Sometimes you get a celebrity memoir that you can tell is ghostwritten and focus-grouped to death, and it’s as boring as shit.
This is not that.
Gabourey Sidibe is an American actress, whose first acting role in Precious in 2009 catapulted her into the public eye. She’s a Black woman who is fat, with an African name, and she’s in a business where all of those things work against her. She’s got the personality and the attitude to take all of that on, and she does so. In this book, she goes to some brutally honest places to show how Gabourey became Gabourey.
She’s very honest and open about her struggles with depression and disordered eating, how intensive therapy worked for her, and the unconventional dynamics of her family. The story of how she got the role of Precious is almost last – she wants you to understand who she was before that audition, and how she became that person. It’s a story that involved growing up struggling in New York City, dealing with her father going back to Senegal and marrying other people before getting divorced from her mother, and working as a phone sex operator.
You can tell these are all Gabourey’s words because she writes like she talks, and her voice is identical to her Twitter and Instagram feeds. She projects a confidence in herself, and at the same time, admits that sometimes this is a front. There’s a fascinating bit where she ponders why she stayed with a boyfriend she didn’t like, and what that said about her self-esteem. She also has a habit towards long rambling paragraphs and parenthetical asides that makes for a fun read.
There are also a few times where she talks about how she was getting a lot of attention for Precious, but before it had been picked up by a studio with money, so she was attending film festivals but didn’t have the money for stylists or clothes (so she ended up standing between Paula Patton and Mariah Carey in Payless shoes), which seems profoundly unfair. She’s got enough distance from that experience that it’s now funny.
She also talks about how a rumor that started that she died from an asthma attack affected her and her family. She’s not dead, but even though she called her mom to say “Hey, people think I died, isn’t that hilarious?” she still got worried calls from her family weeks later.
There were a lot of sections that really got me where I lived. I’m not Black, and I can only acknowledge that I will never experience life that way, but when she talks about her experiences with dating, or worrying about her weight (and then being like “fuck you I shouldn’t have to feel bad about my size!”), those are things I identified with a lot.
I also really liked the conclusions she came to at the end, specifically that the act of writing the book was its own form of therapy. She recognizes that the Gabourey at the end of writing the book wasn’t quite the same woman who started it, and that by writing out her complicated history with her father, for example, she was able to come to terms with a lot of things. I think that writing-as-therapy is something that most of us know, but it’s rarely talked about in such blunt terms. Also of note: Gabourey is now promoting a film she directed, The Tale of Four, which premiered at the Nantucket Film Festival.
This is a really interesting memoir by someone who I didn’t know much about. She’s got a complicated life story, and a great attitude as she sashays her way through her life. She’s funny, and touching. And, as ever, the inner lives of Black women are still not something that receives nearly enough attention.
Also the stories about being a phone sex operator are HILARIOUS. I’d tell you to read it just for those.
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I loved her interview with Stephen Colbert.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mU08SOppFBE
@JoS – That interview was the best start to my day.
I’ve been on a memoir kick lately, so this goes straight on my library request list. Thanks, RHG!
I just love Gabourey, I would love to read this. It sounds amazing.
Sometimes you get a celebrity memoir that you can tell is ghostwritten and focus-grouped to death, and it’s as boring as shit.
Amazon had a big sale on rock-n-roll memoirs a few months ago, and I can vouch for the above. Literally the only one out of the whole bunch that didn’t have the identical lull-you-to-sleep tone was Marilyn Manson’s — not because the events were outrageously more outrageous than anyone else’s but because it was the only one in which the actual writing displayed any personality. Whatever ratio of autobiography to ghostwriting was at work there worked well.
Whoever droned through the other 80 books like Ben Stein (it has to be one guy — they were IDENTICAL) needs to retire because he’s not helping anybody’s book sales with that ~~snoooooooore~~
I love celebrity memoirs but they are so hit or miss. This one sounds worth reading.
Being a good ghostwriter is a challenge, but I think it helps if your subject is interesting and cooperative. (You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.) I remember an interview with Alex Haley (maybe in Eyes on the Prize?) about working with Malcolm X, and the challenges therein that was fascinating. All in all, I suspect the bland and boring memoirs are sometimes those written LESS by ghostwriters and MORE by people who have never written a book before and think they know better than the professionals how to do it.
I would be tempted to pick it up just from the cover. What a gorgeous shot of her – and they didn’t ‘cheat’ by going with the close-up face pic either.
Thanks for the great review. I did not know Gabourey Sidibe, but now I know I want to read her book. And I will buy the audio version, to have her read it to me. The short audio sample was amazing! I hated when it stopped.
This sounds phenomenal! Thank you for the review!
As an aside, I am intrigued and thrilled that her film premiered at the Nantucket Film Festival. Nantucket is one of America’s strongholds of old, WASPy culture and money, and it has a diversity score of virtual zero. Props to Gabourey for smashing that glass island ceiling!
I’m reading this right now and really enjoying it! I am actually going to try watching Empire now.
I read an interview with her where the interviewer brought up that she had recently lost some weight for health reasons and Sidibe pretty much shut down any room to allow other people to have an opinion about her body. She wasn’t going to reveal numbers or methods or agree that it was an improvement. I was impressed.
I read this more or less on impulse (don’t love memoirs, never seen any of her work) and I LOVED it – definitely laughed out loud, definitely gave me some stuff to think about, definitely made me into a fan for life.
@Rebecca – my very favorite part of Malcolm X’s Autobiography is Alex Haley’s afterward, which is almost as long as the actual autobiography and details everything he did to get Malcolm X to trust him and open up.
I usually don’t read many memoirs but this looks like a good one for me.
I loved her interview on the podcast Death, Sex, And Money! I can’t wait to read this.
I just finished reading this and really enjoyed it. Her writing is so engaging (it almost feels like she’s your awesome new friend), and I loved her openness and honesty and humor. I usually don’t pick up celebrity memoirs but I’m glad I made an exception for this one.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook version that she narrates on my commute and it’s wonderful.