LeVar Burton still loves reading aloud. His storytelling might be what you need right now. https://t.co/6RcNG92RJT
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 11, 2020
… Burton, 63, has always had a particular love for the simple act of reading aloud, he says, a form of human connection that he views as vital, especially in times like these. Confined as we are, unsettled as we feel — when has the sense of possibility, the transportive power of stories, felt more necessary?
On his first night of what would ultimately become a month of readings, Burton begins with “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale,” a dark work of speculative fiction by English author Neil Gaiman. Burton delivers the story with polish and precision, expressive but never distractingly so, careful to make the voices of characters feel distinctive, not over the top…
Burton is sitting in his crimson-walled home office, the room where he has been hosting most of his live streams. One of the 13 Emmys he won for “Reading Rainbow” gleams on a small table behind him, below the framed cover art of his 1997 debut sci-fi novel, “Aftermath.” Burton wears a black T-shirt with a silver pendant around his neck, his look of choice for his recent online appearances, though on this particular afternoon, he is speaking only to a reporter on the other side of the screen.
“It’s one of my favorite ways of storytelling, reading aloud. I love it. I am aware that it’s something that I don’t suck at,” he says. His laugh is a rich, slow-building crescendo. “It brings me joy to know that I am in my purpose.”
“Reading Rainbow” ended its 26-year run in 2009, but fans who grew up watching have since flocked to Burton’s popular podcast, “LeVar Burton Reads,” which he launched in 2017. In recent years, he’s heard from many who have been listening to him for decades, and he’s come to realize “just how powerful that seems to be for people,” he says. “They love hearing my voice. It brings them calm. And I think at this time, more than any other, I felt a responsibility to step up, to step into the moment because I could.”
Burton’s new live-stream series has been helpful for him, too, he says, as he adjusts to his own transformed lifestyle. He refers to himself as an “itinerant storyteller,” a constant traveler who is typically only home for a week or two at a time, when he might dine out with friends or soak in his favorite local hot spring. Now he is homebound, along with his wife of 27 years, Stephanie Cozart Burton, their 25-year-old daughter, Michaela Burton, and his mother-in-law. In the absence of his usual routine, Burton has found structure and meaning in his weekly Twitter readings, which regularly draw an international audience of more than a million viewers.
“Stories are so innately part of the human condition,” he says. “And stories, like music, have the power to bring us together, and I think it’s that magnetizing property that is really important right now, especially in this situation where isolation is so much a part of how we are being required to live.”
For as long as he can remember, Burton has known that he wanted to be someone who helps others think about the deeper questions: Who are we? What is our purpose here? What will we do in the time we have? He credits his mother, Erma Gene Christian, a schoolteacher, social worker and voracious reader, with instilling a clear sense of purpose in her three children. “I was raised in a family where your life is meant to be about service,” Burton says.
At 13, he decided he wanted to become a priest, and he entered a Catholic youth seminary near his family’s home in Sacramento. He studied there for four years, reading the works of Soren Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu and Franz Kafka. “It was the books that I was reading that led me out of the decision to be a priest,” Burton says. “All of a sudden, the world became so much larger, so much more grand than the Catholic parochial point of view, and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, there’s a big, wide world of ideas out there that I feel like I need to explore.’ ”
He won a scholarship to study drama at the University of Southern California, and his first audition as an undergraduate made him a household name, landing him the starring role of Kunta Kinte in the television miniseries based on Alex Haley’s “Roots.” By the time Burton made his 1987 debut as chief of engineering Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” he was the most famous of the show’s cast members, already established as the iconic host of PBS’s “Reading Rainbow” and well on the way to becoming a formative role model to an entire generation of children.
Those earliest fans are now in their 30s and 40s, many of them parents themselves, and they write to Burton all the time on social media. He has been thinking about those messages recently, and what it means to reach a multigenerational audience — which in turn makes him think of his own mother, who taught him to love language, who played such a defining role in his own story.
“You know, I think my mother would really love —” he stops, pressing his palm against his chest. His eyes fill with tears. He waits a moment before he continues: “— the direction that my career is going. To know that education, and my love of literature through the inheritance from my mother, that’s a lasting gift; it’s a lifelong thing.”…
Mary G
I was in college with him – I don’t think we ever did more than nod at each other, but I had a friend who had a mad crush on him, so I heard about him often. He was visiting in our dorm and some mean girls threw her out in the hall in her bra and panties. He was super nice and gentlemanly about it, knocked on the door and chewed them out. Major good person and wicked smart.
