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More Myself by Alicia Keys

Nonfiction

More Myself

by Alicia Keys

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Quick take

Beloved artist Alicia Keys lays bare her journey toward self-understanding in this intimate and inspirational work.

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  • Illustrated icon, Feminist

    Feminist

  • Illustrated icon, Well_Known

    Famous author

  • Illustrated icon, Inspirational

    Inspirational

  • Illustrated icon, Writers_Life

    Writer's life

Synopsis

As one of the most celebrated musicians of our time, Alicia Keys has enraptured the nation with her heartfelt lyrics, extraordinary vocal range, and soul-stirring piano compositions. Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with private heartache?over the challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.

Since her rise to fame, Alicia’s public persona has belied a deep personal truth: she has spent years not fully recognizing or honoring her own worth. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she is at last exploring the questions that live at the heart of her story: Who am I, really? And once I discover that truth, how can I become brave enough to embrace it?

More Myself is part autobiography, part narrative documentary. Alicia’s journey is revealed not only through her own candid recounting, but also through vivid recollections from those who have walked alongside her. The result is a 360-degree perspective on Alicia’s path?from her girlhood in Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem, to the process of self-discovery she’s still navigating.

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Get an early look from the first pages of More Myself.

More Myself

First Word

The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place. —Barbara De Angelis, spiritual teacher

I am seven. My mom and I are side by side in the back seat of a yellow taxi, making our way up Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan on a dead-cold day in December. We hardly ever take cabs. They’re a luxury for a single parent and part-time actress. But on this afternoon, maybe because Mom has just finished an audition near my school, PS 116 on East Thirty-third Street, or maybe because it’s so freezing we can see our breath, she picks me up. The cab inches crosstown before finally turning north onto a stretch of Eleventh Avenue dotted with peep shows, massage parlors, and crumbling tenements. We pull up to Forty-second Street, around the corner from our building. Something catches my eye.

“Mommy?” I ask, pointing. I’ve climbed onto my knees on the seat and pressed my face, crowned with its usual frizz and my hair swept into box braids, right against the glass. “Why are they dressed like that when it’s so cold?”

Mom clasps my hand and pulls me back toward her while glancing out the window. There on the corner stand three women, each rubbing her hands together to stay warm. All are in brightly colored knit dresses with hemlines that end miles above their knees. One is wearing fishnet stockings that reveal flashes of her bare skin. Another has on black boots that extend up the full length of her thighs. None are wearing coats.

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Why I love it

It’s almost impossible to overstate Alicia Keys’s talents as a singer, a lyricist, and a classically-trained pianist, and if you’ve spent time on this planet over the past few decades, you probably know not only her name but the words to one of her hit singles. In this warm and evocative book, Keys further solidifies her credentials as a storyteller by opening up on the page about her rise to fame and her path to honor and recognize herself, no matter the cost.

“For every performance, every photo shoot and appearance, there’s an expectation of female flawlessness,” Alicia writes in More Myself. And for a while, in her teenage years at least, she manages that pressure privately, even while she is literally in the spotlight. But maintaining a celebrity persona amidst changing romantic relationships, her label’s commercial expectations, and, of course, stardom comes at a cost. Gradually, she realizes that trying to please everyone will leave the person who matters most—herself—unhappy. And so she embarks on a spiritual journey to become, in her words, “more myself.”

This is a vulnerable book that hits all the right notes. It forgoes the shallow gloss of a typical celebrity memoir for a carefully-rendered collection of moments that take us from her upbringing in Hell’s Kitchen to backstage at the world’s biggest awards shows to solo moments at the piano, where so many breakthroughs—personal and creative—occurred. Whether you’re an Alicia-Keys-superfan or just looking for inspiration for your own spiritual awakening, look no further than this beautiful work of nonfiction from one of our most gifted voices.

Member ratings (931)

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View all
The Stone Witch of Florence
The Seventh Veil of Salome
Hera
The Lion Women of Tehran
The Return of Ellie Black
Annie Bot
More
Bright Young Women
The First Ladies
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Weyward
Queen of Thieves
Hester
Love on the Brain
Bronze Drum
The Bodyguard
The Change
Lessons in Chemistry
Kaikeyi
My Body
Half Sick of Shadows
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
Outlawed
More Myself
Practical Magic
A Rogue of One's Own
True Story
Fleishman Is in Trouble
The Book of Longings
Untamed
The Kingdom of Back
The Girl with the Louding Voice
Throw Like a Girl
Trick Mirror
Bringing Down the Duke
Three Women
Shout
Thick
Still Lives
The Rules of Magic
The Nightingale