Whoopi Goldberg on Alice Walker, 'Sex and the City,' and the Last Book She Bought

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Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

Whoopi Goldberg has always loved telling stories, and her latest book, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me (Blackstone) is about the 2 people who knew her best: her late mother, Emma Johnson, a Head Start teacher, and late older brother, Clyde Johnson. She also has a graphic novel, about a menopausal superhero, called The Change (Dark Horse Publishing) out in July, and she has written 4 other adult books and 8 children’s books, including the Sugar Plum Ballerinas series.

The New York-born and -raised Goldberg is one of 19 EGOT winners: Emmy for co-hosting The View; Grammy for a self-titled comedy album; Oscar for Ghost, (Patrick Swayze championed her for the role of medium Oda Mae Brown); and Tony for producing Thoroughly Modern Millie. She was also nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for her debut as Celie in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple. She has hundreds of film, TV, and Broadway credits, including the Sister Act franchise (#3 has been announced, co-produced by Tyler Perry, who named a sound stage after her at his Atlanta studio) and recently, friend Tony Goldwyn’s (they did Ghost together) Ezra, which Julia Roberts raved about as a guest on The View. (Roberts’s husband was the film’s cinematographer.) She’s given career advice to Octavia Spencer, was championed by Mike Nichols, and once found Marlon Brando at her house playing “Stardust” on the piano.

The great-grandmother is multiple Oscar ceremony host (as a kid she wrote pretend acceptance speeches), producer (Till), UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recipient, former Fresh Air Fund camper, and morgue beautician. She is also an entrepreneur behind Whoopi Prosecco and equity partner of new Black-focused family streaming platform Blkfam, steering creative development of curated diverse content. She helped highlight the AIDS/HIV epidemic as a guest star on A Different World, sent flowers to her mother on her own November 13 birthday every year, repaid the state of California for welfare she was on as a young single mother, was on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Henry Louis Gates’s family lineage show, Finding Your Roots, and in a Pirelli calendar, inspired Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. She also has a cat named Twilight.

Collects: Art, after Elizabeth Taylor suggested she ask for a gift from a studio every time she agreed to a film, something she did herself.

Good at: Entertaining (she wrote a book called The Unqualified Hostess and records homemaking videos as the Bougie Bitch); making turkey, which she cooks at low temperature for 9 hours, as her mom used to.

Causes she supports: The environment, voting, education.

Likes: Thom Browne and Etsy; VW Bugs and Porsches; shoes and white shirts; comic books, superheroes, and horror films; artist Maxfield Parrish; Sardinia, where she owns a home; Christie’s real estate; The Muppets (as a teen, she babysat for an actress on Sesame Street).

Dislikes: German chocolate cake and eggs. Crack open one of her book recs below.

The book that…

…kept me up way too late:

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. It’s the scariest book ever, and I had no business reading at night. I got what I paid for.

…made me weep uncontrollably:

Roots by Alex Haley. It was the first time I got an idea that maybe we did have a history somewhere, that somebody knew something.

…I recommend over and over again:

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It’s fun to listen to it being read by Lenny Henry. (Editor’s note: She is starring in the Amazon adaptation of the work.)

…shaped my world view:

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. I understood Peter’s groove. I didn’t want adults around, just wanted to live with your people and when you’re a kid, other kids are your people. And I understood wanting to live that way. You have to grow up, but I did it reluctantly.

…I swear I’ll finish one day:

Ulysses by James Joyce. I’m trying really hard.

…I read in one sitting, it was that good:

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. I drink Stephen’s King’s books. He scares me, and he makes me laugh. Those are things I love. [Editor’s note: She starred in the most recent adaptation of the author’s The Stand on Amazon Prime.]

…I’d give to a new graduate:

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. I give it to graduates because Rilke is being asked to read someone’s poetry and to tell the man if he’s a poet, and his response to that is magnificent. I say, If you’re not sure, just read this, this will help.

…made me laugh out loud:

Toddlers are A**holes by Bunmi Laditan. I give it to lots of parents, but I give it to my friends as well because everything she writes happens, and it’s so great to see it on the page. You just kind of go, Oh my God, yes, they are. They are strange little beings who get up in the middle of the night because they want a cookie so you bring them a cookie but then they don’t want the cookie and they cry about not getting the cookie they said they didn’t want. It makes me so happy every time I read it.

…features a character I love to hate:

Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell. All of them. None of them made sense.

…should be on every college syllabus:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

…I first bought:

Peter Pan.

…I last bought:

I bought An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin this morning.

…I consider literary comfort food:

Another Neil Gaiman book called American Gods.

…I never returned to the library:

Never happened. I returned everything [because of] my mother.

…sealed a friendship:

I have no friends. [Laughs] I’d go back to The Color Purple. I made lots of friends because of that book.

…makes me feel seen:

Bits and Pieces.

…everyone should read:

Bits and Pieces.

…fills me with hope:

Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney. She’s amazing.

…surprised me:

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix.

…I’d want signed by the author:

Every book I own. [But] I listen to everything on Audible, so it’s not really possible.

…I asked for as a kid:

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I asked for it every holiday/birthday/whatever came up, and then I got to be a grown woman and someone got it for me. Finally.

…holds the recipe to a favorite dish:

Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freedman. It goes into Delmonico’s being the first restaurant, the first restaurant to allow women to sit by themselves to eat, the first restaurant to put a tablecloth on the table. It’s a fantastic book. I liked all the food they were talking about.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Roots by Alex Haley

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Ulysses by James Joyce

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Toddlers Are A**holes by Bunmi Laditan

Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell

An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Oath and Honor by Liz Cheney

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freedman

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