1. Hamilton 1
Buffy Hamilton
ELAN 8005
Response Paper: Reading Oprah
July 17, 2005
In Reading Oprah: How Oprah’s Book Club Changed the Way
America Reads, Cecilia Konchar Farr, Professor of English and
Women‟s Studies at the College of St. Catherine, analyzes the
popularity of the Oprah Book Club and its implications for how and why
Americans read. In spite of the dismissal, disapproval, and outright
disregard from academe ,from segments of the mainstream press, and
members of higher education (24-26), Farr maintains that Oprah has
been able to achieve what teachers, librarians, and professors have
not: “She pushed solitary readers and alienated writers into the
background and gave the novel back its social history…Oprah gave the
novel back its talking life”(1-2).
Farr maintains that Oprah‟s success lies in her attunement to what
real Americans want and practice as readers: “Oprah‟s Book Club was
a phenomenal success because it recognize and embraced how most
Americans read and value literature. Oprah‟s unique position in
popular culture, and yes, capitalism allowed her to answer the call to
give books a public form, to place them in social contexts, and to take
advantage of their power to connect us. The Book Club latched onto a
book club movement already gathering strength, especially among
U.S. women, and took full advantage of its ties to a long-standing
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

2. Hamilton 2
American tradition of novel reading for literacy and social mobility, a
tradition that continues to appeal to deeply held democratic
values”(97). In other words, readers are not reading books to
reproduce “cultural capital” or to attain literacy as an economic
commodity, but reading is an act that is an act of democracy because
readers are acting as individuals who make their own reading choices
and are not relying upon what “high art” or academia deems as
“appropriate” reading, nor are they reading to engage in a critical
literary close reading. Instead, reading is an opportunity to connect
with others, to challenge ideas, and to thoughtfully reflect.
In the first chapter, Farr explores the roots of the Oprah Book Club.
In the tradition of self-improvement, Oprah created the book club as
part of her efforts to shift the focus of her show from sensationalism to
social responsibility and self-improvement (31). According to Farr,
Oprah chose to create a book club because books had been a
springboard for self-transformation in her own life and because, like
many teachers and professors, she wanted, “…books to become part of
my audience‟s lifestyle, for reading to become a natural phenomenon
with them, so that it is no longer a big deal”(9). Critical to the success
of the book club was the choice of books. Oprah frequently alternated
choices that set up a pattern reflecting the two primary functions of
literature for readers: to educate and entertain (14). While it would
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

3. Hamilton 3
have been easy for Oprah to have chosen light, “fluffy”, and formulaic
novels, she took risks, choosing books considered to be challenging as
well as books by first time writers and African American writers even
though her audience was predominantly white female middle-class
(20-22). Equally important to the success of the book club was
Oprah‟s ability to engage in authentic talk about novels, talk that
author Toni Morrison asserts is, “…essential to their [the books] full
realization as novels”(31). Why is this kind of talk so often silenced in
our classrooms? Why do students view reading as something silent
and solitary? Why is the “talking life” of novels denied so regularly in
literature curriculum?
In each episode devoted the discussion of the book, Oprah did not
rely upon a standard script of traditional questions one might hear in
an English class; instead, she began with her readers‟ responses to the
text and then modeled how to foray deeper into the text; she also
modeled how she as a real reader reveled in re-reading and asserted
there was never a final reading or a “correct” reading (40-49).
Imagine if in American classrooms, talk about books and literature was
like that of the Oprah Book Club. What kind of readers would be
shaped by these kinds of experiences? Would more Americans see
reading as something vital to a more fulfilling life, motivated by the
intrinsic lure of reading a way of participating in a democracy and
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

4. Hamilton 4
rather than literacy extrinsically motivated and as a tool for survival in
a capitalistic society? Imagine that in a high school classroom on any
given day in any given location in the United States, teachers and
students discovering together, “…how books could speak to them and
how they could, in return, have conversation with books”(41).
Whereas most traditional literature classrooms, “…usually focus almost
exclusively on reflective, intellectual approaches, Oprah‟s Book
Club…develops its own hybrid approach to reading…Oprah simply
wants her readers to come away, as she does, with a way into the
novel and the desire to plumb its depths, to reread and talk about it…
The lesson is to trust your own reading while trusting others to expand
that reading in conversation”(45-49).
Echoes of my readings of Brandt and Manguel resonated in Farr‟s
exploration of the history of the novel in America in Chapter 2. Farr
traces the “middlebrow” origins of novel reading in the United States,
citing middlebrow as a “class conscious concept” (35) and middlebrow
novels as means of self-improvement and mobility to move up from
one‟s own social class (35). This history is important because it sets
up a structure and purpose for reading that will essentially be the
blueprint for the Oprah Book Club that comes 100 years later (57).
What was especially interesting and enlightening for me in this chapter
was the idea of books as a means of not only negotiating social
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

