Best Biography of the Year: Book Review by Theresa Gauthier

 Bits & Pieces by Whoopi Goldberg

This is one of those books I knew I was going to like before I even picked it up.   I mean, it’s Whoopi Goldberg.

It’s impossible NOT to like it. After having read it, I can say “like” is too weak a word. This book made me laugh like I haven’t laughed in years, it made my jaw drop open in surprise, and in impotent outrage on behalf of Whoopi and her family.

As soon as I heard about it, I was excited and impatient. Waiting for the publication date seemed impossible. Usually, I read my books in print, but when the chance to hear this as an audiobook with Whoopi Goldberg herself reading it, I couldn’t say no.

I’ve listened to audiobooks before, and, to me, some books work better than others in that format. If you’re considering Bits & Pieces on audio, I highly recommend it. Hearing Whoopi’s story in her own voice was the best experience. She tells the story of her early days in New York, of growing up with a single, working mother, of the times she got away with something, and the times she didn’t.

Some of these things I knew. I’m a lifelong Beatles fan, so I saw her in Eight Days a Week describing how her mother had taken her to see the Beatles in concert. Star Trek has been a part of my life at least as long as The Beatles, so I’ve heard her describe how she felt when she first saw Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura on Star Trek, and how she told LeVar Burton to tell Gene Roddenberry that she wanted in on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Those things aside, there’s surprisingly little I knew in any detail and least of all from her perspective.  Her relationships with her mother and brother were the centerpiece of her life growing up. Her joy at being able to take care of them, of her first family, later when her career took off is obvious, and yet also endearing and relatable. 

Her career didn’t have a logical trajectory, and yet it seemed an organic thing, expanding from each point and catching the right person’s eye, and making it impossible to imagine it unfolding in any other way. There’s no “what if” moment for the reader—that maybe if she’d done that instead of this, things would have been different. Rather it seemed that she did what she was meant to do when she was meant to do it. 

I didn’t want it to end. I enjoyed it so thoroughly, that I wished it were a far more massive book. The print version is 258 pages, so sure, there’s a lot she probably didn’t share. Then again, she didn’t need to. She told as much as she needed to tell, and I can’t imagine any of her fans being disappointed.