Cher is telling her full story in a two-part memoir, with new details emerging for her plans surrounding the books. The 78-year-old Goddess of Pop will be celebrating the release of Cher: The Memoir, Part One on November 19, with part two following months later.
Dey Street Books, which is an imprint of the William Morrow Group at HarperCollins Publishers, announced the two-part publication plan on Wednesday, along with teasers of what to expect from each one’s contents. Cher herself has also provided insights into the intimate, shocking details they will reveal, including her own struggle to decide what to share and what to leave out.
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July 24 marked the cover reveal for Cher: The Memoir, Part One. The minimalist style features a sideways bold black and white photo of a younger Cher staring intensely at the reader with eyes rimmed by dark liner. Cher’s story is called “a life too immense for only one book” by the publisher, and her memoir will explore Cher as “the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar.”
In celebration of the reveal, Cher also shared the cover on her Instagram account, generating over 67k likes, and plenty of promises to pre-order the text. There was a time, however, that she was not so ready to share anything about her story in such a manner, as she admitted while speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“I just totally chickened out,” she revealed. “I didn’t put in some things that need to be in, and they’re not comfortable. But they need to be put in, so I have to go back and man up.” She went on to explain the need for genuine, new, personal details, elaborating, “I’ve lived too long and done too much, and so it’s like it should be the encyclopedia.”
Be ready to expect anything
The upcoming Cher memoir promises a timeline of key moments from her life, the ones that didn’t make the headlines and the ones that did, explored in unprecedented transparency.
“After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir,” teased the publisher. “With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.”
An insider told Closer Weekly that Cher did indeed circle back and add the details she was “too chicken” to share initially, and that this may make some people deeply unhappy.
“She dives into her issues with [first husband] Sonny Bono,” the insider revealed. “She’ll also take a look at her early years and a childhood that was chaotic at best, with her difficult relationship with her mother.” Her subject matter also includes her children, including her relationship with 55-year-old Chaz, his transition, and her difficult relationship with 48-year-old Elijah Blue. Cher’s fear has not yet subsided after making the decision to share such details, the insider confirmed, claiming, “Yes, she worries about how people are going to take it. But Cher figured if she was going to publish a memoir about her life, she might as well be transparent about it. This is her story, and it’s the only one she knows.”