The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir—wise, complex, smart, funny—a version of the American experience different from anything we’ve read Gabourey Sidibe—“Gabby” to her legion of fans—skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels’s acclaimed movie Precious. In This is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she’s played onscreen. With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex “talker.” And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside “a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment.”
Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight (“If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself,” she writes, “would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?”). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face takes its place and fills a void on the shelf of writers from Mindy Kaling to David Sedaris to Lena Dunham.
GABOUREY SIDIBE is an award-winning actress who is best known for the title role of Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire. She has since starred as Queenie in FX’s American Horror Story: Coven andDenise in Difficult People, and can currently be seen as Becky on Fox's smash hit sensation Empire. This Is Just My Face is her first book.
Table of Contents
1 Claw-foot Tub and Mermaid Tail 1
2 Virgin fo' Life 11
3 Why You Shouldn't Marry for a Green Card 22
4 A Psychic Told Me So 42
5 #BlackGirlMagic 50
6 Make a Wish 62
7 Parade of Ugly 73
8 A Door of One's Own 82
9 Obituary 89
10 Gabourey, But You Can Call Me Gabby 104
11 MYOB: Mind Your Own Body 118
12 Twelve Sixty-six 134
13 Is This a Date? 155
14 Another Psychic Told Me So 175
15 Head of Household 195
16 Senegalese Crown 208
17 Will I Still Be Beautiful When I'm Not Fat? 214
Though it sometimes feels as though the daily news gives us all the non-fiction we can take, there’s always room for a well-written memoir or biography. April welcomes books in a variety of styles for all different tastes, whether you’re fascinated by figures in the worlds of rock music, sports, cooking, movie, TV, or even royalty. […]
A new book from one of the funniest memoirists of our time leads off our list of the best bios and memoirs of the month. Legendary figures from the world of sports, acting, and even modeling also have books out—not to mention the nation’s funniest, most improbable politician.
