutenant asked him, "How did he do?" He said, "If I could go by this polygraph test, I would take him out of this jail tonight." And when I passed the polygraph test, and the prosecution reneged on his words, saying, "We could use it if I passed, and if I failed it, he could use it." It just sucked every ounce of energy, every ounce of belief, everything out of me. And how, I mean, if you've been taught that justice prevail and the truth will come to light, I didn't see being convicted. I thought it meant then in the courtroom.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  I didn't know that I was gonna spend 30 years later before the truth come out. I didn't have...

• 29:44Oprah Winfrey?

  It's unbelievable. It's unfathomable. And so there was some dark nights of the soul. You went immediately into, onto death row.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:54Oprah Winfrey?

  And you stopped speaking, literally.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Three years.

• 30:00Oprah Winfrey?

  You did not speak.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Did not speak. Every time, an officer would say, "What is your name? What is your social security number? What is this?" I just wrote it down and gave it to them. And for three years, they thought I couldn't talk.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  It was as though God had taken my vocal cord and I couldn't talk. It's when I tell you, I didn't even realize that I could have so much anger inside of me.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Because of what had been taken from me.

• 30:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  And I went in this hellhole and I just knew.

• 30:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I was trying to figure out, what does time become? Time beca-- do you, are you counting the days? Is there like calendar time in your head? Do Tuesdays or Wednesdays or Thursdays or Fridays matter? If it's May or if it's December, does it matter?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  No. Time is nothing like it once were. In fact, time don't even exist.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Because you're in a place where when they time is at the end, they gonna come get you.

• 31:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  And they gonna scrap you down in the chair of the guard.

• 31:15Oprah Winfrey?

  And as it turns out, your cell was just 30 feet from the death chamber. Where men would have to take the walk down your hallway.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:28Oprah Winfrey?

  With, what, eight other cells?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Eight.

• 31:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Eight other cells, top and bottom. And walk to the death chamber. And when they were killed, you could smell their flesh burning.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And in your time there, you witnessed?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Fifty-four.

• 31:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Fifty-four?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Men.

• 31:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And one woman.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Being executed.

• 31:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Executed.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  And of all the 54, I asked the guard.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  I said, "Officer, is there anything you can give me? So I won't have to smell the flesh burning."

• 32:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Flesh burn.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  That officer looked at me. And he said, "No, there's nothing I can give you." And if there's a consolation to it, he said, "You'll get used to it." And one day, somebody will smell your flesh burning.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And it was at that moment, that very moment, that I escaped up here. I had to. And I often tell people, I kind of understand why about 11 men took their own life. If you can't escape up here.

• 32:47Oprah Winfrey?

  In your head.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  It's old.

• 32:50Oprah Winfrey?

  You can't survive.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. If you're just dealing with that every day. The reality of being in this five-by-seven cell. So what broke it for you? It was someone crying in the night at first, was it not?

• 33:04Speaker 01

  It was a man that had lost his mother.

• 33:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  And.

• 33:07Oprah Winfrey?

  He was wailing, wailing, wailing, wailing.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  And this is a man that I had lived by for three years and never asked him his name, where he was from, or anything. I wasn't there to really to get to know him about. I wasn't there to make friends. All I knew, I was there for something I didn't do. And when I heard this man crying, at an early age, my mom had taught me compassion. And it was that compassion. I hollered through this brick wall. And I got up to the front of the door and I yelled out with my voice. And I said, "Hey, is something wrong over there?" Took him a while to reply. And he finally said, "I just got worried my mother passed."

• 33:52Speaker 01

  And I told him that I was sorry to hear that other men was listening. They holler, "Hey, I'm sorry as well." And I told him a corny joke and we kind of laughed just a little bit to try to break it. And I laid back down and the next morning, I realized my voice was back as well as my sense of humor. And I ain't look back since. I used disappeared to go wherever I wanted to go and made as many people I could laugh.

• 34:22Oprah Winfrey?

  And you say, in "The Sun Does Shine," you say, "I wondered why it is that the cries of another human being, whether it's a baby or a woman in grief or a man in pain, can touch us in ways we don't expect. I wasn't expecting to have my heart break that night. I wasn't expecting to end three years of silence. It was a revelation to realize that I wasn't the only man on death row. I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with, the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not. What I knew, when you're hanging at the end of your rope, does it really matter what color the hand is that reaches up to help you?

• 35:07Oprah Winfrey?

  What I knew was that he loved his mother just like I love my mother and I could understand his pain."

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And the fact that mine was still alive. Made me appreciate her more and made me understand his loss even more.

• 35:22Oprah Winfrey?

  That first night when there was somebody crying on death row and then you ended up making a joke and recognizing that they lost their mom and had compassion and then the men started speaking to each other for the first time, right? And then you later found out that one of the people that you had been speaking to and had befriended was a man named Henry.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Can you tell me about Henry?

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Well, Henry was a Ku Klux Klan's son. His daddy was a Grand Wizard in the Klan's organization. And I got to learn the story. Henry's father was upset that a black man had got found not guilty in a murder trial. And he ordered him to go out and kill the first black man that they came across. And they came across a 19-year-old, I think it was 19. And they befriended him, got him, somehow tricked him in the car. They hung him and cut his genitals off. And when Henry was.

• 36:21Oprah Winfrey?

  This is in 1980-something, right?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yes. And as I got to know Henry and realized I didn't know who I was talking to and.

• 36:31Oprah Winfrey?

  So you all are just voices in the day and night?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Because nobody can see anybody on the row.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  And what I learned about Henry is that Henry had been taught to hate all his life. And myself along with some other blacks, we didn't judge Henry because everybody was there for accused of killing someone. And so Henry and I became friends and I kept wondering.

• 36:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Was it difficult to become friends with a man who you knew had been accused and found guilty? Not just accused, but is on death row for lynching?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:08Oprah Winfrey?

  A young black man? It was not?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  It was not.

• 37:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Why was it not?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  It was not because I personally didn't know had Henry done that. I was there on death row for something I know I didn't do. So I couldn't just judge by him being guilty and I never did ask him, "Did you do it?"

• 37:24Oprah Winfrey?

  You didn't?

• 37:25Speaker 01

  I never did ask him that. I just feel that wasn't my business. And if you did it, that's between you and your God. And let me say before I end this. Death row is the only place that I ever been where I didn't never witness racism. And I often thought about that. Why is it that I never witnessed racism here? It's because all of us had the same sentence, sentenced to death. We went to bed with the death sentence over our head. We woke up with a death sentence over our head. We all wore the same clothes, the same tennis shoes, the same whatever. We all ate the same thing, so it wasn't no different. It wasn't no need to be jealous. It wasn't no need to be racist. We all was there to die.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  And we all had to become and somehow become each other's support system. And so.

• 38:12Oprah Winfrey?

  So much so that you created a book club?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:17Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm very proud of my book club.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  I'm very proud of mine.

• 38:21Oprah Winfrey?

  You had your own book club. What gave you the idea for the book club? The fact that you were able to, in your own mind, go anywhere you wanted to, right?

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:31Oprah Winfrey?

  And you thought books would help them do it?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 38:34Oprah Winfrey?

  I heard you all read, you read James Baldwin?

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:37Oprah Winfrey?

  "Go Tell It on the Mountain."

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Yes. I loved James Baldwin, but I also read other books like "Your Blues Ain't Like Mine." Or "Go Tell."

• 38:48Oprah Winfrey?

  "To Kill a Mockingbird."

• 38:49Speaker 01

  "To Kill a Mockingbird."

• 38:50Oprah Winfrey?

  You wrote that, "We are all slowly dying from our own fear, our minds killing us quicker than the state of Alabama ever could. Men would do all kinds of crazy things rather than spend another night with their own thoughts. Bring in the books, I thought. Let every man on the row have a week away inside the world of a book. I knew if the mind could open, the heart would follow. It had happened to Henry. Look at him sitting here in a locker room with five black men who had nothing to lose. He'd been taught to hate us and fear us so much that he had thought it was in his rights to go and find a teenage boy and beat and stab and lynch him just because of the color of his skin.

• 39:35Oprah Winfrey?

  I had no anger toward Henry. He had been taught to fear blacks. He had been trained to hate. Death row had been good for Henry. Death row had saved his soul. Death row had taught him that his hate was wrong."

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:50Oprah Winfrey?

  He died knowing that.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  He died. And what I loved, on the night of his execution, they asked you two things. What you want for your last meal? And do you have anything you want to say? And I was told that Henry said, "All of my life, my father, my mother, my community that taught me to hate. The very people that they taught me to hate are the very people that taught me how to love. And tonight, as I leave this world, I leave this world."

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Knowing what love feel like.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  And I often say that if we can teach people to hate, we should be able to teach them to love.

• 40:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  And I fought society. I fought this, you take a village to raise a child. And I often ask, what was this village when this young boy was being taught to hate? What was this village when he need him the most? And so, that book club and the fact that we treated Henry no different.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  I really believe Henry left this world a better man than he came in.

• 41:12Oprah Winfrey?

  I know for you, and certainly as I read the book, one of the deepest sorrows is that your mother didn't get to see you free. And that the last time she saw you and every time she heard your voices said, "Son, when are you coming home?"

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:25Oprah Winfrey?

  "When are you coming home?"

• 41:26Speaker 01

  She would ask me that. And I lied to her every time she asked me. "Momma, they working on it. They just gonna take some time." And at some point, I didn't know what's my mother trying to protect me. I knew I was trying to protect her in the truth. And I couldn't say, "Momma, next year, next month." And the night I found out that my mom had died,

• 41:55Speaker 01

  I really didn't give a damn whether I live.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Because I truly believe

• 42:13Speaker 01

  that my mom died of a broken heart.

• 42:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  I guess in some way, I feel like she, I often say she got tired of waiting.

• 42:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And she left this world. And that night, I had called Mr. Stevenson. And I told Mr. Stevenson, I said, "I don't give a damn about this case." And I said, "My mom gone, and I don't see myself in this world without my mom." And without saying, "Thank you," without saying, "I appreciate," I just hung up. And that night, as I tried to sleep, it was as though my mom came in and sailed and stayed in my ear all night long. And I could hear her saying, "I did not bring you up to be a quarter." And that night, I could hear my mom telling me

• 43:12Speaker 01

  that she was disappointed in me.

• 43:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Because you had been thinking about killing yourself. You were thinking about killing yourself.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:19Oprah Winfrey?

  After finding out that she had died.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  And early that morning,

• 43:29Speaker 01

  I called Mr. Stevenson. And then I said, "Mr. Stevenson,

• 43:33Speaker 01

  I want to apologize for hanging up, but I had a moment of weakness. I want you to give the state of Alabama all the hell you can give."

• 43:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Finally, after Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative taking on this case, 16 years later, after they took on the case, you finally are released after he goes to the Supreme Court.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yes, ma'am.

• 44:03Oprah Winfrey?

  And he was just asking the Supreme Court to review it.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:07Oprah Winfrey?

  And in their review, they made a decision.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:11Oprah Winfrey?

  What did you feel like that day?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  I cried like a baby right there in front of all the other inmates that I didn't know. And I got back on the phone, and I said, "When?" He said, "I'm headed back to Birmingham." And I can't tell you exactly, but I'm gonna find out, and we'll know. And he said, "I'm gonna talk to the judge," and he did. And the judge wanted to keep me in one day alone. He said, "No, I want him out as soon as possible." And I got out on Good Friday. And hadn't been to like a regular church in 30 years. And that Sunday, I was able to go to my first Easter service. And every Good Friday is my anniversary.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  And so, had it not been for Bryan Stevenson, God sending me his best attorney, I wouldn't be sitting here, I wouldn't be in this world. The state of Alabama knew that I was not the person. They knew that God didn't match. And to this day, no one in the state of Alabama have had the decency to apologize to me.

