![]() ![]() ![]() Early in her career, Davis was discouraged about the stereotypical roles she was offered, most for “drug-addicted mothers.” Later, she writes, “I did a huge slate of what I call ‘best friends to white women’ roles.” For years, money worries dogged her. A trip to Africa, when she was 25, energized her. At Juilliard, she bristled, at first, at their Eurocentric approach. After graduating with a theater degree, Davis worked tirelessly to hone her craft, both by performing and studying. But an acting coach in an Upward Bound program encouraged her, and she won a scholarship to Rhode Island College. I was saturated in shame.” Inspired by seeing Cicely Tyson on TV, Davis wanted to become an actor-a goal that seemed far out of reach. “I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling and nobody asked. “I was an awkward, angry, hurt, traumatized kid,” Davis writes. As she writes, she wet the bed until she was 14. Besides being taunted by her classmates for being Black, she was shunned because she smelled, often of urine. Her father was a physically abusive alcoholic, and the family lived in a rat-infested apartment where they often had no heat or hot water. Born in South Carolina on a plantation where her grandparents had been sharecroppers, she grew up in dire poverty in Central Falls, Rhode Island. ![]() In a starkly forthright memoir, Oscar and Tony winner Davis reflects on family, love, motherhood, and acting. The life story of an actor whose success has been shaped by grit and determination. ![]()
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