тАЬJust as I Am is my truth. It is me,┬аplain and unvarnished, with the glitter┬аand garland set aside. In these┬аpages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress┬аwho has been blessed to grace the┬аstage and screen for six decades. Yet┬аI am also the church girl who once┬аrarely spoke a word. I am the teenager┬аwho sought solace in the verses┬аof the old hymn for which this book┬аis named. I am a daughter and a┬аmother, a sister and a friend. I am an┬аobserver of human nature and the┬аdreamer of audacious dreams. I am┬аa woman who has hurt as immeasurably┬аas I have loved, a child of God┬аdivinely guided by his hand. And┬аhere in my ninth decade, I am a┬аwoman who, at long last, has something┬аmeaningful to say.тАЭ┬атАУCicely Tyson
Ms. Cicely Tyson is an actress, lecturer, activist, and one of the most respected talents in American theater and film history. From her starring role on Broadway in The Blacks (1961), to the Emmy-nominated 1999 HBO film A Lesson Before Dying, her work has garnered critical and commercial applause for more than sixty years. Her two Emmys for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman made her the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for Best Actress. In 2013, Ms. Tyson won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Miss Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful. A capstone achievement came in 2018, when she became the first Black woman to receive an honorary Oscar. The Board of Governors voted unanimously to honor her with the award, which came 45 years after her Academy Award nominated performance in Sounder.