• 45:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Would it mean something if they did?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  It would, for this reason. It matters to me that the victim family think that I'm still the person that killed their loved one. I think they deserve truth as well. And it would mean to mean that

• 45:34Speaker 01

  for a society that believe in the death penalty, we do send innocent men and women to death row. And just to hear the authority, the system say we made a mistake would mean a lot to me. And it won't give me back what I lost, but it would mean a great deal to me for them to say, "We're sorry. We made a mistake, and we promise that we will not do this again."

• 46:02Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm here in Poland at the Auschwitz death camp, where it's estimated that 1.1 to 1.5 million people perished here in the Holocaust. Most of them Eastern European Jews. It is here, right here, on this track, railroad track, leading into the camp, that a young teenage boy arrived in a cattle car with his family, friends, and neighbors in 1944. That young boy, Eli Wiesel, lived to bear witness to the evil of man. Prisoner A7713 from Szeget, Hungary,

• 46:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Eli Wiesel, was just 15 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz. Years later, he would write his firsthand account in what has become one of the single most important books of our time, Night. Now, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, prolific author, professor, world-renowned humanitarian and Holocaust survivor, Eli Wiesel returns to Auschwitz to meet me and walk these hallowed grounds. When here, you will notice, the professor speaks very softly, allowing the silence to have its space. And as we walk, the memories seem to come in waves

• 47:23Oprah Winfrey?

  as he recalls that first night in 1944 at Auschwitz.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  What a place.

• 47:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, what a place, what a place. What is it even coming back now, difficult?

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Each time I come,

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I try not to speak for a day or two or three. And just to go back and find the silence that was in me then. And I say to myself, "How many of us did not live

• 47:57Speaker 01

  and simply vanished?" Look at this place, the immense reality of the place.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  It's a universe.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And when you think of the numbers, a million, a million and a half people. Just think country, that whole city that has a million and a half inhabitants and simply vanishes. And so, I think of that. I come here and try to see the invisible and try to hear the inaudible. And I always see what I had seen the last time I was here.

• 48:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Do you think the ground speaks? It carries its own energy here. It has the voices of the dead, do you think?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  I'm convinced of that, that some voices are still here.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  I think the souls are here. I think that they listen, they cry, they mourn.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Look, this is the largest cemetery in recorded history. And what do you see? Nothing.

• 49:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Nothing.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  But the cemetery is in our heart.

• 49:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, it's huge.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  It's huge, huge.

• 49:14Oprah Winfrey?

  I am stunned at the vastness of it. It's huge.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  It was meant to be huge in order to receive so many millions of people.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  I remember the first impression I had when I came. When we came, it was at night, midnight. And it was with all the lights on, projectors, dogs, shepherds, German shepherds, assassins with machine guns. But I think the vastness.

• 49:44Oprah Winfrey?

  I bet.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  The vastness of the whole place.

• 49:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  And we didn't know. That's the thing. We had no idea what Auschwitz was. We never heard of what Auschwitz was.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Nobody knew what it meant.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Look, if had we known, we would have run into the forest.

• 50:01Oprah Winfrey?

  So this is about where you arrived, right?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  We arrived here, that was the ramp, yeah.

• 50:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Where the platform was. And what did you think or imagine?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Nothing. But you just thought, "There was..." You saw it. The ordinary horror of people with machine guns starting to shout. Literally, a minute later, saying first of all, families together, then men alone. They didn't have time to say goodbye to each other. Men to the left, women to the right, eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet, that was the moment I left my mother. I didn't know that this was the moment in time and the place that I was leaving my mother in Sipora forever.

• 50:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Where were you separated from your little sister and your mother?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, yeah. My sisters, the two older sisters, my grandmother and my little sister. I remember her because she had a red coat that she got for holiday.

• 51:06Oprah Winfrey?

  A little red coat?

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And that's when I saw them, I saw them disappear all of a sudden. Left, they went to the right. They went to the crematorium, that was the crematorium.

• 51:20Oprah Winfrey?

  That was the crematorium?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But we had no idea, no idea, even afterwards, we had no idea. And some inmates said to us, you see, they said, "But families," they looked, and they said, "The flames." We still had no idea. The mind refused to accept it.

• 51:41Oprah Winfrey?

  They looked, it could be true.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  It could, it could, actually.

• 51:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I appreciate how in the introduction tonight, you say that language became an obstacle in trying to describe it because there are no words.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  There are no words.

• 52:00Oprah Winfrey?

  They were throwing babies alive into the inferno of the ditches, and you saw it with your own eyes, that's what you write in that, with your own eyes.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  I began doubting, I said, "I cannot believe that it was true." If so, I would have lost my mind forever.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Years later, I was wondering what is it, what these people, inhuman, but they were human? And I said, "What was?" In those times, it was human to be inhuman. I have seen so many things in my life, I still don't grasp it. It must have some meaning, positive meaning. That evil can triumph, we knew that.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  That humanization exists, we knew that. But of this, it was a scandal on the level of creation.

• 53:09Oprah Winfrey?

  I know. I have no answers, and all these many years later, you still have no answers.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  I have no answers now. Now I have certain indications that suffering doesn't give any privilege.

• 53:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  That's my, if I have moral philosophies, I don't think I should accept other people's suffering because I suffer, just the opposite, because I suffer, but don't others to suffer. But this is not an answer.

• 53:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you know, I'm trying to make sense of it all. It doesn't, it's a lot to take in, and it just, even seeing it makes it more real, but I can't even get my brain around it.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Oh, brother, death of one child makes no sense.

• 54:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  The death of millions, what sense could it make? Except if you are here, now we know.

• 54:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Now we know.

• 54:20Oprah Winfrey?

  And I think that part of the reason for knowing is to, wherever it's happening in the world, for people to know, it's happening, it's happening, it's happening again.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Whenever people could try to conduct such experiments against other people, we must be there to shout and say, "No, we remember."

• 54:48Oprah Winfrey?

  No, we remember. We're delighted to be in Maya Angelou's house, celebrating "Heart of a Woman." Thank you, Ms. Maya.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Thank you very much, Ms. Oprah.

• 54:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Of all the places in this world, Maya Angelou's house is most like home to me. This is still where I feel most at rest, most at peace, and where I feel the greatest sense of my own possibilities. You just can't leave this home without feeling changed in some way and touched by Maya's wisdom. So tonight, I'm thrilled to get to share that special feeling with four women I know only through their letters. I was saying earlier to Maya, I couldn't get, I couldn't get selected in my own book club.

• 55:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Because I would have wrote, "Dear Ms. Angelou, you wrote a very good book."

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Very, very.

• 55:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Very, very, capital V, underlined twice. I really did like it a lot. I thought your life was very good. You all, the Olympics team. Because the letters were really just extraordinary. And we're going to start with Cheryl, who's going to read hers, so that those of you who are out there who said, "I wrote a letter," and I know I'm as cute as any of those women who are there, you can hear why we thought that their letters were so, we were so impressed with their letters.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Dear Oprah, I have learned through rereading "Heart of a Woman" that in the quest called life, I am constantly in search of the best me, though I will never really find her. And maybe it is the genius of the Creator that I'm not really meant to find her here in this life.

• 56:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Only five minutes in, and we were already booing and hooing at Cheryl's letter. And after each woman read, we got another dose of Ms. Maya's wisdom.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Some folks think that you have to be very educated to be eloquent, extremely blessed and talented to be eloquent. There's nothing more eloquent than a parent saying to a child, "I love you." That's eloquence. A lover saying to a lover, "I love you." That is pure eloquence.

• 57:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Then it was Sherri's turn.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  I spent the Saturday after your announcement quietly reading in my room and being grateful for having Maya Angelou in this world. Her strength, courage, and spirit shown throughout this book, but most importantly, I know why she says, "Phenomenal woman," because she sure is. And thanks to her, I am proud to call myself woman. Oprah, thank you for the opportunity to share this with you and for all the great things you do in the name of women. Sorry, today I am grateful for you.

• 57:42Oprah Winfrey?

  But it was Beth's letter that just reached down and grabbed the heart of every woman at that table. These next few minutes are about as profound as it gets.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Dear Oprah, I don't know when I first started reading Maya Angelou's books and poetry, but I do know that when I was 13 years old, she literally saved my life. I was raped by a family member, and I was suicidal. That's when Dr. Angelou saved my life. I had a copy of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." As I read her story, I found someone who understood my feelings. Our experiences were different, but the feelings were the same. She knew me, even though we had never met. I clung to that book like it was my lifeline.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  At night, I tucked it under the mattress. As the abuse continued, I knew that under my mattress was the writing of someone who knew what I was enduring. I was not alone. She understood my terror, my pain, my fear of telling anyone what was happening to me. I had no one I felt I could tell. So I talked to Maya in my head. I told her. I know to the core of my soul that Dr. Angelou's book kept me alive. Reading about her courage, I knew that somewhere within me was the strength to survive. It has been many years since those events.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  I am an English teacher and am very happy with my life. I have read every book and poem published by Dr. Angelou. I have taught many of her works to my students. Her books and poems are words I cherish and ponder and meditate upon. Would you please tell her that Beth Alexander says, "Thank you for my life"?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Thank you, dear God. The truth is, you know me to be an inspiration. And look at you, you're a teacher. We have no idea the range of your influence. Now, I had someone who went before me. I didn't make it up. Someone went before me. And it is my blessing to have Oprah as my own chosen daughter, friend, and who she influences, and who you influence, who you influence. Who knows?

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  The thing is to be totally present all the time. Have the courage to have courage and say it all the time, that life is fantastic, that it is the pit, sometimes it's horrific. Oh, each time, you must keep pulling yourself up. Somebody's watching you. Somebody you don't even know. You have no idea who you will influence. It didn't occur to me when I wrote "Caged Bird" that I would really, in time, have this particular kind of influence. Some of the books cost me so much.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  One in which I admitted that I'd been a prostitute.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  All I knew is, I had to tell the truth. I didn't have to tell everything I knew. But what I did tell had to be the truth.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  So, to tell the truth liberates. That's what it does. It reminds human beings, all of us, that human beings are more alike than we are unalike. And everybody's been through something. Somebody's going through something, and I understand it. I am capable of understanding.

• 1:02:07Oprah Winfrey?

  And that was just the first 30 minutes. Listen, we have moved into the place. We haven't even had no soup yet. Listen, we need new napkins, and we haven't even had any soup yet.

• 1:02:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Coming up, we finally get some smothered chicken on our plates, and we find out just how strong the heart of a woman is when you mess with somebody's son, especially Maya's son. Honey, please.

• 1:02:46Oprah Winfrey?

  As I said earlier, you can't leave Maya Angelou's home without feeling changed in some way. And I assure you that all of us who were there, camera crew, producers, everybody, left feeling better about themselves and their lives. I was hoping that this show would be able to affect you all who watch it as well. So, let's get back to our dinner. Claire, let's hear what you have to say.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Dear Oprah, for the past few years, I have been just a little too comfortable taking care of my veuse, washing, cooking, cleaning, and ironing his bed sheets and undershirt.

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  They don't even do that anymore.

• 1:03:22Oprah Winfrey?

  I've been telling her that all day, but I have to find her something to do. I know we should. Undershirt! You're ironing the undershirt!

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  However, after reading Heart of a Woman, I am now fueled with the desire to slap myself into shape, to set my mind, to continue living my life to its fullest. Ms. Angelou has never laid eyes upon me, nor I her, but she knows me. Every time she set pen to paper and thought to herself that her words would touch someone in a positive manner, she thought of me. And when she thought of at least one who might be helped by the truth she told of her life, she called my name out loud and told me that it would be all right. I may not be chosen to have dinner with Ms. Angelou, and if I'm not, please tell her for me that I said, "Thank you."

• 1:04:14Oprah Winfrey?

