Bits and Pieces
My Mother, My Brother, and Me
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4.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From multi-award winner Whoopi Goldberg comes a new and unique memoir of her family and their influence on her early life.
If it weren’t for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010—and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later—she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone.
Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time. Growing up in the projects in New York City, there were trips to Coney Island, the Ice Capades, and museums, and every Christmas was a magical experience. To this day, she doesn’t know how her mother was able to give them such an enriching childhood, despite the struggles they faced—and it wasn’t until she was well into adulthood that Whoopi learned just how traumatic some of those struggles were.
Fans of personal memoirs such as Finding Me by Viola Davis and In Pieces by Sally Field will be touched by Bits and Pieces: a moving tribute from a daughter to her mother, and beautiful portrait of three people who loved each other deeply. Whoopi writes, “Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be. So, I thought I’d share mine with you.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actor Goldberg (Two Old Broads) reflects in this tender chronicle on the deaths of her two closest family members. Goldberg grew up in New York City's Chelsea projects with her mother, Emma, and brother, Clyde, while Emma worked tirelessly as a practical nurse and a schoolteacher to support her children. Even as Goldberg hits the requisite celeb memoir career beats—including sections on her one-woman Broadway show, her breakthrough film role in 1985's The Color Purple, and her supporting actress Oscar for Ghost—she keeps the focus on Emma, whose thriftiness and lust for life filled the author's childhood with happy memories of trips to Coney Island and Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. Goldberg contrasts these reveries with the overwhelming grief she felt when Emma died, in 2010, from a stroke. Five years later, Clyde succumbed to a ruptured brain aneurysm, leaving Goldberg to face the world without the "folks who let her be exactly who she was and gave her the confidence to become exactly who she wanted to be." Throughout, Goldberg's earthy, no-nonsense voice anchors her commentary on the ravages of bereavement ("If you go into a funk, then really let yourself go fully into it. Pull up a fainting chair. Draw the curtains. Close out the world for a while and get as insane in your grief as you ever thought you could"). This is no dishy Hollywood tell-all—it's a salve for wounded souls.
Customer Reviews
Awesome
Great book Whoopi!! What a great life story and the appreciation you have for your mum and brother.
Thank you Whoopi
I loved this book as Whoopi didn’t sensationalise her upbringing. She tells it what it was, and I’m thinking that maybe many others grew up in single parent black families with amazing mothers who gave of their all. Difference here is the broader reaching education out of school, out of the house and not in front of TV all the time. Her Mother’s wisdom was clearly evident and, of course, reflects her own upbringing.
Well done Whoopi, and thanks for sharing your story, especially how you have coped since the loss of both your Mother and Brother.