5. Hamilton 5
classes, but also as a means of “bucking the system” and undermining
the established high culture. Farr asserts that the advent and
proliferation of middlebrow literacy helped those outside the privileged
class use novels in particular as “…the means to blur class distinctions
in the United States very early on…but because even women and the
uneducated could (and did) read them, novels were also suspect from
the beginning. And the uneducated did not just read them. They
wrote them. White women and African Americans, with little or no
access to formal education, were such popular writers in the
nineteenth-century United States that Hawthorne and Melville tried to
imitate them. Now that, later critics chafed, was too much.
Evidently novels were too blatant an assertion of democracy of
free choice without the mediation of the educated elite who has
been explaining the Bible and poetry to us for centuries”(36-
37). Are current literature curriculum practices designed to subvert
democracy and to keep certain groups “in their place”?
What would public education look like in America if students both
within and outside of the dominant class viewed the reading of novels
in this light? The beginning of the end of reading so often occurs
during the middle and high school years when students are forming
their identity and so often enjoy challenging the beliefs and practices
of the world (particularly the adult world), yet this should be the time
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

6. Hamilton 6
when adolescents use books to assert their voices and place in society.
Would AYP continue to be an issue in public schools if those in the
“failing subgroups” engaged in literacy experiences that helped them
see books and reading as a way of changing those socioeconomic
boundaries, books and novels as a way to participate in a democracy
and make their voices heard? I can only wonder if Deborah Brandt
views this type of literacy experience and the influence of Oprah‟s
Book Club as a positive and empowering literacy sponsor.
According to Farr, the flourishing of the middlebrow novel created a
reading revolution that created a, “…fascinating circle, then, [in which]
readers were drawn to novels because they were entertaining, while
the popularity of novels drew more people, even disenfranchised
people, to become literate by reading them…In short, reading, once
the enterprise only of the educated elite, met democracy head on in
American novels and, perhaps as much as any political force, launched
the middle-class nation we would become”(38). Just as a reading
revolution took place in the early late 1800s and early 1900s, could
one take place in the twenty first century if literature teachers of all
ages follow Oprah‟s lead and begin to, “… map a social reading
territory, a public space that had been increasingly abandoned in the
last century but one that ambitious Americans once lit out for with
books in their knapsacks…”(50-51)?
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

7. Hamilton 7
Another concept that stood out for me in this reading was Farr‟s
discussion of the term “oprahfication”, a term coined to “…describe the
titillating public discussion of the personal, the disclosure of private
emotion for mass consumption on national TV”(53) and how Oprah‟s
Book Club implies, “„…a shady talk show aesthetic that erases the lines
between appropriate an inappropriate, public and private. It implies
that reading has a social function, an implication quite different form
the traditional, high cultural idea of reading as an individual intellectual
pursuit…”(53-54). Again, the tensions of competing definitions and
philosophies of reading are evident in this loaded term,
“oprahfication.” Even in high school classrooms, fellow English
teachers, parents, and sometimes even students ridicule an English
teacher who teaches reading and literature outside the mainstream
traditional way that objectifies a text as an object with a single and
static meaning. Teachers who do not fall in line with the traditional
practices of the literature curriculum are often perceived and labeled
as “soft,” “easy,” “touchy-feely,” and essentially incompetent; they are
also viewed as dangerous and sometimes even subversive. Yet Farr
argues that Oprah‟s Book Club emphasis on the social aspects of
shared reading as legitimate, effective, and valid, affirming, “There is
no solitary praxis for book group members. Even how we read when
we‟re alone, what we notice and what questions we ask, is affected by
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