  I am so touched by the graciousness of all of you. And when you say, you know, "Even if I'm not chosen, just say, 'Thank you,'" that is just the best. It's just the best.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  What is strengthening, heartening, is to hear a younger person, a woman, a man, white or black, to say, "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thank you, Ms. Angelou." There is nothing greater, nothing, nothing greater, than to have somebody say, "Thank you." You see, the statement is, "I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me."

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  It's the most important, one of the most profound statements.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  And if I can say that, and someone hears it and says, you know, "There's something that I must admit I understand, I comprehend."

• 1:05:34Oprah Winfrey?

  And that's what the heart of a woman is.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 1:05:37Oprah Winfrey?

  That's what it is.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 1:05:39Oprah Winfrey?

  And is he... Don't you believe, though, that the heart of every woman, and man too for that matter, but the book is the heart of a woman, that it really is the same? That's why I try to tell people. It doesn't matter how famous you become. But the heart of every woman is the desire for joy.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. And to be there.

• 1:05:58Oprah Winfrey?

  And to be there.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  And sometimes, to be there is to be difficult.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  It's not just to be there to submit.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  At some point, to be there is to say, "No, not me." "Include me out, I'm totally here."

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  "Not..."

• 1:06:24Oprah Winfrey?

  "No."

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  "No."

• 1:06:25Oprah Winfrey?

  What part of 'no' don't you understand?

• 1:06:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Can we have some soup?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Can we have some soup or anything?

• 1:06:32Oprah Winfrey?

  This is what you are, besides being this extraordinary phenomenon. She is the best cook in the world, honey. You're gonna hurt yourself.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  When I'm cooking, when I start, the moment I touch the food, I am in the food. And I think about the people who will eat it. And you can imagine what I thought about you all, never having seen your faces.

• 1:07:00Oprah Winfrey?

  We're honored.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  I wanted to make it so fine.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:07:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you could have probably made, like, I don't know, bread and water or something. It's so fine. Let's talk about how the heart of a woman and how, one of my favorite passages is on page 83, when you're going to defend your son to the street gang. My favorite part in the whole book. Isn't that one of your favorite parts? Yes. Well, see, I've known Maya for, I've known Maya for quite a while now. And I know that she is this woman. What rereading Heart of a Woman did to me is to remind me that she's been that kind of woman for a long time. So, "Jerry, I'm Ms. Angelou. I'm Guy's mother. He closed his lips and smiled, died. I understand that you're the head of the savages, and you have an arrangement with my son.

• 1:07:51Oprah Winfrey?

  I also understand that the police are afraid of you. Well, I came around to make you aware of something. If my son comes home with a black eye or a torn shirt, I won't call the police. His attention followed my hand to my purse. I will come over here and shoot Suzie's grandmother first, then her mother, then I'll blow away that sweet little baby. You understand what I'm saying? If the savages so much as touch my son, I will then find your house and kill everything that moves, including the rats and cockroaches."

• 1:08:23Oprah Winfrey?

  And you meant it.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. You can't say something like that and not mean it. People know when you're serious. Now, this is against everything I'm about. I am not anybody who knows me on my life. I don't want to kill or hurt or harm or threaten anybody. But I know this. People hear the truth of yourself, I don't care what your words are. This is the heart of a woman.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  A woman may say, "Hi, welcome home," but means something else. If you listen, you will hear what she really means.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  And sometimes, we forget that. We pretend we don't speak these different languages. A woman's heart is sometimes in contradiction to her speaking voice.

• 1:09:31Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, I think of The Covenant of Water as a spiritual revelation, a soulful mystical experience, from the first sentence to the very last. So, I am here in my tea house right now with the author, Dr. Abraham Berges. Hello and welcome. So, let's talk about the book, The Covenant. First of all, I just love saying The Covenant of Water. One of our readers, Danielle, has a question. Let's hear it.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Hi, I am Danielle Jennings. And I have to say, I absolutely loved the book. The way it was written, the way the characters were described, the events, the spaces, everything, I loved it. My question is for Oprah. How and why did you select the book?

• 1:10:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, well, Danielle, the "how" is, I have a team, a very small team, usually one or two people, who are reading lots of books and passing them on to me. And I had read many books, were all stacked on my desk. And then I came across this book, and I kept moving it from one side to the other, and moving it to the floor, moving it to another room. And then finally, one day, I just picked it up. And after the first sentence, I was drawn in. And here's the way I look at life. And I've felt this way since I was a little girl, living in rural Mississippi, often not being able to be around a lot of people, but my grandmother.

• 1:10:59Oprah Winfrey?

  And when people would come by, when bring candy, and sometimes my cousins would come in from the city, I would always hold my candy because I always thought it was better if I shared it. It was always gonna taste better. I didn't want to have the Snickers bar or the Musketeers bar and eat it if I wasn't sharing it with someone else. And I feel that way about a great piece of writing. Like, the moment I started reading this book, I then was looking for other people to share the experience with. And so, one of the great rewards for me, Danielle, is being able to have so many of you now exposed to what I first received in an uncorrected, proved manuscript.

• 1:11:45Oprah Winfrey?

  And I just love hearing all of your reactions to the book. You would have thought I wrote it or something. I don't have this gift, this talent. But understanding how a great story told well, as this one has been, can affect and open you up, just, it delights me. It gives me great joy to be able to share it with other people. And so, that's why. May I add something to? Yeah, you may add. My previous book, Cutting for Stone, was set in Africa. It had a lot to do with women and first...

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  So I prayed Oprah would pick that book. I lit candles. Oh, no. And so when it. No, you didn't tell me that. Yeah, I didn't tell you that. You lit candles. I'm telling you now, I'm a big lighter of candles. If anybody calls me to say something serious is going on with them, I'm not being facetious. I say I'm gonna light a candle. Light a candle for you. I have a picture of it, you know. I don't know what it means or, but this is what I do. This is my way of participating with them in the worry that this news has triggered. But I lit a candle, hoping that Oprah would pick my book. Oh, my. And, you know, it didn't happen, which is, the odds are it doesn't happen, but I had hoped for it.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  And so when it happened with this book, and we finished our call, I got to my knees. Because it was a reminder that, you know, God's time is not my time. No. Or our time, so that candle worked, is what I'm trying to say. That candle did not go out. That candle never went out. That's so incredible you do that. I do that, too. Yeah, but it's a, it's a meaningful thing to do, isn't it? It's a meaningful thing, yeah. What else can you do? You're far away, you get this news, you know. Let's talk about your creative process. You said that you used a whiteboard to map out the characters and the intricate plot. You shared a photo of it and your drawings are, so you, you were an artist, too? Oh, I wouldn't say I'm an artist.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  I'm very visual. I think, I think visually. When I read a description. So how did seeing the story visually help you to write it? It actually didn't help a great deal at all, you know. I think I was trying to save time and try to plot the outline. Have the architecture of a house, essentially is what I had in mind. So I would draw the characters' faces and, you know, since it's on a whiteboard with erasable stuff, I could keep fiddling with it, you know, with my fingers, wiping it off till I, till what was in my head matched what was on the board. And then I would outline these seminal events that were going to happen. But the trouble is, as I started writing, you know, I think writing is mysterious.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  And as I started putting the characters under pressure, now, there's a saying in writing that character is determined by decisions taken under pressure. So I'd put the character under pressure and they would do something very different from what I had planned. And so suddenly the whiteboard was like, you stuck a swimming pool in the middle of where the dining room was supposed to be, you know. So I'd have to go wipe it all off. I'd take a photograph first and then start all over again from this new branch point. Character is determined by decisions taken under pressure. I mean, that's a general writing maxim. It's not mine. I don't want to take credit for that, but yeah, think about it. That's life also. Well, what I was gonna say, that's life also. Yeah.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  It's not just characters that you're building in a story, but it's also our own personal character. Absolutely. Is determined by decisions under pressure. Marielle has a question. Marielle?

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Marielle, and I found the title of the book to be extraordinary and brilliant. I'm curious if you think that the only true agreement that these characters and people have in their life is death, based off of all of the sudden loss that occurs in the book? Is that what you meant by the title?

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  A lot of people have asked me that, which is so interesting, because the covenant of water comes up many times. Various characters talk about that covenant and about what water means. But I think some people are like, okay, so what is the covenant of water? Yeah, I've always felt that titles ought to be a little mysterious, that they, you know, that they're meant to be chewed on. And hopefully, as you go through the book, they begin to mean many, many different things for you. To me, the word covenant had a lot to do with the faithfulness of a matriarch and the family and, you know, that, that sort of covenant. Water, because water was, you know, very much the metaphor of Kerala, but also because this.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  I now want to go to Kerala. I hope you do. I hope you do. And, and, and this family was plagued by their inability, or of some people in each generation, to actually deal with water. So, you know, in a strange way, their covenant with water was broken until the day they finally sort out the covenant. I have to say, you vividly transport us to so many other worldly places. First, a property called Parambel. You can almost, I mean, touch and smell and see everything about this mystical setting. You write about hospitals, and you write about universities, a country club, a factory, a leper colony, an exquisite level of detail. Do you see them in your mind?

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Do you see all this in your mind when you're writing? Yes, I see them, and I'm also drawing on memories of visiting these actual places. Actual in the sense like, not the Parambel, but places like Parambel. Not the particular leprosarium, but I've certainly visited leprosariums. Hospitals are like my second home, so, you know, evoking the images of hospitals in India, hospitals in, you know, elsewhere, isn't that hard? And it's, and it's also, I, I like that sense of evoking place by going into the greatest detail about something that makes you see, smell, and feel it. It just doesn't come effortlessly.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  It takes a lot of revision to make it finally leap off the page. But place matters, and I've, I spend a lot of time thinking of place as a character, because you are shaped by the place where you're born. You know, geography is destiny. My mom, you know, single woman, Nsari, answers an ad to go to Africa to teach, and as a result, she meets my father. I'm born in Africa. I leave that continent to come here and, you know, eventually, here I am. I'm talking to you. I actually have a theory that the immigrant is given voice when they come to America, you know.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Our experiences are often the ones before we go to America, but the voice comes out because this great land.

• 1:18:48Oprah Winfrey?

  My latest book club selection is Olive Again by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Stroud.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Please welcome home and to our book club Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Stroud.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Hey, welcome home, you.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Welcome home.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  Isn't it perfect that we're discussing your book, this book, right here?

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  That's a little weird.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  It's a little weird.

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  And the original Olive Kittredge was so profound and rewarding, but with Olive Again, you took us really even farther. And people are wondering, how did you do it? How did you know it was time for Olive Again?

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  I didn't know. I had no idea. But she just showed up. And she showed up in this, you know, nosing her car into the place that you all just drove into. And.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Well, explain that to normal people.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  What that means, because I know a lot of authors, the, the, the characters, literally, you have a visitation with them.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  They show up in your, yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  I do. She just really, honestly, she appeared in my mind. I'm, I'm just trying to say that.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  You know, it was not a moment of psychosis or anything. She just, you know, I know, I mean, in my imagination, she showed up.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  And I was, I was literally checking my emails in, in a cafe, and I just, she just, she just was there. That's all I can say. And it was so astonishing to me, because I thought that I was done with her.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's so unexpected that a judgmental.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Middle-aged, seventh-grade math teacher in rural Maine has actually touched such a nerve, literally, around the world. Why do you think Olive still resonates? And what is it about her?

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  You know, honestly, for a long time, I didn't really know. I just didn't, I couldn't understand her appeal in, in a certain way, except to myself as I was writing her. But when I went out on the road with Olive Kittredge, the original one, the story where she steals her daughter-in-law's bra.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  And takes one shoe, that, I cannot tell you how many women would lean down and say to me so confidentially, you must have a daughter-in-law. And I don't.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  And you don't?

