00:00We like winners.
00:02We like people who hold trophies.
00:04We like people who have money.
00:06We don't want anything that reflects our greatest fear.
00:11And when you're poor, that's what you are reflecting.
00:15It's not even that people look down on you.
00:18They don't see you at all.
00:20To my sisters, my sister Dolores, who's here,
00:23who played Jaji and Jaja with me.
00:25We were rich white women in the Tea Party games.
00:29Thank you for the imagination.
00:33I would go, Jaji, Jaji, where did you get your ring from?
00:40And my sister Dolores would say,
00:42I got it from my husband,
00:45who loves me more than any man could ever love a woman.
00:49And then she would always break it by, you know, saying,
00:52You're not rich.
00:54You don't live in Beverly Hills.
00:56You're poor.
00:57You live on welfare.
00:58And I would say, take that back, Dolores.
01:01Take it back.
01:02And then we would fight and cry, and then the game would be over.
01:06It was a coping mechanism to deal with the sort of dysfunction and the poverty.
01:11In a way, it was a game that saved us.
01:20It's not easy for me to admit that I've been standing in the same place for 18 years.
01:24Well, I've been standing with you.
01:27I've been right here with you, Troy.
01:29Those things that we probably are ashamed of as human beings.
01:33Certain things that no one would ever talk about.
01:37As actors, when we transform into a character, we empathize with those moments.
01:43August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth-grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's,
01:54who notices women like my mom, May Alice Davis, who has an eighth-grade education, who got married and had her first kid at 15.
02:02You know, grew up on Singleton Plantation.
02:06He wrote about the everyday human being.
02:12And I feel like those are the greatest stories, man.
02:15They're the greatest stories.
02:17That's why I became an actor.
02:22Rebel is not a word I would describe for myself, but I feel like I was a total rebel being an actor.
02:31You know, I think that there is a place that lives within everyone that's untouched by everything surrounding them.
02:40It's a sacred place where they define themselves.
02:45I don't believe that most people know it's there.
02:48I think that we wait for other people to define us.
02:51That's why we love compliments.
02:53We never tap into that place and go, well, who are you?
02:57And what do you want?
02:59And it made me feel alive.
03:02That there was something in me, a passion, a love, and that I didn't just squelch it.
03:08That I literally took it out and I let it soar.
03:12I feel like when I win an award now, the 51-year-old woman gets up there who is very present and very calm.
03:27I come from the world of if you enjoy it, it's like all of a sudden, you know, the sky is going to fall.
03:34Like when I won this art contest, they had this big ceremony for me at RISD.
03:39And I ran home to tell my parents, and I just remember I was running back to poverty.
03:45It didn't feel the same way I felt when I heard the news.
03:49And then I realized that, but Viola, that was your childhood.
03:53You can actually enjoy it now.
03:55So I think it's a big deal to enjoy.
03:58To enjoy.
03:59To enjoy.
04:03You
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