I know why the caged bird sings
- 320 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Author's memoir of growing up black in the 1930's and 1940's
Maya Angelou's Autobiography Series
This remarkable multi-volume autobiography chronicles the life journey of one of America's most influential writers and poets. Readers follow her early years marked by racism and personal trauma, her struggles for self-discovery, and her eventual triumph to literary prominence. These powerful, wise, and deeply insightful works offer an inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Recommended Reading Order
Gather together in my name
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Second volume of an extended autobiography by the celebrated black poet-novelist
A continuation of the autobiographical series by the author of "I know why the caged bird sings" and "Gather together in my name." Tells of her failed marriage to a white man, her theatrical career, and of her relationship with her son.
The Heart of a Woman
- 352 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Maya Angelou's seven volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. The fourth volume of her enthralling autobiography finds Maya Angelou immersed in the world of black writers and artists in Harlem, working in the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King. 'She has a great capacity for love, to give, and receive it' Margaret Busby
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
- 224 pages
- 8 hours of reading
In 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of "Revolutionist Returnees" inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in ways both puzzling and heartbreaking. As it builds on the personal narrative of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, this book confirms Maya Angelou’s stature as one of the most gifted autobiographers of our time.
The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings .A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been assassinated.Devastated, she tries to put her life back together, working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot she describes firsthand.Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help support King’s Poor People’s March.But once again tragedy strikes. King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heaven ends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird .From the Trade Paperback edition.
Mom and Me and Mom
- 208 pages
- 8 hours of reading
'In the first decade of the twentiety century, it was not a good time to be born black, or woman, in America.' So begins this stunning portrait of Vivian Baxter Johnson: the first black woman officer in the Merchant Marines, purveyor of a gambling business and rooming house, and mother to one of our most cherished literary treasures. Anyone who's read the classic, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, knows Maya Angelou was raised by her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away and unearths the well of emotions Angelou experienced long afterward as a result. While Angelou's six autobiographies tell of her out in the world, influencing and learning from statesmen and cultural icons, Mom &