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  No, I don't even have a son. So, but what I understood from that confidentiality was that these women were confessing to nobody. And that was why they liked Olive, because people have these feelings and they can't express them, and Olive expresses them.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of people have an Olive in their life, or are Olive in their, a lot of people, how many of you have an Olive in your life somewhere? Yeah. I had to ask myself, do I have an Olive in my life, or am I Olive?

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Sometimes I am. All of my, all of my daughters think I'm Olive, because I just say what I feel.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Well, there you go.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Let's talk about the book. How do you actually describe Olive Again?

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Well, I think of Olive Again as Olive Kittredge going through the latter time of her.

• 1:22:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Life, you know, the autumn of her life. And I, I feel that Olive Kittredge grows throughout this book. And I understood as I was putting the book together, because I don't write from beginning to end. And I don't, you know, I sort of form it as it comes. And then, but I understood as I was putting this book together that I think there's a myth that we have that people reach a certain age and that's it. They're just done, they're just sort of sitting there. But it's not true. That's what I realized.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  And even she says that. She says that. You reach a certain age and you become invisible. And become invisible.

• 1:22:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Oprah Winfrey?

  And then I, and I realized, no, but it's not true because everybody still has deep feelings. They still have deep desires for whatever may be in their life or deep reactions. And, and they're, and all of this continuing to grow. So that was interesting to me.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Yes. Chapter four, Motherless Child. She saw behind her closed eyes the house and inside her was a shiver that went through her bones. The house where she had raised her son, never, ever realizing that she herself had been raising a motherless child. Now a long, long way from home. That phrase, motherless child, cuts pretty deep, right?

• 1:23:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  And that kind of self-awareness, actually, for the way she treated her husband and son. Because she did treat Henry really badly.

• 1:23:48Oprah Winfrey?

  And it's almost like she had to go through all the things she went through to reach the point of recognition in herself. She couldn't have done it any earlier, is what I mean.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Did it surprise you as the story was unfolding how this showed up as her, you know, newfound love and a way of knowing that she could have loved better? Did it surprise you?

• 1:24:12Oprah Winfrey?

  It always surprises me when I'm writing something. If it doesn't surprise me, then it's not good and I throw it out. So, you know, I'm always surprised. I'm not surprised, you won't be surprised. That's what I think. So, yes, I was surprised to, to, to realize, you know, those particular aspects of her relationship with Christopher and with herself ultimately.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  So Holly is here. Holly, where are you?

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  I'm right here.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Okay, hi Holly. Holly, you said that the passage really hit home with you because you also grew up as a motherless child.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  I grew up as a motherless child, but I had a mother. And my mother was not at all like Olive. My mother, and this is not to condemn her. My mother was very damaged. And she carried out that damage on her children, including myself. So I was a motherless child because for years, I raised myself. I mean, she taught me like the very, very basics. But then that was it, I was off on my own.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Didn't she actually tell you she didn't like you?

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. Multiple times, up until a couple of years ago. And then I decided that was enough. Yes.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  And so when you read that chapter, you felt?

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  I felt, I felt like I understood. I think that a lot of people, you know, when you hear motherhood, you know, everybody has motherhood on a pedestal. Everyone who has a child must be a wonderful person and they must love their children and express their love. And to read, you, Ms. Strout, put that on paper, that that's not always the case. And some mothers make mistakes. And you figure out that, okay, number one, I'm not the only one.

• 1:25:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  And number two, it's okay to have these feelings because, you know, at some point you start to feel bad. Like maybe there's something wrong with me.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Of course you do.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because my mother doesn't like me. Maybe I'm wrong and she's this wonderful person.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  It takes a long time to figure that out.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  Yes, it took quite a long time. So reading it and seeing it on paper, it's like, every time I do, I'm like, yes, this is me. This was my life. And this is my life going on because I don't speak to her.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Wow. How old were you when you realized that your mother actually didn't like you? Because as a little kid, you would be trying and trying and trying and trying?

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  A couple of years ago, recently, so in my 40s. I finally figured it out because she said some things to me. And I was like, you know, she told me I embarrassed her and that I wasn't as beautiful as some other women. And I'm, I'm sorry. And I said to myself, well, I embarrass her, but I'm an attorney. I'm not beautiful, as beautiful as other women, but I'm here and I'm doing whatever it is that I'm doing. It's time to stop. You know, it's time to get out of that.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Good for you, good for you.

• 1:26:53Oprah Winfrey?

  One of the reasons that I write is to try and help people understand that they're not alone in what they feel.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:26:59Oprah Winfrey?

  And that whatever they feel might have been felt and thought before.

• 1:27:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  So today, I'm excited for my latest book club selection. I really am. I read a lot of manuscripts. And I don't choose anything that I don't really like. But there are some things that I just feel resonate deeply inside that, that forever will be a part of my book language and vocabulary. And this book, Kin by Tayari Jones, is one of them. Oh, one of my daughter girls, Tondo's here, a graduate of my school in South Africa. She reads every one of my book club book picks and I always just love Tondo's take. Your take on this one?

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  First of all, I'm a huge fan of Mr. Tari. Since American Marriage, I've read the book 10 million times over. Obsessed. I might be biased, but my next of kin picks some of the greatest books I have, I have read. And again, love the story about chosen family. I've been carried on the backs of chosen family my whole life. And so I have great admiration and respect for the idea that people can step in for us and become our family without the, the bond of blood. But one thing you do, and you did it in American Marriage as well, of course, the, the letters. And they feel like little memories that you almost want to take out the book

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  and put back in their original envelopes with the torn, kind of, you know? And I, I love the fact that you, you, you have us treasure those moments and they feel so personal. When you read each of those letters, it feels like it's coming directly to you. You almost turn each page excited to see, did Annie write? Did she write today? So yeah, since we have you here, I would like to know what that structure looks like, the process of you choosing the letter writing and putting us in, in a memory box like that.

• 1:28:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, first, thank you for, all of you for such careful and generous reading. Whenever you write a novel, you're asking so much of a reader, for so much of their time. You know, we're all so busy and our attention is everywhere. So for someone to give you the gift of their time to read 300 pages, I would like to start by just saying thank you for giving me that chance. You know, I write letters. I'm a letter writer. And I, I lament that letter writing is, you know, we're losing it as a cultural form. I have all the letters. My grand, my grandfather lived eight miles from my grandmother. And just thinking these days when people didn't have cars, that was eight walking miles.

• 1:29:40Oprah Winfrey?

  And so he courted her by letter. And we have those, you know, we have that record. My mother has them in her jewelry box. It's about 50 letters. And I, I hate that we don't have that record anymore. So I think that's why the letter form, you know, comes back in my work. It's me trying to, trying to keep it alive. But also, what we share in writing is different than what we share in speaking. It's also different than what we text or email. There's a certain intentionality because you're putting it on the page for the record. And I was very interested in what these friends and some other characters, what they would say to each other on the record. I generally know what the book is about,

• 1:30:23Oprah Winfrey?

  but I don't know what the people are going to do. But this is a story of a female friendship. And I do believe that as a woman writer, at some point, female friendship, because it's such a part of the fabric of our lives, is a natural, is a natural topic.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Everybody here has a friend, right? Who's a female.

• 1:30:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Everyone has a friend. Yeah, and you have.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Even you non-females too, right?

• 1:30:45Oprah Winfrey?

  They're friends since they were infants because neither of them has a mother. Although Nisi's mother is dead. Annie's mother has abandoned her. So Annie has hope that one day she'll see her mother again. Nisi knows she'll never see her mother. So the question is really, is hope a double-edged sword? Because hope's twin is disappointment. And their lives, you know, their lives unfold. They take different forks in the road. One is able to pursue education. The other is living in Memphis, working in a bar, you know, shacking up with a piano player. But their hearts are still connected. They are still dearest friends. And it's really, I think, about also maintaining your friendships despite the fact that your lives are different.

• 1:31:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Different lives don't mean that you necessarily have different hearts. And you cannot mistake your life for your heart. Those are different things.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Wow. Why did you choose this time in, in, in American history? Because it's in, it's set in the 1950s, in the 1960s, the dialogues, the sights, the smells, all of it.

• 1:31:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I was curious about growing up in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement because my mother, when my mother was 15 years old, she participated in a sit-in movement in Oklahoma City. For two years, my mother, her sister, and some other children that went to their school, the whole summer, they sat in at a drug counter, drugstore counter. And during the school year, they did it on the weekends. And it was just a part of the fabric of their lives. Part of what I did in this book was really to try to get to know my own mother better by thinking about the circumstances under which she came of age. It helped me understand the way our lives are the same and the ways that our lives are different.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Wow. And I love this, this, this page 11, just, it spoke to me so profoundly. While I was tended to, I was never mothered. Still, the hole in my spirit made me into the girl I was and then the woman that I am. One day, I will grow a person within myself and love that little person so hard that it would bind her to me like rich dirt in the corner of a canvas satchel. And you're crying. Why are you crying? Because that was your line too? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:02Oprah Winfrey?

  We, we lost our mom when we were younger. It was really.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  It spoke to you too. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about it.

• 1:33:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I, I can't believe how well and accurately you captured the experience of what it's like to be a girl without a mom. And every line, like that line, was like, yep, my reality, that's my reality.

• 1:33:25Speaker 04

  That's my reality. And so it didn't feel even sad. It felt normal, reading it.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:32Speaker 04

  And.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Felt normal and seen and heard, like someone else knows my story. Yes.

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  Even to say that you accompanied these girls through the story was like, oh, like you accompanied me. Just the witnessing is so powerful. So one of the themes that really stood out to me is this tension between survival and belonging and how you have to sacrifice part of who you are in order to fit in because it's not just a being seen and known kind of thing, but a, am I going to be safe and cared for and protected type of thing? So what was it that you were hoping that people would take away from that tension of when do I, when do I sacrifice myself in order to fit in? Or when do I protect myself in order to survive?

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Thank you, first off, for, for sharing your experience. I think that we believe that we have to sacrifice more than we actually have to sacrifice in order to fit in. You know, a lot of times I think that we capitulate in advance, like we anticipate that we will not be safe. Like, I think that Nisi doesn't believe she'll be safe in telling her truth, but she does not know that. Like, that is a risk. I think everyone should take the risk of the truth because you may be accepted and you don't know it because you're afraid. And so that, to me, is what I, dignity is in the truth. And I think that that's the thing we have to, we think, we think we can live without dignity, you know?

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  We think I'll do this to survive. Like dignity is a luxury, but dignity is not a luxury and you only get it by being your authentic self. I think that's one of the takeaways. And the other takeaway is I really hope that we can stop being so tied to the question of biology. The question of biology is something that is decided for us before we're even born. Like, none of us chose our families. And we, as adults, we as full human beings should have the right to create a family that works for us. I'm not saying that your chosen family has to replace your family, family, you can have both, but not to feel like this accident of birth is the determining factor in your

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  life, that you can be loved by someone else, even if it's not your biological mother or your biological father. Someone else's love can be just as significant if you let it. Like, Annie is so committed to the idea of blood that she cannot experience the other love that's around her. And it was right there in front of her. It was right there, but her commitment to the, it's an idea. Like, they say, you know, you could. And then he eventually says, he cannot be seen anymore because she's, she's chasing the thing that's already there. Obsession is never a good idea. It's never. Yes, yes. You've said that writing this novel gave you a deeper understanding of your, your own mother. Did it also give you a deeper understanding of yourself?