8. Hamilton 8
the lingering presence of other group members‟ voices. By reading,
and reading well together, book group members challenge one another
to think differently, to think critically, and to connect, to build
community”(54). While some critics dismiss the validity of Oprah‟s
Book Club and her influence as self-promotion and the
commercialization of books, they often fail to mention that Oprah does
not profit from the sales of the books she chooses; yes, she often does
have an agenda of social consciousness, but what English teacher or
professor does not have a thematic focus or theoretical lens that
serves as an agenda for how they teach books and reading? Farr
readily admits that the Oprah Book Club is guilty of “oprahfication”,
but in her view, “oprahfication” is a positive act in the tradition of
women in the 1900s using books in the same manner for engendering
social change and ultimately, women‟s place in society. Farr
emphatically concludes that, “On the Book Club, novels are „oprahfied‟,
they have a talking life. In the American tradition, they „enlighten as
well as entertain.‟ And in the tradition of the novel, they
enthusiastically embrace their social function. Oprah, the Queen of
Daytime TV, teaches reading skills more widely and more effectively
than the professionals, in part because she earns the right every day
as she models life skills, even survival skills for her viewers…she
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

9. Hamilton 9
navigated the novel‟s society territory with her cherished favorite
books in hand and got us reading again. Reading and talking”(72).
I believe that those who sneer at Oprah‟s practices envy her dual
possession of both economic and cultural capital. Once again, the
derogatory use of the term “oprahfication” reflects tensions in how
literacy is produced and used in America. Most Americans would say
reading is important, yet those of the cultural elite are threatened by
mass numbers of Americans reading without the guidance and
direction of so-called “experts” who view themselves as “serious
readers” (75-88). What is so threatening about a proliferation in
Americans using novels and reading for entertainment and education?
For Americans from all walks of life to actively choose what to read
and to reject the teachings and recommendations of these “experts” is
to diminish the cultural capital of the “cultural elite” and in effect,
threaten the existing power structure that seeks to reproduce and
value a particular set of values. In light of Farr‟s definition of
“oprahfication,” I would be glad to be guilty of “oprahfying” books in
my classroom practices.
In conclusion, this reading reinforced my understandings from this
semester‟s earlier readings as well as my prior readings of Sumara and
Rosenblatt. While Farr does point out some shortcomings and flaws
with some practices of particular episodes of the Oprah Book Club, her
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

10. Hamilton 10
thoughtful analysis of the roots and history of the kinds of reading
practices reflected in the Book Club gives credence to Oprah‟s work
and educators a model to follow if we really do seek to encourage
lifelong reading and to discover practices of adult readers that we hope
to nurture in the adolescents who enter our classrooms each year. As
teachers of reading and literature, we cannot continue to cling to
traditional practices and philosophies; we must not be afraid to
embrace change because:
"…as books are ever more readily available, as literacy rates rise
and more of us invest in a college education, these old lists and
their outworn standards are not enough. Indeed, I sometimes
wonder how they survived for song in a democratic nation. Sure,
they simplify our choices, but what do they leave out… Everything
around us has changed in the last thirty years in the United States,
but The List and the elite standards that maintain it have stayed
surprisingly the same. With the rise of social change movement
like civil rights and feminism, readers like my students began
demanding more connection to their lives, more relevance in their
literature. Oprah understood what students have been saying for
years but what many professors an arbiters of taste in our culture
have failed do grasp---that today‟s world demands a different
approach to books and to reading. If nothing else is apparent from
a close reading of Oprah‟s Book Club, it is certainly clear that
America doesn‟t read like it used to…Despite these efforts [of the
literary elite of critics like Harold Bloom], Americans aren‟t going to
books seeking classical allusions and Shakespearean quotes as
affirmations of our expensive education or cultural literacy, our
superiors understating or elite sensibilities. Oprah‟s Book Club
demonstrates that this perspective is a more accurate reflection of
where most reading Americans have gone. The Book Club invites
readers to talk to each other over books, to share stories, to
identify and empathize, to explore new life patterns, and even to
change. By emphasizing the novel‟s talking life, Oprah affirms a
democratic shift in what readers value in books. (90-92)
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

11. Hamilton 11
I am looking forward to my upcoming readings in the fall that will help
me continue to explore and critique the Oprah Book Club as a literacy
sponsor in American lives.
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton

12. Hamilton 12
References
Farr, C. (2005). Reading Oprah: How Oprah’s Book Club changed
the way America reads. Albany, New York: State University of
New York Press.
Response to Reading Oprah
All work © 2005 Buffy Hamilton