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 ). “An engaging read. As much a manual on acting as it is a memoir. . . [with] plenty of inspiration for readers.” ― Library Journal "Taraji P. Henson, a Golden Globe winner and an Academy and Emmy Award nominee, shares her rocky road to fame in a bona fide hit memoir." ― Essence Magazine "Henson's memoir is an inspiring account of overcoming adversity and a quest for self-discovery, written with vitality and enthusiasm” ― Shelf Awareness "Taraji P. Henson rips the facade off stardom and reveals a woman committed to her family and craft." ― Essence Magazine, Best Books of 2016 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. Denene Millner is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist who has written more than twenty-five books, including Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man , cowritten with Steve Harvey, among others. She has written for a plethora of national publications, including Essence , Women’s Health , Ebony , Redbook , and more. The founder and editor of MyBrownBaby.com, a website dedicated to Black parenting, lives in Atlanta with her husband and two daughters. Around the Way Girl 1 Fearless Let my mother tell it, all that I am and all that I know is because of my daddy, a declaration that some might find shocking considering the list of negative attributes that floated like a dark cloud over my father’s short, hard-lived life. During his fifty-eight years on this good, green earth, Boris Henson, born and reared in northeast DC, had been homeless and broke, an alcoholic and physically and mentally abusive to my mother during their five years together—plus prone to hot tempers and cool-off periods in the slammer. With that many strikes against his character, I can imagine that it’s hard for some to see the good in who he was, much less how any comparison to him might be construed as a compliment. But Daddy wasn’t average. Yes, there are plenty of fathers who, grappling with their demons, make the babies and leave the mamas and disappear like the wind, without a care in the world about the consequences. The scars run deep. That, however, is not my tale to tell. The truth is, no matter how loud the thunder created by his personal storms, my father always squared his shoulders, extended his arms, opened his heart, and did what was natural and right and beautiful—he loved me. My father’s love was all at once regular and extraordinary, average and heroic. For starters, he was there. No matter his circumstances, no matter what kind of fresh hell he was dealing with or dishing out, he was there, even if he had to insist upon bein