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely, because I came to, I came to understand in writing about this previous generation, just how, how their experiences were so different than our own. Like, there's some things that, you know, I kind of blamed my mom for like not understanding my life. And I realize now, how could she understand my life? She grew up in a different world. She was born in 1943. How is she meant, I mean, the nature of progress is such that we are each in our modern lives living unprecedented lives. And you cannot expect other people to imagine the nuances of our unprecedented lives. And that's what I really came to see, that people do the best they can with the experiences that they have.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  And you have to give them some grace and credit for how hard they try. Wow, that is such wisdom. And I love how you turn a phrase like, my, on page 20, you say, my mother, rough as an emery board, looks like she was born to die. Yeah, poor Hattie. Yeah. How did you, I mean, so as you're thinking of my mother is rough or my mother is, you know, challenged or my mother, how does that come to you? Rough as an emery board? Some of them come to me right away, but other times, once I'm in the zone, like when I'm in the zone of a book, if I touch something rough, I'll become more aware that I, I'm like, that's rough. I should use that somewhere. Like, if I'm in the mode, I'm looking for, I'm looking for metaphors, I'm looking for

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  symbols. But we also have metaphors and symbols, you know, all over our lives. But when I'm in the zone, I hear things everywhere, like I'll hear a song lyric and it'll remind me of something in the book. Or I also think of ways, how am I similar to my characters? I can never write about a character who has experienced any, the book is not autobiographical. None of my books are autobiographical, but I have experienced every emotion my characters have experienced. And I'm more aware of my emotions and how they feel and where they manifest in my body as I write. I love page 94. Me and Nisi weren't sisters and nowhere near twins. I didn't have what she got, nor the other way around. What you have the same isn't what binds you.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Hearts grow strings because of what you know that's the same. What happened to you, that's the same. And when what you want is the same. Yes, that's what you're saying. You've already experienced what these characters have experienced in one form or another. Yes, and I mean, and even when they've done things that are shameful or embarrassing, I have to remember, and it also makes you humble in writing because you are not some perfect figure, moving the people around, making them do what you think they should or punishing them for being naughty. That's, you have to really think about the times when you were not in the right and how it felt to you and that you're still a good person. Then they too can be good people.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  They don't have to do everything right to be worthy of story. Brianna, where are you?

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I just wanted to say that this book felt tangible. I felt like I could touch it, I could hear it, I could taste it, I could smell it. It felt less like fiction and more like a real account of something that happened in the lives of my great grandmothers, my grandmothers, even my mother. And it really resonated with me, Annie and Vernice's predicament, because I also lost my mother as well. And even their friendship resonated with me because I had a classmate who also lost her mother and father that took me under her wing after she found out about my mother's passing and really helped me through.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  I identify with Vernice's desire to be like Mrs. McHenry and her desire to break barriers and create a different life for herself and her children and her children's children. And in doing that, sometimes you feel like you need to separate yourself from certain people or certain environments so that you don't get pulled back into a place that you're trying so hard to escape from. My question to you is, could Vernice possibly have set better boundaries? Was she supposed to?

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  Would that have saved her and Annie in the long run?

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  I think, first off, my condolences to you and your mama.

• 1:41:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  I just, I felt it when you said that. I think that you have to set boundaries with people that are toxic. Annie is not toxic, she's poor. And you can't cut people off for being poor because they don't have the opportunities that you have. She's, Annie is a good friend to her and Annie needed her help. And you have to help those who need your help if they're your friends, if you're close. And part of reaching across these differences in their lives are remembering what this friendship means. I don't think she should have had, I think her mother-in-law who's saying, you know, you keep the people you used to know far away from you, and she tells her how she even pushed her sister away. I think that was a mistake.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  You know, if you have a good relationship with your sister, I don't want, I don't want a life that tells me I can't love the people I love. And I think that is the generational progress that I think that Vernice will make and that Mrs. McHenry is saying, you have to cut off your past. And I think Vernice says, or not. I'm not going to cut her off, I love her. And I think that's important, that we have to figure out ways to integrate the people we love into the lives we want, or else you're choosing between who do you, who you love and your ambition. And you shouldn't have to, and you don't have to. You just have to be, I think you just have to be flexible and open. Well, Leslie and Dr. Kelly, thank you so much for that, for sharing that.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  Leslie and Dr. Kelly and our audience, they've been friends since they were four years old, did I hear? Friends since four years old. Tell us your story, stand up, guys.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Hi, ladies. Hi. So, yes, we have been friends since we were four and five years old. And our parents were members of a black social club, the Consorts. Why dresses all the way down? And much like Nisi and. Annie, we disconnected in our teenage years. But 25 years ago, we were reconnected when my aunt was battling pancreatic cancer. And Kelly was on her rotation. So she walked us through the transition. And we have been thick as thieves ever since, sister friends reunited.

• 1:43:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Ever since. And we've gone, the last 25 years, we've gone through the ups and downs, couple of marriages, couple of divorces, and all the stuff in between. And one of the things that really resonated with me about Annie and Nisi's story is how childhood wounds can, you know, they can't help but to affect us in our lives. But sisterhood can really heal us if we let it, you know? So we collaborated on this question. And, you know, when you think about how women sustain friendships over decades, right?

• 1:44:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Over time and distance and failures and successes and loves, et cetera. What would you like for readers to take away?

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, what do you want all of us to take away from the relationship between Nisi and Annie that we can bring to our relationships? I think the main thing is to honor your relationships. Your friendships are as important as your romantic relationships. And they're as important as any other relationship in your life. And also may last longer because they can start when you're...

• 1:44:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Absolutely, right?

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Well, also they can get started earlier also.

• 1:44:45Oprah Winfrey?

  What you say, Gail?

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  But this person who has seen you grow, and there is more of an expectation of acceptance among friends. Like, your friend is not going to get mad at you because you look different as you get older, you know? Like, that's just not how friendships work. There is a more of an expectation of an unconditional acceptance. And I think that's the thing, though, is to nurture your friendships and value your friends. So many people, you know, people like this, throw their friends away when other circumstances in their lives change. Can't do it. And that, your friends are your greatest resource. I think that's what I would take away.

• 1:45:26Oprah Winfrey?

  There's a beautiful passage about love that you write where you say, "We come to love people in many ways. Much is made of the burning love that hits like a smoldering remnant of a star hurled down to earth." I went, "Now, how long it take to write that sentence?" Yet, this is not the only type of love anymore. Then the camellia is the only flower. There is the love that blooms from decency and from that love, passion.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  I do believe that. I think that real, again, this burning love that's like a, you know, a star hurled from the heavens, that's that imaginary person. That's that imaginary person. But real people can win you over in a lot of ways. And we can be so married to this other script.

• 1:46:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Love that blooms from decency.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Decency.

• 1:46:18Oprah Winfrey?

  And from that love, passion.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  Yes, and you can, passion can develop. I think we think, "Oh, well, if you don't feel it that first day, it's never going to be there or it's not there." But I think that Nisi, with her experience of loss, she is open to different types of love. She even says, I think of another character of Joette, that only she, that's a privilege that makes you think you can only be happy if things work out exactly the way you wanted them to. But there's a range of happiness. And if you can accept that there's a range, there's a way higher chance that you'll find it.

• 1:46:50Oprah Winfrey?

  How does each, how does writing a book like this open up the aperture of your own life? What happens after you have finished this writing and you send it off to your publisher and you know that you are done? Do you feel more expanded in ways that you were before you wrote?

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  I feel like every novel I've written has made me more understanding of other people because I have to walk in their shoes. I never write about any character that I dislike. I have, it has to be something about them that I feel establishes their humanity and makes me understand their, that other person's point of view, even if I completely disagree with them. Like, it was difficult for me, you know, to write from the point of view of a madam in a whorehouse. Like, that was very difficult for me to write because I...

• 1:47:43Oprah Winfrey?

  But we ended up having compassion for her.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Yes, we did end up having compassion for her. But we still had Baby Doll pulling us, pulling our, him saying, "Yeah, but don't forget what she does for a living."

• 1:47:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  But I was able to understand the way that she understood herself. I think that's the key.

• 1:47:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Ooh, that's so good.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  And I try to apply that to other people around me.

• 1:48:02Oprah Winfrey?

  I was able to understand the way she understood herself, yeah.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  And that's the important thing. I imagine that the characters are reading the book. People say to me, "What's, who's your audience?" And the audience are the characters themselves. And I want each of them to feel like I did write by them.

• 1:48:20Oprah Winfrey?

  And you did.

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:48:23Oprah Winfrey?

  There's a running theme throughout the book that women have to sacrifice in some way, themselves, in order to survive. What is your point of view on that?

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I do think that, I mean, sacrifice, that just sounds so like, I don't know, almost like, you know, like in those, like something someone's going to do at an altar, they're going to, you know, of sacrifice. But I do think you have to compromise.

• 1:48:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Give up some things.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to compromise. But everyone, to be in a relationship is by its nature a compromise. The thing is that you have to be in a situation where everyone involved, everyone is compromising. The problem comes in when only one person is compromising. And perhaps that's when it becomes a sacrifice. But that's the thing, like Annie compromises to be in Nisi's wedding. And Nisi has to compromise to remain friends with Annie. Like, they have to give. You have to give. But as long as you get, it's okay to give.

• 1:49:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Very good. We had ourselves a Wally Palooza of a dinner. But first, here's author Wally Lamb talking about how he came up with this big idea behind, "I know this much is true."

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  I saw a guy behind the wheel of a pickup truck in the middle of the night. And I began to ask myself questions, but play a little game, you know? Who is this guy? And I thought to myself, "I gotta follow this guy off the edge of that cliff and see what happens." And that was the day that Dominic Byrdsey sort of was born in my mind. And I sort of followed his story. I had no idea that I was going to write about identical twins or mental illness or Italian volcanoes in Sicily. All of that stuff came in the process.

• 1:50:09Oprah Winfrey?

  So unbelievable. Spent the summer opening letters. Somebody around here did. I actually really did not open them all, I can tell you that. I actually only opened two. I want to say, we got 6,000 letters. I said that earlier. And I thank you all, all of you who wrote, and for the thousands more who stayed with us for all 897 pages, because you're now true readers. The letters were so extraordinary, it was, it was almost impossible to choose only five. But here they are, along with part one of our dinner. Take a look. Our book club dinner started off with cocktails on a warm Chicago night. Isn't this delightful? Let's meet our guests. Well, you all know this man.

• 1:50:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, Wally Lamb, if it ain't you. Well, here we are. He's Wally Lamb, bestselling author of She's Come Undone and the summer chart buster, "I Know This Much Is True." Well, Molly, let's start with you, telling us a little bit about yourself and why you wanted to be here. Molly is from Seattle, only 33 years old, a survivor of abuse, mental illness, alcoholism, to name just a few. From this, she's emerged a stronger person. When I read the book, it just touched so many areas of my life. Isn't it amazing how you, you can read a book like that and then you get to sit down and talk to the author? That always just floors me. It's totally amazing. It floors me. Keith, why'd you want to be here? Keith is our youngest guest. He's 26 and a social worker from Virginia.

• 1:51:37Oprah Winfrey?

  He's dealt with mental illness on the job and at home.

• 1:51:40Speaker 02

  I looked at the book from a personal perspective with my mother, who currently is dealing with schizophrenia now.

• 1:51:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Monica is 30. She lives in LA. Our book got her thinking about her past and her future, the family she left behind and her new role as a mother. And almost having to reckon with all this stuff that I had run away from was quite profound for me. Diana is a 45-year-old from Hatfield, Pennsylvania. Who wrote that it was killing you softly? Wally, there was you wrote that, yeah? Yeah. It was, it was a little painful, actually, to read some parts of that.

• 1:52:17Speaker 02

  Especially Domenico's biography.

• 1:52:20Oprah Winfrey?

  And talk about taking a page from the book. Well, Kathleen is 47 and a twin to a schizophrenic. For her, this book was more than a good read. It was a healing experience. He saved me a trip to the shrink. Really? Thousands of dollars have been saved. Thank you.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:52:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. I can't wait to sit down and deal with you and find out how the story formed in your head and why you aren't schizophrenic yourself now. And maybe you really are.

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  Well, we'll find out as the evening unfolds.

