About this item
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 will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different, and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true.
About the Author
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 and Denise in Difficult People, and can currently be seen as Becky on Fox's smash-hit sensation Empire. Sidibe recently made her directorial debut with the short film, The Tale of Four. This Is Just My Face is her first book. She was born in Brooklyn and raised in Harlem, New York.
