Just as I Am

This book is well written and a thorough account of a well-lived life. Unfortunately it gets only three stars from me for entirely subjective reasons. Firstly, I found Cicely most unlikeable. Even when I agreed with her, I usually thought she was going about whatever situation in an irritating/stubborn manner, but her life circumstances were just so utterly different from mine that I can't fault her for that, but it affected the narrative.

And the amount of supposed divine intervention knocked this down an entire star for me. Look, some people are religious, and I get it. I've read religious memoirs before. They usually don't bother me. But EVERYTHING is some sort of Godly intervention to keep Cicely on the path of the Good and her supposed psychic powers just continously grated me. I literally rolled my eyes when Miles Davis dies and she leaves a salon and falls in the street and still thinks, 30 years after his death, that Miles's spirit was trying to kill her and that God intervened just in time to stop him. It was just too much. I understand that a woman born in the 1920s is pretty likely to be deeply religious, but I've always found this element of religion to be ridiculously self-righteous. Couldn't you, with 30 years of hindsight, realized that you probably just fell in the street because you were shocked and upset at his death?

All in all, most people will really enjoy this, it is a very in-depth look at her life and some of the social issues of her time. Subjectively though I just could not get into it at times. One last criticism, she has glowing praise for Bill Cosby for this entire book, and never once mentions what happens to him, but mentions way more recent things like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd? This just seems very strange to me; even a brief sentence about Cosby would have been sufficient, no need to dwell.