• 1:52:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, maybe you really are. And now that you've met our guest, you know what comes next. Come to dinner.

• 1:52:59Oprah Winfrey?

  First of all, I'd like to congratulate everybody who's read this book. You have been baptized in the reading club. This is the baptism. If, nobody can say they're not a reader after you've read this book. That's the truth.

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  You get the promise?

• 1:53:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes. And you get the promise. That's true. Because I think it is intimidating for a lot of people. Eight hundred and ninety-seven pages. But as I promised, I don't lie. I'm never gonna lie about a book. I can only tell you how I feel about it. And I just felt I'd never read a book like this. And I've been reading since I could read, since I was a kid. Never read anything like it. It read like a motion picture because the images become so vivid in your head that you are living with the characters. Well, let's start with Dr. Patel saying, "I give you the shiva. I give you shiva, the dancing god, in hopes that you will soon be on your feet and dancing past your pain. Do you remember shiva's message? With destruction comes renovation. Be well."

• 1:53:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Everybody, open your boxes, will you? And inside, we have our own little shiva.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  Wow, look at this. Oh, they're beautiful.

• 1:54:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Beautiful.

• 1:54:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Wally, what is a shiva?

• 1:54:11Speaker 02

  Shiva is, is the god, goddess, sort of genderless, from which all things come.

• 1:54:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, what she says is, "With destruction comes renovation. Be well." So I'd like to talk for a minute at the table about your own sense of feeling destruction and renovation. Anybody wanna comment on that?

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  That was the main theme. For me, in my life, I've been in therapy for a long time. I've put a lot of therapist children through college.

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  But what I've, when I found the most success is when I could face my fear. When I was willing to let go of the way it was, look at the way it really is, and then be open to what it could be. It only came after I was willing to look at my past, face my fears, rip it apart, and build it back up again. There's a scene late in the, in the novel where Dominic, who has grown up in this duplex house, makes a decision, as the house is evolving into something else, to, to, to break down the middle wall of the house. And I think, I think, you know, so there's the destruction

• 1:55:30Speaker 02

  that comes with renovation in a, in a very physical way. But I think that, that business of breaking down all those barriers and all those defenses that we build up over the years, and we get very good at, at building up.

• 1:55:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Building up our walls.

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think that the disassembling of, of those kinds of things is what, in some ways, sets us free.

• 1:55:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, for me, it was, it got to a point where

• 1:55:57Oprah Winfrey?

  either I was gonna choose to tear down in my head what I consider to be first floor of a house. Just tear it and rip it to pieces, either on my own or have someone or something come in and wipe it out for me.

• 1:56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:12Oprah Winfrey?

  And it became a matter of choice.

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  You know what I wanted to ask you, Wally? I wanted to know where you got your insight about being twins. Because I, I mean, I could swear you hit a twin when you said that. I wanted a twin when I was a kid. Oh, I think everybody does. Yeah, I was fascinated with twins. Wouldn't it be fun?

• 1:56:28Oprah Winfrey?

  I didn't want one.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  And that's why you didn't get one.

• 1:56:32Oprah Winfrey?

  They want one, I didn't get one.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  That's why you didn't get one.

• 1:56:34Oprah Winfrey?

  I never had that. I never.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've heard, and I've, I've done a lot of research on, on twinships. And I've heard that there are certain twins who feel like they're only whole if they're with their twin. See, it was a scary part in the book when you talked about being untwinned. Because I had never crossed my mind before. It just never crossed my mind. And I thought, well, if I, if anything ever happened to my sister, I would not have a twin, and I also would not be a twin. You know, but I had never thought about it until I read it like that.

• 1:57:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Favorite passages in the book?

• 1:57:12Oprah Winfrey?

  I know you all have them. Diana, your favorite passage?

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  Well, I have many, but I, I feel like I wanna skip to my absolute favorite, which really is the end. Is that okay to do?

• 1:57:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, you can. That's mine, too.

• 1:57:27Speaker 02

  "I am not a smart man, particularly. But one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much at least I've figured out. I know this much is true." And that, you know, just says it all. You know, that sentence, "Mongrels make good, good dogs", like, it stunned me. I'm biracial, and my son can pass for white. Sort of ethnic white, Greek, maybe. And you always read these stories where being multiracial is tragic.

• 1:58:12Speaker 02

  You know, it's sad. You're trapped between two worlds. When my husband and I got married, you know, it's like, what about the children? And to read a story in which multiple heritages could empower you. It could be something to draw from and learn from. You know, I mean, it's not the tragic mulatto. He's not caught between two worlds.

• 1:58:30Oprah Winfrey?

  My favorite passage is page 610. "Life is a river," she repeated. "Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past, connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially." So this is my opinion, my friend. Should you throw your ancestry into the wood stove? Of course not. Should you keep reading it even if it takes away your sleep? Yes, by all means. Read your grandfather's story, Dominic. Jump into the river. And if it upsets you, come in and tell me why.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  That was beautiful.

• 1:59:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Dr. Patel, thank you so much. Wow, where did that come from?

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  Well, it came partly from myth and how, how the past informs the present.

• 1:59:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I who just done, completed Beloved. I mean, that's what I used.

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Used the past to, to, to create that character. Used that past to move forward and feel, as a part of that experience, connecting to the past, that I am so much stronger and transformed by the connection. Yeah. That's why I was like, "Go, Wally!"

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  It's, it's interesting to me and kinda sad that in America, you know, somebody turns 30 and we give that person black balloons. And somebody turns 40 and we, and there's sort of like this, kinda like this mock mourning going on. But I really love having, having come to middle age because a lot of the things that I didn't understand and struggled with.

• 2:00:03Oprah Winfrey?

  I love it. I just don't like calling it middle age. That's what older people say. I really do. You know why? I don't, I like to come up with another term. You can do that for us, Wally, because,

• 2:00:12Speaker 02

  I'll work on it.

• 2:00:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Because middle age is what our parents were when they were this age. I, I wouldn't trade this age for anything.

• 2:00:19Speaker 02

  Well, let's, let's maybe call it the, the age of perspective, then.

• 2:00:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Or something like that.

• 2:00:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Take a moment to taste this tiramisu.

• 2:00:28Oprah Winfrey?

  It is about the best. Just take a mo, let's all together take a bite of Nick Silino's, Nick Silino's Cucina Amores tiramisu.

• 2:00:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Ooh, baby, baby.

• 2:00:45Speaker 02

  We have arrived.

• 2:00:46Oprah Winfrey?

  We have. Oh.

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  Hey, bravo!

• 2:00:50Oprah Winfrey?

  There's Nick Silino.

• 2:00:54Oprah Winfrey?

  This is tiramisu that could really medicate us and put us under. We thank you so much for the entire meal. Did somebody tell you this was my favorite meal? Is that why we're eating this?

• 2:01:06Speaker 02

  No, I, this is actually my specialty. I believe to be the best tiramisu maker in the world, which I take great pride on. And the fact that you like it as much as I do is a, is a great thing.

• 2:01:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, but the whole dinner, like the pastas, and, beginning with the, with the artichoke and, and the, and the scallop.

• 2:01:21Speaker 02

  There's a reason for it, actually.

• 2:01:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Why?

• 2:01:23Speaker 02

  Twenty-five years ago, when my father said goodbye to me at the airport, he told me, "Nicolino ricordala America è un sogno", which translated in English means, Nick remembered that America is a dream. And one of my dreams has always been to actually cook for you.

• 2:01:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Really?

• 2:01:36Speaker 02

  And the one occasion that I've been given, I wanted to make absolutely sure there was an unforgettable dinner. Not only for me to have had the honor, but for you to remember for a long time. Mr. Lambert, I had the opportunity to read your book, and I only hope that the passion of my food matched the emotions that you made me feel to your writing. Thank you so much, Nick.

• 2:01:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, that is so moving. That's really.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  Ooh, we have some gift for everybody.

• 2:01:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you so much, Nick Silino. Thank you, Nick Silino. Cucina Amores. Thank you. I'm always the first to open presents, like I never get any. Wow! Look what it is! Oh, my goodness.

• 2:02:08Speaker 02

  Oh, they're beautiful.

• 2:02:09Oprah Winfrey?

  It is gorgeous.

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  Wow. Outstanding.

• 2:02:12Oprah Winfrey?

  That is gorgeous.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 2:02:16Oprah Winfrey?

  That's gorgeous, guys.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  Nice book.

• 2:02:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. Wally says in my book that he signed to me, "Thank you with all my heart for connecting me to a readership far beyond my imagination." And you know about my imagination.

• 2:02:31Oprah Winfrey?

  That's great. I know, because it's like, and I know for you, Wally, who is one of the most humble spirits I've ever met in a human body, that it's not about making money.

• 2:02:42Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:02:43Oprah Winfrey?

  I know. Because, you know, he still lives the same as he did when, when the first time we went to his house and he was putting the clothes on the laundry, separating the darks from the lights. But about expanding the word.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:02:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Being, allowing more people to have the words. Yeah.

• 2:03:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that says it. That says it better than I can say it. Thank you.

• 2:03:06Oprah Winfrey?

  I don't think so. Well, I would like to make a toast to Wally. Wally, you just outdid yourself. It's a Wally Palusa of a book. Today, we're talking to an author who is no stranger to our club. Her novel, The Poisoned Wood Bible, was my pick. Over 22 years ago, back in 2000, and her new book, Demon Copperhead, is being called by so many critics, one of the best of the year. She's also one of America's best-known and revered authors, and we welcome you, Ms. King-Salva. We, you know, were sitting together 22 years ago, talking about another one of my favorite novels of yours, The Poisonwood Bible. I still, I never looked at ants the same after

• 2:03:50Oprah Winfrey?

  that, and, or a rainy season, or a monsoon. And I know that all of the books are precious to you, and are like children. But, and when you, but when you send them off into the world, whether it's Poisonwood Bible, or Unsheltered, or Flight Behavior, and now Demon Copperhead, is there, was there something about Demon that resonated or lingered in a way that some of the others had not?

• 2:04:22Speaker 02

  I was pretty nervous, honestly, to send this really, truly, deeply Appalachian kid out into the world. I feel maternal toward him. I wanted people to hear him and to love him.

• 2:04:40Oprah Winfrey?

  And we do, indeed. Are you surprised, I mean, premiered on the New York Times Best Seller list, number two, Chasing John Grisham, are you surprised at how deeply Demon is resonating with people all over the country and the world?

• 2:05:03Speaker 02

  I'm really, really happy about it. And of course, you know, as novelists, if we do our job right, you know, if we do our best, our characters will translate, you know, they will, they will cross all the boundaries. And that's something I really wanted to do with this book, to sort of approach these terrible divides we have in our country right now, you know, between rural and urban. So, you know, so many, so many things divide us. And I wanted this book to, to reach across those divides and to sort of maybe generate

• 2:05:43Speaker 02

  some empathy in readers for people that they don't know well, and maybe have misunderstood.

• 2:05:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you know, we all know what it's, what it's like to be looked down upon. And Barbara, you've taken us inside what that feels like. Did anyone relate to Demon? Or how did you relate to Demon? This is a better question. Jen, can I ask you that?

• 2:06:07Speaker 07

  So what really, really spoke to me was when Demon's mother passed away, and how you really captured his anguish, not just only at that time, but throughout his whole life, where something that hits you so deep to your core, it's not a just one time getting over. It's, it's an anger that you have that is inside of you that burns the rest of your life. And it's constantly working on forgiveness. And, and, you know, how do you live your life with this new perspective? And when I was younger, my sister died, and it changed our

• 2:06:48Speaker 07

  whole life, to say the least. Did you have anyone that passed away in your life that you could relate to that type of feeling to?

