This memoir tells the life story of the Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis. Davis was born into poverty. As a young girl, she dealt with significant trauma, including the extreme abuse of her mother by her father. The apartments they lived in were shoddy, rat-infested, and often lacked electricity. She and her siblings experienced racist bullying and sexual abuse. Though school was a haven of sorts, her home life was so difficult that she struggled with everything she did. One day, she saw on television the actor Cicely Tyson, who was Black like Davis, and decided she wanted to act.

Davis joined a summer program and met her first acting coach, who helped her begin to open up. This inspired her to do better in school and restrain her behavior. In a prestigious acting contest, she gained recognition for her talent. Davis won a full scholarship to Rhode Island College and began to study acting there. But she struggled to put her full self into her work because she felt excluded as one of the few students of color and because she had to work throughout school. Her family problems also encroached on her academic life. However, she was able to prove her talent and graduated with great success.

After college, Davis took on a summer acting program in New York City. The program helped her grow, though living in the city was a struggle. She wanted to apply to graduate school, but she had to wait a year, so she became a professional actor during that time. When the time came, her application to the prestigious program at Juilliard was accepted. Yet being at Juilliard was challenging and sometimes painful. The program there was designed to mold a student into the perfect white actor, Davis writes, and there was no consideration for the fact that the students of color would always be cast with their race in mind. A healing trip to Africa helped her realize how limiting this was.

When she graduated, Davis was not able to get work right away. This, she reflects, is the reality for many artists. Her first major role, in the August Wilson play Seven Guitars, eventually came along. The play toured across the country and ended on Broadway. Davis was thrilled, but family issues and a personal health situation deflated her. After recovering, she got a role in a film and moved to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, Davis met Julius, her future husband. She was hesitant, because past experiences had made her leery of men. However, she gave him a chance and learned that he was protective and caring. During this time, her relationship with her father healed, and she began to bring her parents to New York to see her plays when she was performing there. She and Julius had three weddings so as to fully celebrate with everyone they loved.

Davis’s career began to take off. She did movies with major stars like Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. The film Doubt brought her to the status of a star, Oscar nomination included. Her next nomination was for The Help, a film controversial because of racial issues. But Davis’s true breakthrough came when the producer Shonda Rhimes cast her as the lead in the television show How to Get Away with Murder. Davis felt self-conscious about this, as she was not a traditional lead, but the show was successful, and her career continued to grow. The book concludes with Davis’s reflections on her work with Denzel Washington on the film adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences, where his direction brought out her full presence as an actor for what she felt was the first time.