Cicely Tyson, the legendary actor whose memoir was released on Tuesday, has died at 96, the New York Times reports.

Tyson was widely considered one of the greatest American actors of the 20th century. Born in Harlem to West Indian immigrant parents, she made her acting debut in 1951 on a television show called Frontiers of Faith; several TV and film roles would follow over the next decades.

She shot to stardom in 1972 with a starring role in the film Sounder, based on the young adult novel by William H. Armstrong, which earned her an Academy Award nomination. Two years after that, she won two Emmy Awards for playing the title role in the television movie adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines’ novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

Tyson made her literary debut on Tuesday with her memoir, Just As I Am. A reviewer for Kirkus called the book “a forthright self-portrait of a determined woman and iconic cultural figure.” And at the Washington Post, critic Tre’vell Anderson wrote that the book was “a 400-page chronicle of a history as American as apple pie, as Black as the dead of night, as rich, surely, as Tyson’s favorite meals, oxtails and okra…a universal accounting of just how far we’ve come in Tyson’s near-century of life, and how far we still must go.”

Tyson was remembered on Twitter by author and politician Stacey Abrams, who wrote, “The art of rewriting an entire narrative is rare - but #CicelyTyson did so. She infused film with the power of transfiguration, showing black women, marginalized women, underestimated women in their abundant glory. And the world will never be the same. God’s rest to you, madam.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.