Around the Way Girl: A Memoir

Taraji P. Henson

Oct 2016 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From Taraji P. Henson, Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe winner, and star of the award-winning film Hidden Figures and the 2023 film The Color Purple, comes an inspiring and funny memoir—“a bona fide hit” (Essence)—about family, friends, the hustle required to make it in Hollywood, and the joy of living your own truth.

With a sensibility that recalls her beloved screen characters, including Katherine, the NASA mathematician, Yvette, Queenie, Shug, and the iconic Cookie from Empire, Taraji P. Henson writes of her family, the one she was born into and the one she created. She shares stories of her father, a Vietnam vet who was bowed but never broken by life’s challenges, and of her mother who survived violence both at home and on DC’s volatile streets. Here, too, she opens up about her experiences as a single mother, a journey some saw as a burden but which she saw as a gift.

Around the Way Girl is also a classic actor’s memoir in which Taraji reflects on the world-class instruction she received at Howard University and how she chipped away, with one small role after another, at Hollywood’s resistance to give women, particularly women of color, meaty significant roles. With laugh-out-loud humor and candor, she shares the challenges and disappointments of the actor’s journey and shows us that behind the red carpet moments, she is ever authentic. She is at heart just a girl in pursuit of her dreams in this “inspiring account of overcoming adversity and a quest for self-discovery, written with vitality and enthusiasm” (Shelf Awareness).

Ratings and reviews

this book hooks you from the very beginning, the discription of the characters make you feel like you are familiar with them . just an awesome book !! Tarahjee you truly Rock !! thank you for sharing your story with us . courageous work !!! peace and blessings, and continue to live your blessed lifestyle .

TOP NOTCH! This was REAL talk from a REAL person who's progression from cement stairs lined with cold unforgiving steel to knotty wooden stairs to the sweet spot where the crystal stairs finally blend in. What a pleasure to read as Taraji has moved progressively from one escalation to the next. This author's memoir should make every required reading list for instructors in the high school arena, the high school student body can benefit from the candor. Sharing is caring and this book came from the heart of a big sister. This is a must read, cause nothing motivates stretching and reaching like a good "cookie".

I could not put this book down. I inhaled her book in one evening. All of us around the way girls are rooting for you like the home girl we've grown up with from forever. Thank you for breathing life into who we are so that we can be that much more acceptable, less distanced and written off, and a bit more ourselves in public without regard to where we are from.

About the author

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Taraji P. Henson graduated from Howard University. She earned a Golden Globe for her role as Cookie in Empire, an Academy Award Nomination for Best Supporting Actress opposite Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and was a 2011 Emmy nominee for Best Actress in a Movie or Miniseries for Lifetime’s Taken From Me. She also won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Detective Joss Carter in CBS’s Person of Interest. Henson made her singing debut in Hustle & Flow and performed the Academy Award-winning song “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” on the Oscar telecast. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her son and has a strong dedication to helping disabled and less fortunate children. Follow her on Twitter @TheRealTaraji.