Ohio Mom
I’d forgotten all about Roots and Kunta Kinte. It premiered when I was a college student, snowed in by a Buffalo blizzard.
Looking back, the blizzard was something like a very short lockdown. What gave our days structure was knowing there was another episode of Roots to look forward to.
BruceFromOhio
Quality human.
Benw
Make it so, Mr Burton
Arclite
How soon before LeVar receives a C & D for his generosity? Audible (Amazon) for example, can’t be happy.
JustRuss
I’ll have to give him a listen. I did a lot of reading to my mother during the last year of her life, I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed it. And by how dark many of Robert Frost’s poems are.
aliasofwestgate
I was one of the first generation Reading Rainbow kids, and then saw him on ST: TNG as a teen later. He’s always been one of my favorite people celeb wise. He’s an amazing person and i’m glad he’s still doing what he loves and helping others in this crazy.
Mary G
Uh oh, the tweets will be insane tomorrow morning:
sdhays
I haven’t been able to listen to his live stream, but the podcast is excellent. He’s such a genuinely good person, it’s nice hearing his (short) commentary and interviews with authors in the live sessions as well.
And he picks great stories. So far, he has read two that I’ve read before. One of them I had read a few years ago, but listening to it now that I have my son left me in tears (which is pretty odd for me). It just hit me in the gut harder. My wife was briefly concerned.
zhena gogolia
@JustRuss:
I read to my husband while he cooks every evening. I love it and he loves it (I hate to be read to, though). We just finished Fifth Business. Next up — Todd Purdum’s bio of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
sdhays
@zhena gogolia: My parents do that sometimes.
Brachiator
A very charming article. “Reading Rainbow” came around long after I was no longer its target audience, but I was aware of the popularity and success of the program.
But I vividly recall the quiet power of his role as Kunta Kinte in “Roots.”
The vision assist visor he wore on TNG hid his eyes and made acting a challenge, and he was sometimes lost in the large ensemble, but he was part of a very solid and memorable cast. Also, I suppose that every chief engineer in the series has a hard time getting out of the shadow cast by Scotty.
But it’s been a tough day, and it is a pleasure to read about someone who loves to share his gift for reading and communicating.
theturtlemoves
When my wife was undergoing 18 hours of labor with our son ~23 years ago the only station in the birthing room at the hospital was PBS and they were having a Reading Rainbow marathon overnight. So, it has a very specific place in my heart tangential to the storytelling. I can still hear that theme song playing over and over during a sleepless night.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Remember scenes of him, alone on the bridge, manning the command chair during the graveyard shift and thinking it would have been cooler had he not kept the standard lights on, the scene illuminated only by the glow from the various screens.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
That’s a genuinely great story. It sounds like he’s been a stand up guy for a good long time.
MisterForkbeard
@sdhays: Wil Wheaton has a number of stories about how great Levar Burton was from his early days on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Basically, Levar and Brent Spiner took gawky teenage Wil under their wing and took care of him. They’re both just such genuinely excellent people.
Salty Sam
It has become a major ear worm for me since I first saw this WaPo article…
? Butterfly in the skyyyyy, I can fly twice as high ?
I was, like Brachiator, way past the target audience age, but watched it with both my boys as they were growing up. Great show, very good man.
ETA- I had a friend who named his first son Kunta Kinte. Apparently that was not uncommon the year “Roots” came out…
slightly_peeved
@sdhays:
Part of the reason he’s reading Neil Gaiman is that he posted in Twitter saying he was looking for stuff to read and Neil gave him permission to read any of his stories.
His daughter Mica is pretty good at telling stories, too. She’s involved with a couple of the big D&D streams on Twitch.
WaterGirl
@MisterForkbeard: All this talk about Star Trek: The Next Generation makes me want to watch it, which I never did when it was on.
sralloway
@WaterGirl: “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.” It best shows what TNG represents. Small role for the crew. Levar was great in his role in the series. Should be rated as Scottie’s peer.
WaterGirl
@sralloway: I will check to see if it’s on Netflix.
edit: It is!