• 2:06:58Speaker 02

  Well, sure. I mean, I've had terrible losses in my life. And I think that one of the, one of the things that I remember being really shocking, like in, in the immediate aftermath of a terrible loss, is when you look around and see the world just going on, and you can't believe it. You know, it feels like everything has changed. And I tried to capture that in the scene where Demon is alone in the undertaker's car, driving to the cemetery. And he's sitting in the back by himself, because there's no other family. And he's watching the driver, who's the undertaker's son. And there's a woman, a young woman, sitting with him, with no relation to this funeral. And he realizes

• 2:07:42Speaker 02

  the driver is hitting on this woman. They're flirting with each other.

• 2:07:46Oprah Winfrey?

  That was such a powerful moment, written so subtly, because we, we have all experienced that, anybody who's lost anyone, where you are in the middle of your deep grief, or you're going through a crisis, or you feel like the world's falling apart. And you look out the window, and people are just laughing and going on with their lives in a way that you're like, whoa. We all know about the addiction crisis in America, but what was enhanced in your knowing after reading Demon? Antonia, anything?

• 2:08:22Speaker 06

  You know, it's, it doesn't, it didn't feel like it was always something that people were intentionally choosing to pursue, right? And so how life kind of unfolds, and things are presented to you, and you use what is available to you, and you make the best decision that you can in the time. And I, I found that in the story, I was really empathetic to the people who, like, one, were obviously impacted by this opioid crisis, and the way that it was unfolding in their life, because you often don't have a, a say in what you're surrounded by.

• 2:08:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Tim, what was your takeaway?

• 2:08:55Speaker 06

  It starts with Demon's mom, and you kind of want to tell her, get it together for your son. You know, like, try to do something to get it together. And then you read, and you fall so, care so much about these characters. And then when it happens to Demon as well, you realize that, just like Antonia said, the empathy of, this is a sickness. It's not

• 2:09:15Oprah Winfrey?

  something that he wanted. It's not something that he sought out. It was something that he was dealing with. And you really, Barbara, you created such a character that you might have walked into the book feeling one thing, and by the middle, you're just like, I just want to help you. I just want to, you know, I just want to either, you know, have him go to a better foster care or something. And it's just, it was just so amazing to me how much you just cared. Can we speak to Aunt June and what that meant, Barbara? Because I think the fact that she was so enlightened at a time when other people were not, was really significant for those of, for the reader.

• 2:09:57Speaker 02

  I met a number, and talked with a number of people who have been through this, who have been through opioid addiction, and are coming out the other side with recovery. Just listened to their stories, which broke my heart. And every one of them, I just need to say this, every one of them started with a prescription from a doctor, and instructions to say, take these pills, you know, set your alarm clock, stay ahead of the pain, do it exactly as I'm telling you, because that's what the drug company said, and they promised it was not addictive. That's how it happens, through, with a sports injury, as happened with Demon, or a, a work injury. And, and that's where the character of Aunt June comes

• 2:10:41Speaker 02

  in, because she feels hoodwinked, because she, like all of the other doctors around, were, were, were given false information. They were presented with false studies from the, from Purdue Pharma, that said, we, this is absolutely not addictive. And so Aunt June is, is, she's the, the nurse practitioner, who's caught in the middle, who understands, who's first to understand when these patients are coming back and getting angry, because they're saying, I'm sick, I'm still sick, I need more of these pills. And she, she's the one to see what's going on. And this is how it actually happened.

• 2:11:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, before you meet Cormac McCarthy, I want to share a little bit about his masterpiece, The Road. For those of you who read it, you know what a masterpiece it is. It's a story of survival that takes place in a post-apocalyptic America. Imagine that. Well, I couldn't. That's why I chose the book. When you started The Road, did you know where it was going to end, or did it end itself? No, I had no idea where it was going. Where did this apocalyptic dream come from? Well, it's interesting, because usually you don't know where a book comes from. You just, it just, it's just there, some, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch. My son, John, about four years ago, he and I went to El Paso. He's eight now.

• 2:11:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And we checked into the old hotel there. And one night, John was asleep, it was night, it was probably about two, three o'clock in the morning. And I went over and I just stood and looked out the window at this town. It was nothing moving, but I could hear the trains going through in that very, very lonesome sound. I just had this image of what this town might look like in 50 or 100 years. This image of these fires up on the hill and everything being laid waste. And I thought a lot about my little boy. And so I wrote those pages and that was the end of it. And then about four years later, I was in Ireland. And I woke up one morning and I realized that it wasn't two pages of another book. It was a book. And it was about that man and that little boy.

• 2:12:42Oprah Winfrey?

  The Road is dedicated to Cormac's eight-year-old son, John Francis. Is this a love story to your son? Hmm, in a way, I suppose it is. Although it's kind of embarrassing, I suppose it is, yeah. I just saw you blush. Yeah, but no, it couldn't have been when I called you at first. You said, when I said, "People want to know where this book came from." And you said, "Well, it's obvious. It came because my son practically co-wrote this book." Yeah. Had you not had this son at this time, this book wouldn't have been written. No, absolutely not. Never would have occurred to me to write a, try to write a book about a father and a son. What is it like being a father at this particular time in your life?

• 2:13:25Oprah Winfrey?

  How is it different than? I think you, I think you appreciate it more. Yeah, if you're young and have a child, it's, you know, okay, so you got a kid, you know. But to have a child when you're, you know, when you're older is, uh, it, uh, it wrenches you up out of your, out of your nap. And makes you look at things, you know, afresh. It, uh, it forces the world on you. Yeah, and I think it's a good thing. Are we to ever know what actually happened? All kinds of critics and, you know, fans of yours read all kinds of things into it. Some people say it's about the journey of man on earth.

• 2:14:10Oprah Winfrey?

  It's about a man's, you know, spiritual journey here on earth. Is that true or is it just about the man and the boy on the road? I, well, I like to think it's just about the boy and the man on the road. But obviously, you can, you can draw, you know, conclusions about all sorts of things from, from reading the book, depending on your taste. It's, it's a pretty simple, straightforward story, I think. You know, it's so interesting. I think if we had read this book of, mm, 25 years ago, 20 years ago, it would have seemed futuristic. But something about it feels ominous and real.

• 2:14:53Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, I think it is, maybe since 9/11, people, uh, people are more, more concerned about, uh, apocalyptic issues. We're not used to. Well, I was gonna say, we're not accustomed to. We're not used to that, yeah. Not accustomed to living in fear? No. Being anxious about what's gonna happen tomorrow? Yeah, we've had it pretty good, you know. This country's been very lucky, just like me. So you know that now people are, it's on people's minds. I think it is. Obviously, it was on your mind. Yeah. What do you want us to get from this book in particular? Could be just simply care about, about things and people and, and be more appreciative. Life is pretty damn good, even, even when it looks bad.

• 2:15:37Oprah Winfrey?

  And we should appreciate it more. We should be grateful. I don't know who to be grateful to, but you should be thankful for what you have. You haven't worked out the God thing or not yet? Well, so it would depend on what day you ask me, you know. But, uh, but sometimes, sometimes it's good to pray. I don't think you have to have a clear idea of who or what God is in order to pray. You can, you could even be quite doubtful about the whole business. Do you care if now millions of people are reading your books? Versus when there were only a few thousand reading your books in the early years? You know, I, in all honesty, I have to say that I really don't. I just don't.

• 2:16:19Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, you want, you would like for the people that, that would appreciate the book to read it. But as far as many, many people reading it, that, so what? I mean, what does, what, it's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. But it's not, it's not going to particularly brighten my day. Well, you are a different kind of author, let me tell you. It's such a pleasure to meet you and honor to have this interview. Well, thank you. You're very nice. Really, an honor. You are a different kind of author. That's good. Read it if you want to. You know, it's okay. That's great. First of all, just let me say, congratulations, because this book took my breath away. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. When you started with the premise, where did the idea come from? The Underground Railroad? Uh, it was about 16 years ago.

• 2:17:03Oprah Winfrey?

  And I think, uh, a lot of people, when they're kids, they hear about the Underground Railroad. Right. And think it's an actual subway. Right. You know, for a few minutes and then they're sadly disillusioned of that. And so about 16 years ago, I thought, what if the Underground Railroad actually was a literal underground network? And I started thinking about some more. Yeah. And, and then I thought, what if, as our hero travels north, every state he goes through, and he was, he at that point, um, each different state, North Carolina, South Carolina, was a different state of American possibility. And so each time she gets off on a, at a station and comes up from the underground, she finds a different, alternative America, slightly tweaked.

• 2:17:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Um, but different, um, sort of state of possibility. And that first time she comes up, which I've often thought about this, um, since Beloved, you know, Toni Morrison's. Surely. And, yeah, I, that, that line where you gotta get out of the yard, you gotta leave the yard, in her book, when she's speaking of the character Denver. I often thought about the slaves who never left the yard. And then suddenly, after thinking about it for a long time, planning the escape, make the decision, and you've never been any further than the front yard. It's just the most incredible thing. Yeah, you've never stepped off the property and... You never knew a world bigger than the front yard. All you've known is the tragedy of the plantation. Yes.

• 2:18:33Oprah Winfrey?

  And what kind of, how do you get the courage to make that first step? Yes. And then once you do, and you're, you're off, across the boundary line, how do you keep going? And so you're waiting for years, you're waiting for the full moon, then you finally make that, you know, that leap. You know, I remember when I was promoting the movie, Beloved, I was being interviewed by a group of African-American journalists, who actually said to me, "Why do we need another story about slavery? Why do we need another story about slavery?" I go, "How, how many have you seen?" Because we don't, we don't know, nobody knows. You know, I feel I'm reasonably, reasonably educated, you know. My first experience with, uh, understanding slavery was when I was seven and Roots was on

• 2:19:17Oprah Winfrey?

  and my parents, you know, gather us, all our kids, in front of the TV. This is how we got here. This is what, you know, your ancestors encountered. And in college, you study American history. Right. Small section on slavery. And I, I think coming to the material as a, as an adult, as a grown-up, definitely changed the way I approached it. I think it's one thing to understand it when you're seven, in your twenties, to understand the after-effects of slavery, which, you know, reverberate, um, in most segments of society now. Uh, but then to understand what it is to lose a parent, a child, um, you know, I have children now and, um... To never have the stability of knowing, this is what I say to people.

• 2:20:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Never have the stability of knowing that your child really is yours and that your family can be together as long as, you know, God has designed it, you know? Or the world has designed it. Because you can come back from a cotton field and your, your, your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone, you are gone. Yes, your property and your children are property. And you're a property. And you've been bought because you can actually make more slaves, like a, you know, uh, like a mint making money. Did you feel in yourself the spirit of, uh, there's a wonderful line that Maya Angelou wrote in, uh, one of her poems, I think it's Poem to Our Grandmothers, where she says, "I come as one and I stand as 10,000."

• 2:20:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Could you feel in some way the spiritual presence of generations who paved the way as you wrote this book? Um, I feel, I think Cora does. I mean, you know, um, I'm trying to, trying to find a language of hope for someone who's completely hopeless. And I think, um, when she gets to the library, um, you know, she, she's on a plantation, a, a farm, uh, and the person she's staying with has a great library of all the black poets, black thinkers, Benjamin Banneker, the Black Almanac maker, his books are in there. And she's inspired, but she had no idea that there's any sort of history outside of the degradation of slavery. And so we created moments like that where, um...

• 2:21:26Speaker 02

  She's gone through hundreds of pages of trials and is learning and figuring out who she is. To get to moments where, like that, where she's in the library and sees that she's part of a, you know, a great lineage and, um, and part of, uh, the future as well. I mean, people she touched, you know, the children that she helps out and helps along the way are the next generation of survivors and people who will carry on, carry on the battle.

• 2:21:55Oprah Winfrey?

  When I read The Sweetness of Water, um, first, first thing I do is I go, I look at the author to see who is writing and there you are. This man. Okay, next time I'd say, smile a little bit, will you? Okay?

