OPRAH: A biography
by Kitty Kelley.

NZRRP$39.99. Published by Allen & Unwin. 


In my review of this title posted Sunday I mentioned the author's interesting Foreword. I have now got permission from the publishers to reproduce the opening four paragraphs which follow below.

I met Oprah Winfrey when I was on a book promotion tour in Baltimore in 1981, and she was cohosting WJZ’s morning show,  People Are Talking, with Richard Sher. We sat down before the show began, and as I recall, Richard did most of the talking, while Oprah seemed a bit standoffish, which I didn’t understand until later. He interviewed me on the air and then joined Oprah on the set with a compliment about our lively exchange. Oprah shook her head with displeasure. “I don’t approve of that kind of book,” she said. “I have relatives she wrote a book about and they didn’t like it at all.”

I looked at the producer and asked what in the world she was talking about. I understood what she meant by “that kind of book”—an unauthorized biography written without the subject’s cooperation or control—but I was perplexed by her reference to my having written a book about her relatives. The only biography I had written at the time was the life story of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Jackie Oh!), and my research had not turned up any Winfrey relatives in that family tree.

The producer looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well . . . Oprah is close toMaria Shriver, plus she’s very much in awe of the Kennedys. . . . I guess she considers herself part of the family in a way and . . . she knows they were upset by your book because it was so revealing . . . and . . . well, that’s why we decided to have Richard do your segment.”

I jotted down the exchange on the back of my book-promotion schedule, just in case the publisher asked how things had gone in Baltimore. I had no idea that twenty-five years later Oprah Winfrey would be a supernova in our firmament, and I would devote four years to writing “that kind of book” about her.

Text extracted with permission from OPRAH: A biography by Kitty Kelley. NZRRP$39.99. Published by Allen & Unwin. Available now in all good bookstores.