In the end, what is clear is that all autobiographers are, alas and inevitably, the heroes or heroines of their own text. As every reader should know, every autobiography, in its own way, subtle or blatant, settles the scores it needs to settle while disguising its subject’s insecurities.
The woman who began her career as a fashion model for Ebony and Jet magazines, who married (and divorced) jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, and whose love of Black people, especially Black women, made her into an activist for most of her long, long life developed her craft so exactingly that she reigns as one of the greatest artists America has ever produced (or ever will produce).