This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare

The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir—wise, complex, smart, funny—that is different from anything we’ve read.

One of Glamour's “Best Books to Read in 2017” * One of Entertainment Weekly's “Most Anticipated Books for 2017” and “Best Books to Read in May” * One of People Magazine’s “22 Super-Revealing Celeb Memoirs to Read Right Now” * One of Hollywood Reporter's “27 Books to Watch For in 2017” * One of Elite Daily's “5 Celebs About to Light up the Red Carpet and Release Books in 2017” * One of Bustle's “20 Best Non-Fiction Books Coming in May 2017” * One of HelloGiggles’ “7 Celebrity Memoirs We Can't Wait to Read This Year” * One of Nylon’s “50 Books We Can’t Wait To Read In 2017” * One of Bustle’s “9 Books By Celebrity Women Being Released in 2017 To Add To Your TBR” * One of Cosmopolitan’s “10 Books You Need to Read in 2017”      

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.