As her memoir “Worthy” hits shelves, Jada Pinkett Smith tells ‘Writing Black’ host Maiysha Kai she didn’t write it to set the record straight.
The maiden. The mother. The queen. The huntress. The sage. The mystic. The lover. Writers and readers alike might recognize these seven classic feminine archetypes as prevalent throughout stories of all eras, genres, and cultures. In Jada Pinkett Smith’s already heavily discussed memoir, “Worthy,” the actress-turned-author embodies all of these archetypes and more, taking readers on an over-50-year “heroine’s journey.” Through the unraveling, reweaving, and, yes, “entanglements” of her personal mythology, Pinkett Smith shares a story both uniquely hers and surprisingly universal — reminding us that, in the end, she might simply be … human.
To say the public mythology surrounding this half of “Will and Jada” runs deep would be an understatement. While her years in that famous pairing constitute roughly half of Pinkett Smith’s life to date, with “Worthy,” both halves have now presented their respective stories to the world in print — and though the details may differ, it’s worth noting their accounts rarely, if ever, contradict each other. However, each has also acknowledged that tacit agreement sometimes comes at a price, a point “Worthy” offers as both a testimony and cautionary tale.
“There were so many very complex, complicated ideas within this relationship of Will and I … that’s played out in the public in so many different ways,” said Pinkett Smith, in conversation with theGrio for this week’s episode of “Writing Black.” “So it’s really complicated, and it’s even far more complicated than what I wrote in the book. But I did the best that I could in speaking about it from, you know, from my point of view.”
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As she was reminded during the episode, there are often three versions of any truth: your truth, my truth, and, somewhere in between, the truth. Surprisingly, she claims she didn’t write “Worthy” to set the record straight but for herself, her children, and those who might see themselves in her story. For those who inevitably devise their own narratives about Jada Pinkett Smith — casting her as the adultress, the master manipulator, the shrew, the martyr, or the villain — she recognizes that those archetypes extend far beyond her.
“Particularly for Black women, [there’s the idea] that we don’t deserve compassion; you know, that we don’t deserve the space to be human,” she said, “that when we have our pitfalls or even when we’re in childbirth in the hospital, the idea that we should be able to take on an enormous amount of pain more than anyone else, right?
“So all of these myths and all of these tropes that go along with being an African-American female from the gate — and then having to deal with the level of self-hatred that we have in our community, right? That is oftentimes projected onto one another,” she added.
Whatever your personal impression of Jada Pinkett Smith, as countless media breadcrumbs have teased, “Worthy” is full of juicy recollections, revelations and disclosures. For a certain generation, it is also satisfyingly rich in nostalgia. Like its author, the memoir is multilayered, complicated, strangely comforting, and difficult to put down, ultimately making it a very worthy read. Hear more from Jada Pinkett Smith about the heroine’s journey of writing “Worthy” this week on “Writing Black,” available now on theGrio’s Black Podcast Network or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Maiysha Kai is theGrio’s lifestyle editor, covering all things Black and beautiful. Her work is informed by two decades of experience in fashion and entertainment, great books, and the brilliance of Black culture. She is also the editor-author of Body: Words of Change series.
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