Daring To Go There

There are times, though perhaps not many, when even the Queen of Talk is at a loss for words, when her lively brand of armchair wisdom collapses under the weight of personal revelation. Oprah Winfrey calls these her "go there" moments, spiritual episodes of divine guidance that far transcend the chatty exchanges with her studio audiences--about her fiance Stedman, her best friend Gayle or even her dogs Sophie and Solomon--that often masquerade as intimacy. It is during these moments, usually while jogging the winding trails on her Indiana farm, that Winfrey becomes overwhelmed by the sense that old spirits are trying to get in touch with her. And it is during these moments that the woman who loves to talk stops dead in her tracks simply to listen.

Sometimes the epiphanies carry the voices of Negro slaves--Joe and Emily and Dara; Sue and Bess and Sara. Winfrey says she has come to know each of them personally and calls them in at will to guide her in her work. The spirits began visiting her a few years ago, shortly after she bought the property records of various plantations at a Sotheby's auction. A collector of slave memorabilia, Winfrey cherishes the slave papers because these documents serve as the best vessel for connecting her--through name, age and price--to the real human legacy of slavery. While filming Beloved, she kept the slave inventory in her trailer on the set. She dedicated scenes to individual slaves by lighting a candle and praying aloud to them. Often, though, she became so emotional that she couldn't perform the scene.

The film, she says, has changed her life. "I always thought I knew my black history, the essence of my roots," says Winfrey, sitting in her spacious, comfortable office in Chicago. "For years I have talked about my ancestors being the bridge that I crossed over on, that the reason Oprah Winfrey can exist is because Sojourner Truth did, because Fannie Lou Hammer did and because Ida B. Wells did. But I have gone from an awareness to a knowing...I now have a sense of what slavery felt like instead of what it looked like."

For the past decade Winfrey's obsession has been to share such feelings with all of America--to recast the discussion of slavery, presenting it not merely as a brutal, exploitative era in our history but as a kind of roll call of individual tragedy in which, as chattel, "you died with no salvation and no honor in your spirit." She argues that painting slavery with a broad brush in literature, film and even political debate has kept us from knowing the real horror and heroism of the institution. "We got it all wrong," she says. "For years we've talked about the physicality of slavery--who did what and who invented that. But the real legacy lies in the strength and courage to survive."