Whoopi Goldberg speaks...'Here's where I'm supposed to say all kinds of hip, Whoopi-esque stuff to get you to buy the book...So this is when we seal the deal, when I tell you in my own inimitable way, how uproarious and provocative this book is, how OUT THERE, and cutting edge, and whatever else I can think of to throw into the mix. Or, I could say things like, 'Not since War and Peace...' or 'Move over Alice Walker...' Well come on now, if a book were all those things it would be a novel, and I wouldn't resort to such low tactics.... So I'll give it you straight.' As befits the sassy, original entertainer, this is no ordinary autobiography filled with the boring details. Instead, Whoopi delivers twenty-five monologues with titles such as Fate, Trust, Home, Self, Cost, Race, Choice, Dick, Death and Dream. Under the chapter 'Wind' she reveals: 'A lot of people don't know this about me...but that's how I got my name, from my frequent farting. When I was in my 20s and diagnosed with ulcers, I was encouraged to fart up a storm, and my friends started calling me Whoopi. I was like a walking whoopee cushion, they said. It was an easy tag and the name stuck.
Well, this was fun. The style of the book immediately reminded me of the scene in one of my favourite Goldberg films Jumping Jack Flash, where her character, Terry Doolittle, is injected with a truth serum and can't stop herself from commenting on everything that is going on around her.
I loved that scene, but I can see how the train-of-thought approach to writing might not be to everyone's tastes.
Nevertheless, this was a book I really enjoyed. Goldberg is honest and forthcoming, to the point that she does admit that she had the help of a co-author when writing this, her first ever, book.
The sad aspect of the book of course is that many of the issues she writes about in this mixture of biography and social commentary are still relevant 20 years after the original publication in 1997.
