Bits and Pieces

When her brother died,  2 years after  their mother's death, Whoopi Goldberg realized that there was nobody to share her memories of childhood.  I kind of got that idea in the other direction, when I reconnected with my cousin, with whom I grew up, and we started sharing memories and I realized how much I'd forgotten and how wonderful it was to talk with someone who had the same memories.

Whoopi especially wanted to share memories of her mother, a single mother who raised 2 kids with essentially no money, but was able to feed them get them to arts events around New York, create a magical Christmas every year, etc.  She never answered questions about how she did it.

At one point during her childhood, her mother had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for two years, while relatives and friends took turns taking care of the kids.  When she was released, she didn't know her kids.  But gradually she became the mother they remembered.

This is a beautiful, sweet book.  It's not an autobiography exactly, though you do get bits of Whoopi's career

 

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