Jasmine Guy is telling her story and she is not telling it alone. The legendary actress, dancer, singer and director has co-written a memoir titled A Different Girl alongside her daughter and confidante Imani Guy Duckette. The 320-page book is published by Black Privilege Publishing in partnership with Atria and arrives February 9, 2027. Pre-orders are available now.
The memoir spans Guy’s full life and career, from her childhood in Atlanta growing up mixed near Morehouse and Spelman, where her father taught philosophy, to her years training with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater after moving to New York at seventeen, to her Broadway debut and her breakthrough on screen with Spike Lee’s School Daze. It was her role as Whitley Gilbert on A Different World, the beloved HBCU sitcom that ran from 1987 to 1993, that would cement her as one of the defining stars of Black Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s.
The book does not shy away from the harder chapters. Guy opens up about her battles with depression, her wavering self-image, her brushes with racism in Hollywood and her lifelong yearning to create meaningful work. Along the way she revisits encounters with some of her generation’s greatest talents including Whitney Houston, Debbie Allen and Tupac Shakur.
What makes A Different Girl particularly special is the collaboration at its heart. Imani Guy Duckette co-wrote the memoir with her mother, bringing a daughter’s perspective to a mother’s story and capturing the woman Jasmine was before she was ever “Mom.” It is a book about legacy, healing and history preserved within a family and passed on to the rest of us.
Frank, unfiltered and often funny, A Different Girl is described as a book for dancers, mixed kids, dreamers and anyone who needs to hear a hopeful message.
A Different Girl by Jasmine Guy and Imani Guy Duckette is available for pre-order now and publishes February 9, 2027 via Black Privilege Publishing and Atria.