Hall, M. R. (2003, July). The “Oprahfication” of Literacy: Reading Oprah’s book club. College English, 65(6), 646 667.

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Buffy Hamilton
Think Piece/Paper
August 29, 2005
ELAN 8005
Hall, M. R. (2003, July). The “Oprahfication” of Literacy: Reading Oprah’s book club.
College English, 65(6), 646--667.
I chose this article for two reasons: the author incorporates the theoretical lens of
“literacy sponsor” coined by Deborah Brandt, whose work I studied this summer, and the
author examines how the Oprah and the Oprah Book Club function as a sponsor of
literacy. Brandt defines a sponsor of literacy as “…any agents, local or distant, concrete
or abstracts, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress,
or withhold literacy---and gain advantage by it in some way” (Brandt, p. 19). Oprah is a
literacy sponsor who is successful because she is willing to “…should the mantel of
cultural authority…she can do this because her appeal to viewers…is based on…self-
help”(660). In using Brandt’s theory to “read Winfrey’s power and authority to tell
millions of people what---and how---to read…”, Hall closely examines how Oprah
Winfrey uses her status as a member of celebrity culture to hook and maintain readers in
the Oprah Book Club. Although Hall seems critical of Oprah’s emphasis on the use of
literacy for personal transformation and self-help, his article seems more of a lament of
the non-highbrow uses of literacy by Oprah’s Book Club rather than a convincing
argument that Oprah and the Oprah Book Club are detrimental sponsors of literacy.

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Hall introduces his examination of the Oprah Book Club as a sponsor of literacy by
stating the central purpose of the article: “…to develop this conceptualization of literacy
as an ideological practice by investigating the manner of content of thinking about
reading and writing associated with it”(647.). Rather than literacy being a set of concrete
“skills,” Hall takes a sociocultural view of literacy in which literacy is an “…ideological
practice, implicated in power relations and embedded in specific cultural meanings and
practices”(647). Two essential questions are at the heart of Hall’s analysis:
What values and assumptions about literacy were advanced on The Oprah Winfrey
Show?
How are they (values and assumptions) implicated in power relations and
ingrained in specific reading practices?
According to Hall, an investigation of these questions is important not only in
understanding how literacy perpetuates and is embedded in the values and practices of a
culture, but also because “…understanding the literacy goals and practices of non-school
communities and institutions can help teachers to connect with students’ literacies and
lives beyond the classroom”(647-648). Exploring these understanding is important to me
for two reasons. As an English educator and school based literacy sponsor, I am
interested in the practices of adult readers and the influences of sponsors of literacy in
adult readers’ lives and how those practices might translate to meaningful classroom
practice. However, given the conversations from our ELAN 7700 class this past summer,
I am particularly interested in the practices of literacy sponsors that are not associated
with public schools, especially when I think about how many of us perceived schools as
literacy sponsors who shaped our reading beliefs and practices in a negative way.

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Hall devotes the majority of the article outlining how Oprah links a glamorous
lifestyle and reading through a detailed analysis of episodes featuring book club meetings
at Oprah’s home with sumptuous dinners and hallmarks of “good taste.” Hall identifies
the major themes of “…Winfrey’s Cinderella fairy tale: secrets, intimacy, power---and
books”(648). Hall spends the majority of the article analyzing how Oprah creates “an
illusion of intimacy”(651) to convince her book club members to engage in the books she
chooses for the book club selections. Hall especially hones in on how Oprah frequently
engages in self-disclosure, frequently sharing the story of how books and reading
transformed her life from one that was intellectually and financially impoverished to a
life that is rich both spiritually and materially rich. Hall also depicts how Oprah links
celebrity culture and good taste while avoiding any associations “highbrow” culture when
she hosts book club dinners at her home that feature fine dining and sumptuous settings
(652-54). While Hall seems to hint that Oprah’s tactics are a smoke and mirrors kind of
act and that her theme of books as a means to self-improvement (655), Hall never
acknowledges the fact that Oprah as a literacy sponsor achieved what so many other
sponsors of literacy have not: she has people reading and engaging in dialogue about
books.
I do not think we should discount Hall’s concern that Oprah’s Book Club sometimes
privileged “…deeply personal, affective responses…because they are more consistent
with the value and assumptions underlying the show”(658) over intellectual responses to
the texts. The concern of how to balance a literary conversation with personal response
and a deeper inquiry into the text itself is a challenge for all literacy educators. In
addition, Hall expresses a valid concern over the messages, implicit and explicit, sent to

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readers about literacy and its uses through the linkage of celebrity culture and lifestyle
with reading when Oprah hosts book club dinners at her glamorous home complete with
fine amenities and sumptuous cuisine. However, I think it would have been more useful
for Hall to have interviewed individuals who participated in the Oprah Book Club and to
have compared how the literary conversation and meetings were different or similar to
those book club meetings televised on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I am intrigued to know
how participants in the book club benefited from Oprah’s sponsorship of literacy in her
viewers’ lives.
Although Hall asserts that Oprah provides her readers her “…credibility, with the
promise of self-improvement and moral uplift…”(660) in exchange for “ratings and
revenue”(660), I do not see the Oprah really gains any power from her role as a literacy
sponsor, particularly after reading Reading Oprah: How Oprah’s Book Club Changed
the Way America Reads; in this book, Dr. Cecilia Konchar Farr points out that Oprah did
not make any financial gains through the Oprah Book Club. While Hall perceives
Oprah’s role of hostess at the book club dinner table representative of a woman in
traditional and subservient roles of mother, hostess, and homemaker (660), I disagree
with Hall’s assertion that the Oprah Book Club falsely frames reading in terms of “female
empowerment”(661) and depends on “fundamentally conservative forces in the history of
literacy sponsorship for women in this country”(661). The all female book clubs of
America in the late 1800s and early 1900s did not depend on “fundamentally
conservative forces”; instead, these book clubs were a means for women to do social
work that actually conflicted with traditional cultural values and enabled women to
enlarge their reading practices and forge bonds with other women to enlarge their

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thinking and push the envelopes of socially acceptable behaviors of women in a time
when women’s rights were severely limited in American society.
While this article did not change my overall perception that the Oprah Book Club has
functioned as an important sponsor of literacy in contemporary American society, Hall
does pose some valid questions that warrant further inquiry:
Might there be, for instance, a negative version of the literacy sponsor---a “non-
literacy sponsor,” perhaps? (663)
What would be the reciprocal relationship among these non-literacy sponsors and
the sponsored? How might non-literacy sponsors, such as schools and
bureaucracies, reinforce existing inequalities in America? (663)
What “extracurriculum” might flourish and function as part of the “experiences of
literate people” (664) when non-school readers become enthusiastic readers
through the sponsorship of a literacy sponsor such as the Oprah Book Club? How
might other literacy sponsors create literate communities that embrace and embody
the literacy practices from this “extracurriculum”, particularly for those in public
schools who have had limited literacy access to literacy and/or limited literacy
learning experiences?
In conclusion, I enjoyed reading this article that analyzes the Oprah Book Club
through Deborah Brandt’s literary lens of “sponsors of literacy”. Although I did not
agree with all of Hall’s analysis and conclusions, I do value the important questions he
raises in this article and feel that this reading will inform my own research project this
fall as I interview individuals and examine the role of literacy sponsors in the lives of
my research participants.

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