Finding Me: A Memoir

Finding Me: A Memoir (2022) is a New York Times bestselling memoir by actor Viola Davis, encapsulating her journey of growing up in poverty in Rhode Island and overcoming the trauma of her circumstances to find global success and fame. Davis is a celebrated actor with numerous awards and accolades to her name. At the time her memoir was published, she was the only African American to have won the Triple Crown of Acting: a Tony, an Emmy, and an Oscar. Through the retelling of her own experiences and the insights she has drawn from them, Davis touches upon themes of the interrelation between poverty, race, and trauma; the long and arduous process of coming to terms with one’s identity in the face of marginalization and discrimination; and the heavy hand that luck, chance, and privilege play in the glitzy world of Hollywood.

This guide is based on the Hodder & Stoughton Kindle edition (2022).

Content Warning: This book mentions and describes domestic and sexual abuse, racism, bigoted language and violence, and substance use and addiction.

Plot Summary

Viola spends a significant portion of her childhood running, largely to escape from bullies who torment her for being Black. Viola’s mother, Mae Alice, encourages her to stand up to the bullies when she is eight years old. Many years later, a conversation with actor Will Smith leads Viola to realize that, although she has physically stopped running from bullies, as an adult she is still defined by the memory of her eight-year-old girl self, who was harassed for being Black. Viola’s therapist encourages her to reconcile with this younger version of herself, but Viola resists the suggestion.

Viola is the fifth of six siblings born to Mae Alice and Dan Davis. Mae Alice was born and raised on a plantation in South Carolina. She married Dan when she was just a teenager, after becoming pregnant with his child. Dan is a horse groomer, and the family moves to Central Falls, Rhode Island, a couple of months after Viola is born, though her oldest siblings, John and Dianne, are left to be raised by their maternal grandparents. Dan’s work does not earn much above a living wage, and the family lives in abject poverty for many years. The rage and frustration caused by this, coupled with the demons from Dan’s own childhood, lead him to alcoholism, affairs, and violent domestic abuse. When Viola is 14 years old, she stands up to her father for the first time and yells at him to stop beating her mother. This incident helps Viola realize that she has the strength to break out of her family’s patterns and circumstances.

Viola’s parents eventually save up enough money to bring John and Dianne to Central Falls with them. Viola meets her oldest sister for the first time when she is five and Dianne is nine. Dianne is the first one to encourage Viola to have a goal and work toward it, in order to rise above their parents’ poverty. Under Dianne’s leadership, Viola and her sisters band together. Their lives are filled with constant challenges, from rat-infested living spaces and neighbors who harass them to sexual abuse and other traumatic events, including witnessing their parents’ frequent and violent fights. Their struggles are compounded by the shame of being looked down on at school for being Black and poor. There is rarely any gas, electricity, or running water in their home to even ensure that they are clean and well-groomed before leaving for school, and Viola and her sisters are always hungry. Despite all this, school becomes their shared haven, and all of them work hard and do extremely well academically. Their childhood is littered with some good moments too, one of which is when they create and perform a skit together and win a local contest. This points Viola in the direction of her calling, and she falls in love with acting. When Viola is 11, her youngest sibling, Danielle, is born. Having someone to take care of after having been the youngest for so long elicits a positive transformation in Viola and brings her joy every day.

Viola attends the Upward Bound program when she is 14, taking drama classes as an extracurricular. Her coach, Ron Stetson, leaves an impression on her, boosting her self-esteem as well as helping her realize the depth of her conviction about becoming an actor. Before her senior year of high school, she is selected to be a part of an elite talent and arts competition held in Miami, one among a group of 30 students chosen from thousands of applicants. Viola’s confidence in herself and her abilities grows, and she eventually makes it to Rhode Island College on a scholarship. She graduates with a degree in theater despite the many challenges she faces along the way, from continuing family conflict to her own wavering mental health. She takes a gap year, during which time she attends a summer program in New York, followed by a stint of professional acting at Trinity Rep in the city. These experiences coincide with beginning her first romantic relationship, as well as traveling abroad to perform for the first time as a professional actor. Over the course of the year, Viola auditions for and gets accepted at Juilliard, a school she chooses because it seems the fastest track toward a career in acting.

Viola’s experience at Juilliard is an intense one that forces her to come to terms with her Blackness. The approach and the academics at the school are hugely Eurocentric, and the experience of being Black is often erased. A scholarship allows her to take a trip to The Gambia in West Africa in her second year, and Viola is utterly changed by the experience. She comes back feeling freer and more connected to her racial and ethnic identity and heritage, and this translates into her performances as well. Well before she graduates, Viola signs with an agent from a top agency, J. Michael Bloom. Two weeks before she is due to graduate, however, she discovers that she is pregnant with her boyfriend’s child; she goes on to have an abortion, with no emotional or financial resources available to help her raise the child.

After graduation, despite having a top agent, Viola does not immediately receive much work; the inherent colorism and sexism in the industry restricts her to a very narrow and limited range of auditions. She eventually lands a role in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, which launches her Broadway career and earns her a Tony Award nomination. Viola’s professional success begins to grow steadily over time; she receives more work and makes the transition from theater to film. Family challenges continue, but she experiences healing in her relationship with her father, who is transformed into a loving and caring partner and grandfather upon the birth of his many grandchildren, whom Dan and Mae Alice assume responsibility for.

Viola meets, falls in love with, and eventually marries Julius Tennon, a fellow actor and a castmate of hers from the show City of Angels. Her relationship with Julius is a safe and stable one, and Viola realizes that she can create a new, happier life, despite her past. Julius stands by her through a number of challenges: he encourages her to take the role in King Hedley II that wins her a Tony; supports her through her father’s death and various medical and health issues; and eventually becomes her co-parent as they adopt a daughter, Genesis. Viola’s professional success ties in with a number of personal realizations and insights: she earns her first Oscar nomination as a lead actress for her work in The Help, which makes her feel a higher degree of worthiness as an actor; she embraces and accepts hitherto ignored aspects of her identity as a Black woman through her work on How to Get Away with Murder and the subsequent Emmy award it wins her; she taps into her own experiences of motherhood and her newfound confidence to deliver an Oscar-winning performance in Fences. Over the course of her life, Viola realizes that all the different experiences in her past each contribute in their own way to creating the person she is today, and she finally wholly reconciles with her eight-year-old self.