Product Description

The name and the face of Oprah Winfrey are instantly recognizable to probably every person in America. To millions of people around the world, Oprah is the embodiment of American spirit and entrepreneurial success; a rags to riches story come to life. While there is a near continual barrage of information in the media about this larger than life woman, this biography takes readers past all the hype and hyperbole and presents a candid, balanced portrait of the flesh and blood woman herself. This well researched personal profile manages to present a realistic yet intimate portrait of Oprah that neither canonizes nor demonizes her. The dramatic events in her life, both the struggles and the successes are detailed with factual accounts that guide readers through the complex, and sometimes controversial, course of Oprah's life from her childhood in Mississippi, to her current position of extraordinary success. This penetrating book chronicles for readers the significant people and events that have had the greatest impact on Oprah personally and professionally. The careful organization of this book, with eight well developed chapters, also examine the myriad areas of Oprah's immeasurable impact on the people close to her and the public at large , from her literary and political influences, to her candor about her own ups and downs with mental and physical health issues. Each of these areas is well researched and narrated with an equanimity and lucidity that distinguishes this book from a tell-all" approach.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #402668 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 200 pages

Review
“The author paints a candid, balanced, and intimate picture of Oprah, as both a person and a leader. The reader is led through her struggles and successes from her childhood in Mississippi to the present.”–Multicultural Review

About the Author
HELEN S. GARSON is the author of Tom Clancy: A Critical Companion (Greenwood 1996).

Customer Reviews

Subpar For a Biography on the Queen of Talk
This book by Helen S. Garson is quite subpar. Most of the "facts" that she gives are things that can be found (...)from watching cable shows that talk about Oprah. Oprah has set the new standard of what talk shows should be, but Ms. Garson did a poor job in showing this. She even describes Oprah as "clowning" for her viewers and audience when she gets excited about something on her show. Yes, I consider myself an "Oprah supporter," and was very disappointed in this biography. The next time Ms. Garson wants to write a biography about a celebrity, she should get her research from more places than the local library.

The Life (and Make Believe) of Oprah Winfrey-land
There are many reasons why this is not a very good biography. The least of these is that it is poorly organized, poorly fact-checked, and poorly written. But also, and much more importantly, it makes mincemeat of Oprah's life and humanity. Oprah's life is taken up as if it were a "feminist political project" rather than as a biography proper. It proceeds to smother both her humanity and her life under a welter of meaningless awards and sycophantic accolades. So much so, that when the dust finally settles beneath this whirlwind of obsequious and sycophantic panting, there is nothing left of Oprah: There frankly is no Oprah there? There is a shaky feminist cardboard cutout left in the place where a life was supposed to have been.

This all puts the reader in an uneasy, unenviable and disadvantaged position. He is forced to fashion a "real biography" from the debris left behind in the wake of this disaster and by reading between (and beneath) the lines. And here I must say that the author has made my task a great deal easier that at first it might seem. Since there is an ironclad logic to her methodology -- "hide everything real that is negative about Oprah's life, and reveal everything that is positive, trivial and unreal about it" - the subtext of her manuscript thus gives us an unerring roadmap to discovery through our own devices, the truth about Oprah's life and humanity.

After reading both between and beneath the lines of this "biography," all I can say is that I would hate to be Oprah's therapist, for as "head cases" go, it is difficult to imagine how a single case could ever be a worse one: illegitimate birth, hated by all sides of the family, considered to be too black and too ugly; raised in racist environment in both North and South, shuttled back and forth between family members, raped at 14, raised in abject poverty in both the North and South, etc.

However, the Rosetta Stone to Oprah's mental health is none of these things, but is clearly the trauma of her pregnancy at 14, and the events surrounding the birth and death of her baby. While the author tried to shield Oprah (and her not so well-hidden feminist agenda), by obscuring and "disingenuously sliding around these critical facts," all she actually did was to make everything in the subtext, even more crystal clear. To wit:

(1) Sexually promiscuous ghetto mothers tend to produce sexually promiscuous ghetto daughters, (check the statistics on this) especially those who feel unloved enough to "act out" against these very same mothers, and Oprah was one such ghetto daughter.

(2) Regarding all of the "supposed sexual abuse" committed against Oprah while in Milwaukee (reading beneath the lines), although it may have begun that way, at some point it appears that it ceased to be sexual abuse and became more like "sexual enjoyment." Taken in context, this sounds more of a "like mother-like-daughter" promiscuity situation than abuse to me?

(3) That Vernita (her mom), found it "impossible to control her daughter," more or less confirms this point. As a result, she sent Oprah back to Tennessee, pregnant.

(4) Even wayward mothers (which Vernita surely was) do not normally abandon their sexual abused daughters and declare them "uncontrollable." And anyway, what did she mean that Oprah was "uncontrollable" if not that she was just too sexually promiscuous?

(5) How did the baby die? We are given no clues. Its death seemed a bit too convenient for a real life scenario. Surely there is a deeper story here that the reader may never really know of.

(6) In any case, Oprah's "real life" began at 15. It was marked by her being shipped off to Tennessee, pregnant, with the trauma of the birth and death of her baby. And yet one of the first entries in her diary after all this, which she began at 15, was that she was "having problems with boys?"

Hmm, how does a traumatized sexually abused teen come up with "having problems with boys" as one of her first problems after being shipped away pregnant by a sexual abuser, followed by the trauma of an ensuing birth and death of her baby?

Even giving Oprah the benefit of the doubt (as I do since I like her, although I don't believe a thing she says), this story makes no sense. The old excuse that "the man-made-me-do-it" is just too thin to cover her this time. A lot more is going on here, and this book is derelict in its duty not to give us at least a plausible explanation. After all, Maya Angelou, Oprah's good friend (who incidentally is from Stamps, Arkansas and not one of the five states the author claims she is from), wrote a whole book about her abuse as a child. Maya's book (I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings) was a classic and every word of it is believable. Oprah's own revelations, had the air of a political tract, rather than a personal confession, and as a result, was completely unbelievable. This book confirms this lack of believability in her "claimed sexual abuse."

I could go on and on but this example is symptomatic of the sloppiness of the book. It is an Oprah Winfrey fairytale that does not do the great woman justice. I really bought it to discover what the true story was behind the strangeness of her relationship with her declared "significant other "Stedman." But I no longer trust anything this author would have to say on the matter, so I will seek answers to that question from other sources. For this purpose I purchased Stedman's own book. God hope there is more truth there than is here.

One star

Oprah, Queen of Rot
If you have millions of dollars in America, a country not known for its generosity, it's normally accepted that you are a very "kind" person, thus explains the aura which surrounds the scream queen Oprah. Her empire not only includes millions of dollars, but questionable investments throughout the world which include sweat factories and exploited workers. I for one found this book rather tedious as it attempts to make Oprah a saint who does no wrong. I'm waiting for her fall from grace like Martha Stewarts.