Just As I Am by CicelyTyson
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
“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 a 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
When I tell yall I did not fully know about the force that IS Ms. Cicley Tyson, I DID NOT KNOW.
Of course I knew about her knock you down, rip your heart out power and talent as an actress.
Her epic career spans DECADES.
But I had NO IDEA about the entire REST.
She was a beautiful wordsmith, intense writer, engaging storyteller, fierce advocate and a tender, witty, and intelligent POWERHOUSE of a woman.
This book was not just a memoir of her life, but it also is a history of American stage and screen across the span of many years, told through the perspective of a Black woman.
“My mother, a woman who, amid abuse, stuffed hope and a way out into the slit of a mattress, is the very face of fortitude. I am an heir to her remarkable grit. However, beneath that tough exterior, I’ve also inherited my mother’s tender femininity, that part of her spirit susceptible to bruising and bleeding, the doleful Dosha who sat by the window shelling peanuts, pondering how to carry on. The myth of the Strong Black Woman bears a kernel of truth, but it is only a half-seed. The other half is delicate and ailing, all the more so because it has been denied sunlight.”
“When you know your history, you know your value. You know the price that has been paid for you to be here. You recognize what those who came before you built and sacrificed for you to inhabit the space in which you dwell.”
She bluntly tells about the realities and truths of racial injustice in this country and the exhausting fight by generations of Black Americans for civil rights.
“Black women—our essence, our emotional intricacies, the indignities we carry in our bones—are the most deeply misunderstood human beings in history. Those who know nothing about us have had the audacity to try to introduce us to ourselves, in the unsteady strokes of caricature, on stages, in books, and through their distorted reflections of us.”
“Just walking through this life as a Black person, and actually surviving that, was and still is an ovation-worthy performance.”
Ms Tyson broke SO much ground as a Black actress…to say it was amazing and impactful seem like insufficient adjectives.
“The gratification for me comes in the doing of the work, the creation—the embodying of a character so fully that the audience comes to believe, feel, see, smell, and taste her existence, climb into her reality, understand her humanity as a means for reflecting upon their own.”
Every single thing Ms Tyson did in her ENTIRE life was FULL of purpose, intention and divine spiritual guidance.
“When you ask God for strength, as I do daily, he doesn’t usually just drop it from the sky. He often answers by placing you in a circumstance that requires you to build fortitude while relying solely on him.”
All of her acting roles, all of her relationships, all of her life decisions big and small…..she has always felt power and purpose thru her faith in God and herself.
“My true identity isn’t rooted in our history, grievous and glorious as it is. It is grounded in my designation as a child of God, the daughter of the Great Physician. In his care, I find my cure.”
“…even those who care deeply for us cannot always see our big picture, the Grand Story Line that is destined to unfold before us. They are on their own journeys. And though their paths may run parallel to ours, each is singular in its curves and mileposts, unique in its destination. As much as others want the best for us, they do not necessarily understand God’s best. He alone does.”
This book is full of rich and powerful memories, history and wisdom on life.
“We don’t have long here, children. Our hopes and aspirations may feel limitless, but our days are finite, our experiences fading in the twinkling of an eye. Death is a love note to the living, to regard every day, every breath, as sacred.”
This book is a blessed GEM, yall….just as Ms Tyson was in life.
She was one of those rare human beings who is golden and sparkly and FIERY in all ways.
This memoir is fascinating, eye opening, emotional and educational….full of tears and laughs and sorrow and success…beauty and struggle, art and wonder, creativity and spirituality.