The moment was filled with pure emotion!
When Oprah Winfrey called Tina Knowles to tell her that her new memoir, Matriarch, would be the next Oprah’s Book Club selection, it was a moment filled with emotion between the two powerhouses.
“I’m calling you because I finished Matriarch, and Oh, My God! It is so extraordinary that I’m calling to tell you that I want to choose it for the April Book Club,” Winfrey shared during the touching call.
Knowles, overwhelmed with gratitude, responded, “Oh, my God! Thank you so much! That’s my dream!”
Both women fought back tears, their mutual admiration filling the moment with undeniable warmth.
“I have so much respect and admiration for who you are and what you’ve been able to do and I cannot wait to tell everybody what an extraordinary, extraordinary job you did on this book,” Winfrey told her.
Knowles, still emotional, admitted, “You don’t know what this has done for me because it just confirms and makes me less nervous…about letting it go.”
In her signature way, Winfrey reassured her, saying, “You should have the blessed assurance that you have done well for yourself and for telling the story of how you came to be yourself. You should have the blessed assurance that you have done that thing.”
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The book, which traces Knowles’ journey from growing up in segregated Texas to raising two global music icons, Beyoncé and Solange, has already struck a chord with readers. During a recent appearance on CBS Mornings, Winfrey praised Matriarch for its depth and universality.
“What you did is what I think is so hard to do when you’re writing a memoir, and that is to tell your story intimately, personally, but also make it universal,” Winfrey said. “I believe everybody who has a mother, and everybody who is a mother is going to love this story.”
Among the memoir’s most revealing moments is Knowles’ disclosure of her previously private battle with cancer — a revelation that even surprised Winfrey.
Nicknamed “bad a** Tenie B” in her youth for her outspoken nature, Knowles shared both excitement and nervousness about releasing her life story. “It’s a wonderful day … but I still have a little anxiety, because you’re just putting it out into the world,” she said.
Originally spanning 1,000 pages, Knowles laughed as she recalled her publisher’s advice to trim it down, joking, “nobody’s gonna read a book that’s 1,000 pages.” She emphasized that it was important to “tell the stories without telling other people’s stories,” a delicate balance she worked hard to maintain.
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At its heart, Matriarch is about resilience, legacy, and the unbreakable bond of family. “I also hope that people will do their family trees and get into their legacy and their ancestors,” Knowles shared. Leaving a lasting legacy was central to her motivation: “I didn’t know my grandparents, so it’s one of the reasons why I want to do this, is to leave that for my grandchildren, that I want, my great grandchildren, that I might not meet, and they’ll have a story in my words, and not someone else interpreting a story.”
The memoir also touches on her decades-long marriage to Mathew Knowles and the challenges of protecting her daughters from the ups and downs of their relationship. One of Knowles’ forward-thinking parenting decisions — sending Beyoncé and Solange to therapy as children to strengthen their bond — stood out to Winfrey as especially profound.
“She knew early on that the girls’ relationship with each other needed to be balanced and talked about in a way that she didn’t feel capable of doing completely herself,” Winfrey noted.
Matriarch also offers personal glimpses into Knowles’ early life, including facing racism and the revelation that her maiden name was Beyoncé — a name that would one day light up stages around the world. In the memoir, Knowles also shares the story behind the name of Destiny’s Child, explaining, “I put their picture in my NIV study Bible, and one day I opened it, and it said ‘Destiny.’ And I was like, that’s the name. And my ex-husband added ‘child’ to it because it was already a group by that name.”
Reflecting on her life’s most meaningful role, Knowles said, “With my kids, I said I got to control myself. I have to be deliberate and intentional … I just didn’t want to screw that up, because I screw some stuff up.” She called motherhood the “best, important job of your life.”
Matriarch is available now wherever books are sold. Knowles will kick off her book tour on April 30th in Washington, D.C., with a special appearance alongside Michelle Obama. Fans can also tune in to The Oprah Podcast for more about the memoir and grab tickets to the Matriarch tour via Live Nation.
Cover photo: Oprah Winfrey Selects Tina Knowles’ Memoir Matriarch for Book Club in a Tearful, Powerful Moment/Photo credit: Oprah Winfrey/Instagram