Whoopi Goldberg, about to turn 69, has released her autobiography in the United States, a memoir of just over 200 pages titled ‘Bits and Pieces: My Mother, my Brother, and Me’, a title that in Spanish could translate as ‘Pieces and … pieces: my mother, my brother and me’. The title, together with the dedication (‘This book is for all those who knew my mother and my brother’), well condenses the essence of his work: remembering his mother, Emma, who died suddenly in August 2010, and his brother, Clyde, who died even more unexpectedly in May 2015, aged 65. The book also includes his personal and professional career, according to El País.
The book covers some of the names that have helped Goldberg throughout his career, from directors like Mike Nichols to Steven Spielberg, from actors like Maggie Smith to Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he maintained a loving friendship based on philanthropy and Marlon Brando, who after a telephone conversation appeared by surprise at her house and she found out because she heard someone playing the piano. The interpreter was born in a humble environment and grew up the daughter of a very peculiar single mother in public housing in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York.
Disappearance of his mother
Among these intimate episodes, one especially stands out in which at one point in his childhood, his mother disappears. His mother is taken to a hospital and she disappears from her and her brother’s lives for two years. They don’t know anything about her, if she will come back, if not. She also doesn’t remember much of what happened in the meantime, but she does remember that her father and paternal grandfather were the ones who admitted her to a medical center. As adults, Emma reveals to her two children that she underwent electroshock therapy during those years, a time that left her weakened and with hardly any memories. When she returns, she recognizes them, she did not remember who those children were. She never visited a doctor again and she changed her profession from nursing to teaching.
The relationship with her mother has been the pillar of the actress’s life. In fact, not without a good helping of racism, Goldberg is often asked why she doesn’t have a strong accent, something that she continues to be surprised by and that her mother attributed to other people’s ignorance. She always supported her, even when she wanted to be an actress since she was a child. And also when she became pregnant and wanted to move on, when she was barely 18 years old.
In the book, Goldberg acknowledges that she never forgot the physical pain of childbirth, nor the inability to breastfeed little Alex. When she had her she was very young, she had barely started her career. She wanted to be a film actress in Hollywood, but she started with theater in New York and then in Texas and then, yes, she arrived in California. There she signed Spielberg for ‘The Color Purple’, her first big on-screen opportunity and her first Oscar nomination, although he didn’t win it until his second, with ‘Ghost’ and the role of Oda Mae.
Maternity
Her early motherhood, at the height of her career, first made her have to ask for social benefits, which she later wanted to return to the State of California. And then, for long periods of time he did not see his daughter; It was her mother who took care of her. Emma left her New York apartment and flew to California to care for the little girl, granddaughter whom she cared for for years.
The actress admits that she knew about her daughter’s lack of affection from very early on. At just 15 years old, the young woman became pregnant; On the day she turned 34, she Whoopi Goldberg was a grandmother. Years later, her daughter confessed to her that “she believes she got pregnant as a teenager because she wanted to have a person in her life who didn’t know who Whoopi Goldberg was.” She now has three children and a granddaughter; Since 2014, at 58 years old, Ella Goldberg has been a great-grandmother.
Drugs
In the eighties, at the peak of his fame, Goldberg fell into drugs again. In a New York hotel, alone on her birthday, she was discovered by one of the cleaners, sitting on the floor with a face full of cocaine. They were both scared of each other and she was so ashamed that she stopped using hard drugs, but she continues to take marijuana and even had cannabis marketing companies.
When Emma died in 2010, the performer and her brother decided to throw it in Disneyland park, south of Los Angeles. It is a common practice, although prohibited, but she acknowledges that she knew it would make her mother happy.
