Today we celebrate the release of 96-year-old working actress, Cicely Tyson’s memoir ☛JUST AS I AM [pub: HarperCollins] written with illustrious author Michelle Buford. It’s flooring that my earliest memory of the Emmy winner is watching her brilliant performance in 1974’s Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and that my most recent is last year’s Cherish The Day, Ava DuVernay’s anthology. The many lives Ms. Cicely Tyson has lived coupled with the vivid memories she’s still able to share with us in her own strong voice, just four years shy of becoming a centurion is a great blessing to us all. Catch the great Cicely Tyson in conversation with the legendary Whoopi Goldberg in conjunction with Well-Read Black Girl founder Gloria Edim this Thursday, January 28th at 6 p.m.
I’d be a horrible book bestie if I neglected to mention that the audiobook is narrated by three queens—Academy, Tony, and Oscar-winning actress, Viola Davis, the author, Cicely Tyson and in-demand voice actress Robin Miles.
Enjoy this audio excerpt of Cicely Tyson reading the introduction from her memoir:
Just As I Am Synopsis from HarperCollins:
“Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.” –Cicely Tyson
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