A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life by Isaiah Washington Read Free Book Online Page A

are an artist. You can do whatever you want.” She later gave me a copy of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
. It was a gesture that greatly resonated with me. A year later I found myself living at 231 Clermont Avenue between DeKalb
     and Willoughby streets, in Brooklyn. This was the landmarkneighborhood where Walt Whitman lived and was inspired to write
Leaves of Grass
. I don’t think it is an accident that I now write this book.
    After we worked together and he so kindly challenged death on my behalf, John Amos, whose memory confirms mine on the choking
     incident, became a mentor and friend. Our relationship had special significance and actually began long before I met him in
     person for the first time.
    It was 1976, I was thirteen years old and sitting at home in Houston watching the TV show
Good Times.
During a commercial break, there was a teaser for the five o’clock news about the death of a local man, fatally shot by his
     common law wife. Turns out, the man was my father. That’s exactly how I learned that my biological father had died—at home,
     sitting on the couch after school, watching an episode of
Good Times.
    When I was three years old, after his beating my mother throughout their five-year marriage, my mother and I left him. My
     mother later told me that when she packed her bags to leave, she told him there would be a woman out there who would not tolerate
     what she endured from him, and that woman would probably take his life.
    To me it is no surprise that when I learned of my biological father’s death, I was watching my fantasy father on TV. I idolized
     James Evans Sr., John Amos’s character on
Good Times,
and for years I wished he were my own father. They were complete opposites. While my father was aggressive and abusive, fighting
     everyone around him, James Evans Sr. used his strength to fight against the sting of poverty and racism in the Chicago projects
     that threatened to tear apart his family.
    To me James Evans symbolized strength and character. I admired him, and with no strong black man close to me to look up to,
     with no one like him in my life, I looked up to him. As my life progressed, I would eventually learn that a man’scharacter is his destiny. And I knew that one day, I would meet John Amos.
    I feel extremely fortunate to have developed such a strong bond with John when I did. He exemplified strength of character
     in everything he did on film, television, and stage. It was his mentorship that laid the foundation for my transition from
     New York to Los Angeles. He helped me further understand my place in the world.
    He would always say, “Your intensity can be a pain in the ass, son, but I love it! All you need is one vehicle and you are
     on your way. That is if your emotions don’t become your worst enemy. You feel so deeply, son, but you have got to learn to
     contain it and make it laser sharp. Sharp enough to be felt through the screen. Can you do it? Huh?”
    “Yes, I can do it,” I replied.
    “Can you be obsequious?” he asked me one day.
    I looked up the word “obsequious”; definition: servile. The word “servile”; definition: humbly submissive.
    I didn’t understand. “Why on earth was John Amos asking me to be servile? He’s Kunta Kinte, one of the strongest symbols of
     a black man ever on film! He’s the guy who held up his newborn child toward the starry night sky and proclaimed, “Behold the
     only thing greater than yourself!” To me he exemplified strength, but he was telling me that I must figure out how to “conceal”
     mine.
    Meeting John Amos was no accident. I was supposed to meet him; there was something I was to learn from him. He said I needed
     to appear affable and nonthreatening or there would be hell to pay. Hollywood never saw my strength as an asset; it already
     had Denzel Washington for that. Apparently, there was no room for another serious actor to become a “leading man” in the 1990s
     and I wasn’t the happy