• 2:22:09Oprah Winfrey?

  But I go to see the author and, you know, where these words are coming from. And then I looked you up and saw that, you know, you were just this beautiful young man who is writing your first novel. And I just couldn't even believe what I was reading, you know? And I kept going back and looking at the picture, looking at the picture and then referencing, referencing that. So it's called The Sweetness of Water and it's set in a fictional town of Old Ox, Georgia in 1865, when in, in the days and months immediately following the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War.

• 2:22:51Oprah Winfrey?

  And what, what I marveled at is the fact that I've read many books on Reconstruction, but I never thought about those first few days and weeks after the Civil War. And I certainly wouldn't imagined a young 27-year-old at the time you started writing this, thinking about those days. So how did this story come about for you? God, I, I love books about the Civil War and Reconstruction. But I think if you're gonna write a novel, you have to have a new angle. You have to bring readers something they haven't experienced before. And for me, I'm just, I'm always curious.

• 2:23:32Oprah Winfrey?

  And I was reading about, um, slaves just being freed and what they were going through and that initial moment of freedom. And I was wondering, gosh, why haven't I read that before in a novel? And then it struck me, why don't you do it? And I was immediately like, I, I can't do that. Of course I can't do that, because I'm 20, oh, at the time, 27, you know? But then I was like, well, what am I doing here? If I wanna write a book, let's just do it. Had you thought of writing any kind of book before? Oh, sure. I mean, that was, it was always my wish. It was always the dream to write a novel, you know? I love books, you know? So were you great in English class? Did you love words? Did you, were you writing little stories as a little boy? Yeah, that was exactly right.

• 2:24:17Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, I, I still remember, uh, being in, I think, second or third grade and we all got to write these little picture books. And then we would, um, all read each other's. And there was a long line to read mine. And I thought, oh, man. There was a long line to read? There was a line, yeah. It was kind of like a little horror story and everybody was kind of like, it's, it's kinda scary. And they're just seeing everybody engaging with it. Okay. You were throwing down in the second grade. Yeah, exactly. Everybody wants to read Nathan's stories in the second grade. And it was all I could do. I mean, it's hard growing up when you can't do, you know, you can't do math, you know, sciences, the sciences.

• 2:24:58Oprah Winfrey?

  And then I found out that writing just came naturally to me and I just loved, I found that writing just came naturally to me and I just loved stories. Yeah, it feels like it. You know why it feels like it? From sentences like, I love this, I mean, the poetry of it. "The lilies upon the water unified like a carefully drawn illustration. The water reflecting his image made beautiful if only by the beauty that surrounded him. He loved the silence so totally encompassing that his thoughts arrived as if he were speaking, the sentences full and alive, the sort a preacher might thunder to an audience who would respond with whoops and wild amens.

• 2:25:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Here, things were different, for the sliver of time he was allowed, the pond was his." You put us right there. Yeah. Yeah, to the point where we could feel the sweetness of the water. Okay, so how long does it come, take you to come up with sentences like that? I mean, did you, was that a day's work? Multiple days' work? Yeah, I mean, it can be something where I can imagine the scene, but then it'll be weeks or months later where, those are the moments of almost poetry, where some, a, a line will just come to me and I can just, I can, I go immediately back.

• 2:26:26Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm transported back to that moment in the book and I, I run to my computer or I run to my, my phone to put it in and I, I know it has to go there. And it just, and it just strikes me. Okay, so you were interested in the Civil War? Yeah. As a young man? Yeah. And how did the characters start to form? First of all, their names, Landry and Prentice. Did you do research for that time period to discover, you know, what people would be called or what their names would have been? Yeah. Enslaved? I don't know how I struck on those two, but, um, the bills of sale for slaves were,

• 2:27:07Oprah Winfrey?

  even just reading the names on there, you can almost, uh, feel the energy from it in a way and you're kind of transported back to that time period. You're talking to the choir. You know, I have them all in my library. I do. And, and, and actually, when I was filming the movie Beloved, I took them with me to my trailer so that in the morning I would recite their names. Yeah. To, to, to put me in the spirit. That's remarkable. Yeah. So I just had, I, I had that exact same experience. And again, reading, reading the oral histories that have been put down when they talk to these, uh, freed people, you can, you can hear it in the, in the dialect. They record the dialect of how they were talking. And, um, that's how they explain that moment.

• 2:27:50Oprah Winfrey?

  It's so authentic, more authentic even than I could ever, you know? And even with the poetics. Yes. The way they are talking about it is, is more resonant. And, um, I was just inspired by it and I just felt like I needed or wanted to, um, use my imagination to build on that in a way that justified what they had gone through. No, and I think you captured it so beautifully in this sentence on page 24, when you're talking about emancipation. "The notion of true emancipation had always seemed so fantastical, that were it to occur, Prentice had expected the heralds of a bugle, rows of men in lockstep who would descend

• 2:28:33Oprah Winfrey?

  upon Majesty's palace like angels brought down to serve the aims of God himself. In the actual event, it was nothing but a few young men in blue uniforms, as scraggy as the clothes that Prentice and Landry had on themselves." And I thought, wow, of course, if you have all these years been thinking about what freedom looks like, if you were ever emancipated, if there's even a possibility that that can happen, you would think that, you know, Gabriel and the trumpets? Exactly. And Jesus and the disciples and all would have to come for that deliverance, when in fact, it was something far more common. Yeah, far more common, yeah.

• 2:29:14Oprah Winfrey?

  And I think it's, you know, again, you try to embody your characters and, and being in Prentice's mind, um, which was very difficult at times, but just, you're waiting for that moment your entire life and you don't think it's ever going to come. And I almost, in my mind, I was thinking almost every day, he was fantasizing more about it every week and month and then finally it happened and it, of course, it wasn't gonna live up to it. One of the things that really inspired me or struck me is the way you inspire empathy in the reader. I believe so powerfully in the ability of books to create empathy.

• 2:29:54Oprah Winfrey?

  That's what books can allow us to see and know people in a way that you wouldn't have, even if you don't have those people in your life. Why was empathy important for you? God, I think, I'm right with you. I think empathy is the reason we read. You can, to put yourself in the shoes of a person who doesn't look like you or again is from a different class than you or even people who are doing evil things, there's a reason they're doing evil things. And we need to investigate that, but, you know, I tried to, um, show sides to even the villainous characters that, um, you know, we could almost relate to.

• 2:30:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Um, and I think that's necessary so we can, um, I don't know, come to learn more about our common people, the people who are around us in our community. And that's necessary for us to, to grow as people. Guess who's coming to dinner? Sidney Poitier.

• 2:30:55Oprah Winfrey?

  This is a book that I have loved for a very long time. It's a spiritual autobiography and it's called The Measure of a Man. In all, seven special readers will join Sidney Poitier for our Dinner of a Lifetime. What do you think, Mr. Poitier, that all of us are gathered around this table here in the year 2007 to talk about a book that you wrote several years ago? And also a book that really is an extension of the first book, um, This Life that you wrote, I don't know, when in, in the 60s? What do you think of that?

• 2:31:26Speaker 02

  Well, it would be the sixth time I have pinched myself because of this gathering. I am greatly honored by it. I am greatly honored by your presence and I'm looking forward to the exchange. It isn't just the dinner that brought me here. I've heard about you people and I find what I know of you to be very impressive and I thank you for coming.

• 2:31:57Speaker 03

  You describe yourself as lucky a lot, Mr. Poitier, in, in the book. How do you feel about the word luck? It sounds like through reading it, you were more prepared than lucky.

• 2:32:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Because you believe in that definition that I believe in, that I believe there's no such thing as luck, that it's preparation meeting the moment of opportunity. But he does use the word lucky a lot.

• 2:32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think, uh, I think luck is akin to serendipity. It implies that, uh, out of nowhere, serendipity dips down and kisses us on a cheek and wonderful things happen to us. And these forces are influencing.

• 2:32:37Speaker 03

  In our lives, they help to mold us and to shape us. I believe that we have free will. I believe too that free will operates within this frame of nature and God, if you will. But we have responsibilities. It is not that we can sit back.

• 2:32:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Tell this group what you were telling me. You were saying that even now you still see things through the eyes of your mother.

• 2:33:04Speaker 03

  Yes, I do. The whole experience that my mom had with the soothsayer.

• 2:33:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. Tell us that.

• 2:33:13Speaker 03

  Tell you that. Read the book. Well, she was, as you know, I was born prematurely by more than two months. And I was less than three pounds. There were no doctors. There were midwives in those days for us. It didn't look good, obviously, for me. But by the end of the following day, there seemed to be absolutely no hope. So she stopped at this soothsayer. They sat down. And the soothsayer was in some kind of trance. And she stayed in it for a while.

• 2:33:57Speaker 03

  And when her eyes flew open, she said some things to my mother. She said, "Don't worry about your son. He will grow up to travel to most of the corners of the earth. He will walk with kings. Your name will be carried all over the world." For 50 cents, my mother found the support she needed for backing a long shot.

• 2:34:25Oprah Winfrey?

  So here your mother was, this poor, you know, wife of a tomato farmer on Cat Island. And she told her that you would see the world and that you would walk with kings. Come on, say it. Walk with kings, says the soothsayer. I'd like to get her in here today.

• 2:34:45Speaker 03

  I have to assume, at least I had to assume, that I am left with the responsibility to effectuate my own survival. I was lucky, though, too, you know.

• 2:34:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Lucky.

• 2:35:00Speaker 03

  I think that there are things way beyond our understanding.

• 2:35:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. Do you think that that force was working with you when you first moved to New York City? Arriving in the city, not even having, you know, adequate clothing, and it turns cold and you're in New York City, sleeping on the rooftops with not even a coat?

• 2:35:20Speaker 03

  I don't think that we make many moves without the force knowing about it.

• 2:35:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, if you call it God or not.

• 2:35:26Speaker 03

  If you call it God or not. We still have responsibilities.

• 2:35:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Isn't it amazing, astounding, that he was just this boy alone, basically? Boy, he was a boy alone, moving, you know, on the train, arriving in New York City, trying to figure it out. And in figuring it out, you came to this profound idea, this profound theory of life, that you are responsible for you. And I think you ultimately paid it forward by showing black people what was possible.

• 2:35:57Speaker 03

  You know, the importance of speaking well and... That question bothers me a lot. The question of education. We are too rich a country to have inner-city education what it is. It is each family, I believe, who has the responsibility to educate their children. No matter what their own education is.

• 2:36:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 2:36:35Speaker 02

  It's interesting because I work with inner-city kids. And what was so brilliant about, when I introduced the book to them, they said, "Wow, I didn't know Sidney Poitier could barely read in the beginning." And that register, they could connect with us because they can...

• 2:36:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Because Sidney Poitier and so many others now stand for what is possible.

• 2:36:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:36:54Oprah Winfrey?

  I'd like to make a toast. I'd like to make a toast to the forces. I'd like to thank the forces, whatever you choose to call the forces, that allowed me to, at 10 years old, the forces that put me in front of my Magnavox black and white television set to see Sidney Poitier receive the Academy Award and planted that seed. That moment that I saw you, I've told this story many times before, but it is true. The moment that I saw him accept the award for "Lilies of the Field," it said to me that this is possible because what your life has meant to all of us says that your love, your sense of honor, your sense of integrity, it is possible for all of us. And so here's to you.

• 2:37:38Oprah Winfrey?

  And here's to your beautiful book, "Measure of a Man."

• 2:37:42Speaker 03

  Here, here.

• 2:37:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Here's to you, who I've loved my entire life and even before I was born.

• 2:37:49Speaker 03

  Oh, my goodness sake.

• 2:37:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Sidney Poitier.

• 2:37:51Speaker 03

  Salute.

• 2:37:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Salute.

• 2:37:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Our listeners, who 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. 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.