Viola Davis names her favourite books of all time
The always excellent Viola Davis holds the record for being the only black female actor to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, having won an Academy Award, an Emmy and a Tony. Throw in the fact that she also won a Grammy in the process, and it’s easy to see why Davis is held in such high esteem.
Davis’ first big impression on the acting scene came in 1999 with her performance in the play Everybody’s Ruby, and in 2011, she wowed the cinema world with her effort in The Help. With the likes of How to Get Away with Murder, Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Davis is certainly one of the most important storytelling actors of her generation.
In her 2022 memoir Finding Me, Davis wrote of the need for stories, “My eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love.”
As an actor, Davis is naturally tied to the nature of storytelling and once revealed herself to be a deep lover of books. During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, she explained how books have helped her in showing her how to live and proceeded to name her five favourites of all time.
Davis begins with two books by Brené Brown. The first is Atlas of the Heart, in which she “explores eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and walk through a new framework for cultivating meaningful connection”. The other is another non-fiction book called Braving the Wilderness, which looks into the imperative of being okay with being in solitude.
Moving onto fiction, Davis picks the beloved 1982 epistolary novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Winning the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the novel takes place in the early 20th century and focuses on a young African-American girl called Celie, who experiences a series of traumatic events with Walker examining themes of racism and sexism.
Storytelling itself seems to be important to Davis and her next selection in the 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, in which the legendary American writer looks into the mythological structure of the archetypal hero, a theory that has been widely influential and been used by several other writers and filmmakers in the years since it was first published.
Finally, Davis turns her attention to Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now, which is essentially a spiritual discussion of how people perceive themselves and interact with others based on that perception. Self-reflection is at the forefront of the book, and it comes with a series of exercises intended to help achieve its core principles.
Viola Davis’ favourite books:
- Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
- Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
