FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile
After a deeply touching foreword by Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis and an introduction by the indomitable force that was Cicely Tyson (1924-2021)—narrator Robin Miles picks up the torch and delivers 16 riveting, thought-provoking hours on the life and times of the author. She was born in Harlem to parents who were West Indian immigrants. Her career in modeling and show business started late; she was 30 but was advised to say she was 10 years younger so that she wouldn’t be "aged out" of work. Winner of the Spingarn Medal, the most distinguished honor the NAACP awards; a Kennedy Center honor; three Emmys; a Tony; an honorary Oscar; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Tyson attributes her well-deserved success to luck, tenacity, and her personal relationship with God. In addition to being the first Black woman to star in a TV drama, she recalls her work in SOUNDER, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, and as Kunta Kinte’s mother in ROOTS, as well as many other groundbreaking roles. Robin Miles is truly remarkable as she relates wonderfully amusing anecdotes of Tyson’s life in the public eye, as well as revealing painfully intimate moments with her parents, her own family, and jazz great Miles Davis, with whom she had a longtime, turbulent relationship. Robin Miles delivers all with an elegance, dignity, and charm that would make Tyson proud. This honest account of Cicely Tyson’s life also tells of the history and trials of Black women over generations. She closes her memoir by saying that “Whenever God calls me home . . ., I want to be recalled as one who squared my shoulders in the service of Black women, as one who made us walk taller and envision greater for ourselves.” This audiobook is a must-listen, thanks to the combined brilliance of Robin Miles's performance and the genteel grace that pervades Tyson's prose. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2021 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Viola Davis
This book is Ms. Tyson’s abundant treasure to each of us: her life, in her words, just as she is. She shares truths usually whispered between close friends in the dim light of a back bedroom, those candid declarations not often spoken aloud. And she tells her story the way only a black woman can: in all of its dazzling authenticity, heels off and voice undulating, shifting between anguish and exuberance. The art of acting is the art of exposing, an emotional unveiling before others. Ms. Tyson is as revelatory on these pages as she has been on the stage."
Library Journal
08/01/2020
Author of the New York Times best-selling The Still Point of the Turning World, about parenting terminally ill son Ronan, Black uses Sanctuary to reconsider the concept of resilience, for which she was roundly praised when she rebuilt her life—another husband, another child, a booming career—after Ronan died. In Walking with Ghosts, celebrated actor Byrne recalls his formative first 12 years in a large Dublin family, interspersed with career highlights from acting opposite Richard Burton to winning a Golden Globe. As related in The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames, Cowan learned after her mother died that she had been raised in London's Foundling Hospital, a brutal institution that originated solitary confinement even as it helped create important cultural institutions (40,000-copy first printing). Abandoned young by his eccentric poet father and adopted by his stepfather, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Gilmour bonded with a magpie he rescued (named Benzene for its glistening black feathers). With Featherhood, he relates his subsequent immersion in a poem his biological father wrote about effecting a similar rescue and explains what Benzene taught him about parenting (60,000-copy first printing). In Blindfold, award-winning journalist Padnos relates what it's like to be kidnapped and tortured in Syria by Al-Qaeda for two years; originally scheduled for July 2020. In Aftershocks, Whiting Award winner Owusu limns a crisscrossed coming-of-age (she moved from Rome and London to Dar-es-Salaam, Kampala, and finally the United States for college) and subsequent assured sense of self; originally scheduled for May 2020. Fashion and beauty editor at Vibe, then Rolling Stone, the high-powered Smith collapsed in tears one day and, as Bevelations explains, completely remade her life (75,000-copy first printing). Tichenor's The Night Lake explains that as a young Episcopal priest, she had to learn how to integrate into her vocation twin tragedies: the death of her five-week-old son less than a year after her alcoholic mother's suicide. Tony Award winner, three-time Emmy Award winner, the first black woman to win an honorary Oscar, and the first black woman to host Saturday Night Live: Tyson has some story to tell in Just As I Am.
FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile
After a deeply touching foreword by Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis and an introduction by the indomitable force that was Cicely Tyson (1924-2021)—narrator Robin Miles picks up the torch and delivers 16 riveting, thought-provoking hours on the life and times of the author. She was born in Harlem to parents who were West Indian immigrants. Her career in modeling and show business started late; she was 30 but was advised to say she was 10 years younger so that she wouldn’t be "aged out" of work. Winner of the Spingarn Medal, the most distinguished honor the NAACP awards; a Kennedy Center honor; three Emmys; a Tony; an honorary Oscar; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Tyson attributes her well-deserved success to luck, tenacity, and her personal relationship with God. In addition to being the first Black woman to star in a TV drama, she recalls her work in SOUNDER, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, and as Kunta Kinte’s mother in ROOTS, as well as many other groundbreaking roles. Robin Miles is truly remarkable as she relates wonderfully amusing anecdotes of Tyson’s life in the public eye, as well as revealing painfully intimate moments with her parents, her own family, and jazz great Miles Davis, with whom she had a longtime, turbulent relationship. Robin Miles delivers all with an elegance, dignity, and charm that would make Tyson proud. This honest account of Cicely Tyson’s life also tells of the history and trials of Black women over generations. She closes her memoir by saying that “Whenever God calls me home . . ., I want to be recalled as one who squared my shoulders in the service of Black women, as one who made us walk taller and envision greater for ourselves.” This audiobook is a must-listen, thanks to the combined brilliance of Robin Miles's performance and the genteel grace that pervades Tyson's prose. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2021 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2020-10-27
An acclaimed actor recounts her eventful career.
In this highly anticipated and candid memoir (“plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside”), Tyson (b.1924)—winner of three Emmys, a Tony, an honorary Oscar, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other honors—ascribes her remarkable success to luck, grit, and the hand of God. She grew up in East Harlem, the daughter of West Indian parents whose marriage ended because of her father’s philandering. Her mother, a domineering presence in the young Cicely’s life, worked as a housekeeper. Irate when Cicely became pregnant at age 17, her mother insisted that she marry the child’s father. After two years, Tyson left her husband, patching together jobs to support herself and her daughter. A chance encounter set her on the path to modeling, which in turn led to an offer of a movie role. In 1972, she earned her first lead role, in Sounder—and her first Oscar nomination. While on tour to promote the movie, Tyson became increasingly aware of bigotry and returned home with a new sense of purpose, “saying to myself, Sister, you’ve got some educating to do.” She notes proudly that she became the first Black woman to star in a TV drama and “the first black TV actress to reveal my hair in its bare-naked state.” Besides chronicling her work in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Woman Called Moses, and as Kunta Kinte’s mother in Roots, among other roles, Tyson lays bare the details of her tormented relationship with Miles Davis, an unrepentant womanizer and substance abuser. “He had a strong need to be cared for,” writes the author, “and that need intersected with my desire to provide care.” Tyson ascribes her longevity to an organic vegetarian diet and daily meditation, and she defends her reputation for being difficult: “The truth is that I insist upon respect….Even now, at 96, I teach folks not to mess with me.”
A forthright self-portrait of a determined woman and iconic cultural figure.
