Finding Me: A Memoir

Finding Me is a deeply personal memoir that details Davis’s journey from a poverty-ridden childhood in Rhode Island to global success as an internationally acclaimed movie star. However, it is intended for a larger audience than just those who are familiar with Davis’s work as an actor, as it provides a commentary on the different ways in which one’s racial background contributes to and influences not only one’s identity and sense of self-worth but also one’s socioeconomic circumstances.

In her first-person narrative, Davis recounts, mostly in chronological order, the story of her life: her parents and their backgrounds, the births of her siblings, her own birth, her childhood and upbringing, and her journey to reach eventual success and fame. Anecdotes from her life are interwoven with reflections on life lessons and the insights they provided, and the theme of race is important throughout. The maternal side of Davis’s family hails from a plantation in South Carolina, and this detail immediately directs the reader to the trauma of slavery that haunts Davis’s family history. Though neither she nor her parents experience this particular trauma, their respective childhoods are deeply impacted by the aftereffects of slavery and racism, in both overt and indirect ways.

Within her own life, Davis bears the dual weight of growing up Black and poor, and her memoir explores the relationship between the two. While she relates anecdotes that speak to both experiences separately, she continually suggests that one is greatly influenced by the other. Specifically, the generational trauma of racism is a challenge that takes up so much mental space and resources that there is little left to combat other stressors in her family’s life, poverty being foremost. Furthermore, Davis recalls multiple instances in which the responses of adults around her, rooted in both implicit bias and outright racist beliefs, work to perpetuate the cycle of poverty experienced by her family. The systems in place around Davis do not offer recourse for someone who is Black and poor; rather, the latter is further reinforced by other people’s beliefs and stereotypes regarding the former. She highlights how racist bias and ideology is so prevalent that it has affected the consciousness of the Black community as well, and it is present at all levels of society. As a young girl, Davis’s mother faces discrimination and even abuse from other Black people because she is dark-skinned. Many years later, Davis experiences subtler but equally powerful kinds of discrimination when she begins working as an actress, being denied access to certain kinds of roles because she, too, is a darker-skinned Black woman.

Davis’s experience of growing up poor dominates her early childhood and has a profound impact on how she chooses to live her life as an adult. Her racial identity is an even more pervasive aspect of her journey. While she eventually transcends the former and learns to embrace the latter, the memoir is a retelling of how she learned to reconcile the versions of her past that are simultaneously influenced by both experiences in inextricable ways.