The first third of this book was very hard to read - physical abuse, sexual abuse, extreme poverty, more physical abuse, lots of physical abuse! I almost put it down when I reached the 1/3 point and was still in her childhood and it was just so much abuse, poverty, racism, etc. It was good just very hard! I kept going though and enjoyed hearing about her time in college, Juillard, and her acting career from the beginning when she struggled through to her more recent work. Makes me want to go back and re-watch The Help and watch some of her other films and tv shows that I missed out on. I listened to the audio which is read by the author and that she won a grammy for reading.