JUST AS I AM: A MEMOIR

BOOK CICELY TYSON | HARPERCOLLINS

Iam not one to feel as if I have arrived, for even at ninety-six, I am still arriving.” So writes Cicely Tyson in this posthumously published memoir, a sweeping chronicle of a remarkable life that sadly reached its final chapter in January 2021.

Born in Harlem in 1924, Tyson was working as a secretary when a talent scout spotted her and suggested she try modelling. A distinguished career in acting followed, largely thanks to her determination to project strong images of women in such dramas as 1972’s Sounder (for which she was Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated), 1974 TV movie The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman (which earned her two Emmys) and groundbreaking slavery saga Roots (1977). In 2018, she became the first African-American woman to win an honorary Oscar.

Thanks to her volatile marriage to heroin-afflicted jazz star Miles Davis, Tyson’s life was eventful away from the camera, too (one argument was so intense she tore out his cherished hair weave). It also placed her in the same orbit as a host of fellow Black icons: Oprah Winfrey, Aretha Franklin, Denzel Washington and Barack Obama were just a few of her stellar acquaintances.

Tyson’s prose sometimes reads a little preachy, not least when she is bemoaning the “narrative homicide” of Blaxploitation cinema. Yet it’s also warm, candid and winningly mischievous – most notably while reliving a legal spat with Elizabeth Taylor that left the latter half a million dollars poorer. Neil Smith