This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare

“Gabourey Sidibe’s delightful memoir offers a memorable look into what happens when a black girl’s dreams come true, from the inside out. Sidibe is fearless, incredibly funny, and gorgeously open. What she offers of herself in these pages is a gift.”—Roxane Gay In This Is Just My Face, Gabourey Sidibe—the “gives-zero-effs queen of Hollywood AND perceptive best friend in your head” (Lena Dunham)—paints her unconventional rise to fame with full-throttle honesty. Sidibe tells engrossing, inspiring stories about her Bed-Stuy/Harlem/Senegalese family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway, her first job as a phone sex “talker,” and her Oscar-nominated role in Lee Daniels’s Precious. Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, celebrity, weight, haters, fashion, race, and depression (“Sidibe’s heartfelt exploration of insecurity . . . makes us love her” —O Magazine). 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. “This memoir [is] a book you will want to give your daughter.” —New York Times “Sidibe’s hilarious Twitter account is no fluke—the Empire actress’s memoir about growing up in New York City and finding unexpected fame in Hollywood is sharp, witty, and wonderfully substantive.” —Entertainment Weekly