By her own admission, Winfrey's relationship with Lee had always been fraught. Raised by her grandmother in Mississippi for the first years of her life, Winfrey was later sent to live with Lee in Wisconsin. She was then sent to Tennessee to live with her father before she was returned to Lee without explanation—something Winfrey spoke about often on her eponymous talk show. While Lee was physically present, Winfrey said she wasn't emotionally available. "I grew up with an understanding that there was this God—all-knowing, all-powerful—who loved me. The wonder of that, the magical mystery of that, is what carried me when I was separated from my grandmother and sent to live with my mother at 6 years old. I suddenly land in a place that's completely foreign to me. I don't know anybody," Winfrey recalled on OWN in 2015, adding that she didn't "really even know my mother" at the time, let alone what life with her was like.

"I remember the first night entering into the house and being told that I wouldn't be able to sleep with my mother, and I wouldn't be able to sleep inside the house. But there was a little foyer-porch before you actually got inside the house; I was put outside to sleep there," she continued. "I later realized it was because of the color of my skin; my mother was boarding with this very light-skinned black woman who could have passed for white. I could tell instantly when I walked in the room that she didn't like me, and it was because of the color of my skin."