Just as I Am

Ms. Cicely Tyson is an actress, lecturer, activist, and one of the most respected talents in American theater and film history. From her starring role on Broadway in The Blacks (1961), to the Emmy-nominated 1999 HBO film A Lesson Before Dying, her work has garnered critical and commercial applause for more than sixty years. Her two Emmys for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman made her the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for Best Actress. In 2013, Ms. Tyson won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Miss Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful. A capstone achievement came in 2018, when she became the first Black woman to receive an honorary Oscar. The Board of Governors voted unanimously to honor her with the award, which came 45 years after her Academy Award nominated performance in Sounder.

"The autobiography of Miss Cicely Tyson is a balm for the afflicted." - New York Times

"A parting gift to readers and chronicles an incredible life, lived fully." - USA Today

"This grand tale of her immense talent and desire to live out loud will resonate with anyone who has a dream." - O, the Oprah Magazine

"It's in these poignant moments that the memoir becomes a resonant meditation on the link between an actress's life and her art. This showstopping tale hits the mark." - Publishers Weekly

"What shines most from the memoir is how Tyson's story, while frankly written and supremely eye-opening, isn't just her own. It's also the story of Black women in America, of generations past, present and yet to come, whose wills to survive are divinely gifted and ancestrally guided." - Washington Post

"Tyson speaks with incisive clarity, humor, and moral authority..." - Booklist

"If you're ready for your next book, "Just As I Am" is the one to pick." - Washington Informer

"This book is Ms. Tyson's abundant treasure to each of us: her life, in her words, just as she is. She shares truths usually whispered between close friends in the dim light of a back bedroom, those candid declarations not often spoken aloud. And she tells her story the way only a black woman can: in all of its dazzling authenticity, heels off and voice undulating, shifting between anguish and exuberance. The art of acting is the art of exposing, an emotional unveiling before others. Ms. Tyson is as revelatory on these pages as she has been on the stage." - - Viola Davis, Academy, Tony, and Emmy award-winning actress and producer