Talks & Entertainment

This program does not include a book signing. All books will be pre-signed by the author.

In This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare, the Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she’s played onscreen.

In the memoir, with full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints a vivid picture of her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. She tells the engrossing story of her first job as a phone sex “talker,” and shares her unconventional rise to fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels’s acclaimed movie Precious, alongside “a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom’s apartment.”

Sidibe offers self-aware reflections on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight—“If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself,” she writes, “would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?”

In conversation with Linda Holmes, a pop culture correspondent for National Public Radio and the host of the podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour. She’s covered everything from Mad Men to a royal wedding to the intrigue of displaced Monopoly pieces. In her free time, she watches romantic comedies and bakes very good bread.