Inspiration to Live Your Magic: 75 Inspiring Biographies

Oprah Winfrey
It may well be that no other person in history has risen so far - from 
such poverty and despair to such wealth and fame - as Oprah Winfrey.
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Born to a single, teenage mother in rural Mississippi, Oprah was raised by her 
grandmother until the age of six. The family was so poor that Oprah sometimes had to 
wear dresses made from potato sacks. Things didn’t improve much when Oprah went to 
live with her mother. They lived in a poor neighborhood and struggled to afford decent 
food and clothes.
It wasn’t only the grinding poverty and the open prejudice against black people that made 
her childhood so tough; Oprah was beaten and sexually abused by family members. At 
age thirteen, she ran away from home. By fourteen, she was pregnant (her baby died 
shortly after it was born), and she got involved with drugs and emotionally abusive men.
But Oprah Winfrey had a spirit that would not be destroyed, and a mind that yearned to 
be free. Out of her troubled past came a young woman determined to learn, grow, and 
succeed in life.
Oprah became a top student in high school, and started winning public-speaking contests. 
She was so good at speaking that she won a university scholarship, and so beautiful that 
she won the state beauty pageant.
Her big break came when a local radio station offered this bright, well spoken, and 
determined young woman a part-time job in the newsroom. After that, it wasn’t long 
before Winfrey’s hard work and talent earned her a spot in television news. She got so 

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involved in her stories, sometimes crying along with guests who were having trouble, that 
the television station decided to move her to a talk show. Oprah Winfrey never looked 
back.
Winfrey took a struggling TV talk show in Chicago to the number one spot in the city, 
then to the top-rated spot in the entire United States. Within a few years, Oprah Winfrey 
had the most viewers of any talk show in history, and was on her way to launching a 
series of successful TV and radio shows, magazines, websites, charities, and the world’s 
most influential book club.
A millionaire by age thirty, and now a billionaire, Winfrey is often described as one of 
the most powerful people in the world, and one of the most generous. Never forgetting 
her roots, Oprah Winfrey helps people around the world and encourages others to 
appreciate and share their good fortune.
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