A Good Word: LeVar Burton Reads
We should all thank the English teacher who gave LeVar Burton copies of Kierkegaard and Lao Tze. Burton entered a Catholic seminary high school at age 13 after feeling a deep calling. He was on the road to becoming a priest, but at 17, after encountering some bumps in the doctrinal road, decided to train as an actor. As a result, we have Kunta Kinte, Geordi LaForge, and the man from Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton’s weekend gig (he often shot RR after he was playing Jordi LaForge on Star Trek all week) became the first juggernaut of the children’s book publishing industry. Most of us who were children in the eighties and nineties don’t remember that, though, but rather the earnestness and directness of Burton, who followed Fred Rogers’ blueprint for speaking directly to children and treating them with dignity. Burton was arguably more fun and energized, and it was no small thing that he was the first African-American actor to carry a children’s television show like this. When a friend told me that he had launched a podcast for adults, in which he read stories, I felt the emotional equivalent of a squeal. It felt at first like a guilty pleasure, listening to that almost too-breathy voice, and charisma that I had imprinted on in childhood. But then I read an interview with Burton in which he agrees that his intention is to create a Reading Rainbow for adults. He still is making things for us.
One of Burton’s taglines on his podcast is that there’s nothing the stories he reads have in common except that he likes them. They do tend to feature speculative fiction (Sci-fi and fantasy) by authors of color. He reads them with an actor’s skill, and then, best of all, he spends the last five minutes of the podcast musing about the story he just read. Some of the podcasts are taped live, and he interviews the story authors after his reading. His unbridled enthusiasm and admiration for them are almost over the top. His warmth abhors a vacuum.
All the stories on LeVar Burton Reads are delivered with care for language, curiosity for the characters and an studied sense of narrative arc. Burton gives spoken narrative its spiritual due — he begins each story by inviting you to take a deep breath with him. One of the kindest things anyone said to me about my own chaplaincy was that it was bigger than the church alone. I think this is true of LeVar Burton. He didn’t leave his call behind when he stepped away from the institution of the church. He widened its embrace.
(There’s a great oral history of Reading Rainbow here.)
