When Gabourey Sidibe writes a memoir, she does not mess around.
In “This Is Just My Face (Try Not To Stare)” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, out now), the 33-year-old actress sounds off on just about everything, including her mother giving her diet pills at 9; her struggles with bulimia, panic attacks and depression; the time her family faced eviction on the morning of a red-carpet event for “Precious”; and when she overheard former Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley calling her a “fat bitch” on the phone to “Precious” director Lee Daniels. (“I’m putting that fat bitch right on the cover of Vogue. I love her. That black bitch WILL be on the cover!” Talley yelled.) It wasn’t meant maliciously, but it still stung.
“I was sneaking in on a conversation I wasn’t meant to hear about, sneaking into a world I wasn’t meant to be a part of,” she writes.
Then there’s the three years she spent working as a phone-sex operator named Becky. “According to what I had already seen at this particular company, the average talker was a plus-size black woman. That’s right, white dudes! You might think you’re talking to Megan Fox, but you’re actually talking to . . . well . . . ME!”