The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

by Maya Angelou

Superbly told, with the poet's gift for language and observation, Angelou's autobiography of her childhood in Arkansas - a world of which most Americans are ignorant.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Feminism, Classics, Poetry

1184 pages, Hardcover

First published September 21, 1995

About the author

Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, family, and travel.

Reviews

[Becky Kapes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a lot of books and this one had more impact than almost any other. This is an amazing collection that literally changed my life (or at least my way of thinking about the world). I had previously read her best known works, but this included several pieces about her earlier life that were completely amazing. Did you know Maya Angelou was at different times homeless, a lounge singer, a pimp, a mistress, a single mother? Me neither. She's very open and honest about her triumphs and mistakes and this book gave me a much needed dose of courage to make some changes in my own life.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the final volume of the six in The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou. I reviewed the other five autobiographies under their own book titles, but I will review A Song Flung Up to Heaven as part of the six volume set.

A Song Flung Up to Heaven picks up Maya’s story as she is returning from Ghana to the United States to work with Malcolm X. She is plagued by the guilt of leaving her son, Guy, in Ghana, and she is almost immediately assaulted with the news of the murder of Malcom X. In this volume, Maya shares her personal life as it intersects with major historical events, including the Watts riots and the death of Martin Luther King Jr. This book was similar in style to the others. Maya’s writing is straightforward and easy, but, at the same time, poetic. We see a little less humor in this installment than the others.

What struck me over and over while I was reading all of the volumes is the amount of living Maya did in only 40 years covered by the autobiographies. Her life was truly fascinating, and she was remarkably honest in these memoirs. She never shied away from her flaws and mistakes, but she learned from them. We can, too. She shows us that the human spirit can triumph.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF after the fourth volume. I enjoyed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings so much that I bought this collection of most of Angelou's autobiographies. But the succeeding three volumes did not compare to the first. After having this book on my currently reading shelf for what feels like years, I'm going to be honest with myself and declare this a DNF. I'm inclined to come back to I Know Why the Caged Bird sings as some point, but I don't think I'll be reading any more of her autobiographies.

[Teshy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This entire collection is what made me start to read. The writing, the emotions, the hope, the journey.. She filled my confused, lost 20 year old heart with so much love and hope that it changed my life.
Anytime I doubt myself or feel like I am running out of time, I ALWAYS think about Maya. How she accomplished so much without setting limits, while against the tide. Her longing for true love, the same as I, and her expression.. She inspired me to be unequivocally me and take all experiences.
Because I have never felt this type of hope, support, and emotions in my life—ESPECIALLY not from a book, I searched and searched for more books that could touch me so. She started my love of reading as well as helping me realize and encourage soooo many other aspects about me that I would have drowned or ignored before. Thank you, Maya. ❤️

Years and books later, this collection is still my all time favorite series or book(s).
(Close second is Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi)

[⭐ Emerson ⭐]

$2.99 on Amazon! What a steal! Grab it while you can!!! ❤

[Jonna Volkers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zeer zelden beoordeel ik een boek met vijf sterren, deze is het wat mij betreft echt helemaal waard. Prachtig taalgebruik, pijnlijk eerlijk over succes en spijt en dan ook nog een levensverhaal dat het delen waard is en dat langs uitzonderlijke vriendschappen en ontmoetingen verlopen is. Een deel van de mensen die mevrouw Angalou heeft leren kennen is in de geschiedenisboeken terug te vinden, een ander minstens zo belangrijke belangrijke groep mensen die haar beïnvloed en geholpen hebben is wellicht alleen een klein beetje te leren kennen door dit boek te lezen.

[Jing · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most impressive books I've ever read. What a life! Maya Angelou's writing was direct, beautiful and captivating. But her courage! And her total abandon when she plunged herself in the messiness of life! And her willingness to laugh at herself, to laugh at life, to express such fierce emotions while keeping an open mind, to condemn all the hatred without bitterness. What a free spirit!

And such touching description of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Such insight of the civil rights movement.

[Nicole (Reading Books With Coffee) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maya Angelou really is quite the woman! After hearing that she passed away, I knew I had to read her autobiographies. I read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings years ago, but it never occurred to me to pick up her other ones. I really am sad that I didn't read them earlier.

I'm actually glad I went with her collected autobiographies, because she did so much, and I felt like her life story flowed a lot better being able to read all of her autobiographies as a collective whole.

I loved seeing her life up to when she started writing I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and she had such an eventful life! It did get a little tedious at times, especially with All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes and A Song Flung Up To Heaven. All together, it was a definitely a marathon, and I think by the time I got to her last two books, I kind of wanted to be done with her autobiographies. They were interesting, and I don't want to take away from that at all, but I also wish I had taken a little more time with them.

It's so easy to see how she became the person that she was- she is definitely a survivor, and always landed on her own two feet, no matter what happened to her. I was quite surprised by some of things I read- like running a brothel, and traveling all over the world (and even making an effort to learn the language of every country she visited) and working for both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr...she is truly an inspiration, and I feel like we're so lucky that she shared her story with us.

She really does have a way with words, and there were times when I forgot I was reading an autobiography. There's something very poetic about the way she writes, and she has a way of feeling like she's telling you a story.

Let's Rate It: I feel so honored to have read Maya Angelou's story. I feel like I understand her world so much better after reading her autobiographies, and I really regret taking so long to read them! Reading them as one collective work was daunting, especially with her last couple autobiographies, but I also liked seeing her life as a whole, instead of in shorter stories. Her Collected Autobiographies get 4 stars.

[Jeanne Arp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this collection which contains all six of Ms. Angelou's autobiographies from 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' to 'A Song Flung Up to Heaven'. When read like this, these six books make up chapters in her story that runs from her birth during the Depression through the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Aside from the amazing life and story of Ms. Angelou, it gives us an up close and personal view of the American Black experience during those years. The book left me hungry for more. I want to ask her, "How did you not only survive, but thrive through the terrible adversity of your life?" And "How did you evolve from the angry revolutionary of your youth to the woman full of grace and love that we all came to know?" And finally, "How do I take your wisdom into my own heart and pass it on to our youth who so desperately need it?" I will be looking for more Maya Angelou books seeking the answers to those questions.

[NON · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating 3.5/5

This collection represents the many adventures (and lives) of Maya Angelou. Reading about her life was such a journey. I didn't always agree with her choices but she fascinates me nonetheless with her eloquent language and sharp observations. The way Maya carried herself is inspiring, and if I learned anything from her story is to have the courage to try, fail and continue to march on regardless.

Note that Mom & Me & Mom is not included in this collection.

[Miri Maravall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble. Una figura increíblemente valiente e inspiradora.

[Timi Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe I'm just reading this. What a delightful read. Wow.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read these seven books between February and March of 2023, one after another, barely pausing between them. They exist in my mind now as a single long book — one of the greatest memoirs in the English language — and I want to review them that way. My individual reviews of each volume are linked in the list at the bottom of this review. What follows here is an attempt to say what the whole thing is and why it belongs among the ten books that have stayed with me longest.

Who Maya Was

The public figure — the stately elder stateswoman reciting "On the Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, the wise grandmother of American letters — bears only a partial resemblance to the woman in these books. The woman in these books was raped at eight years old by her mother's boyfriend, became mute for almost five years afterward, became a mother at seventeen, worked as a fry cook, a sex worker, a madam, a nightclub dancer and singer, a cast member of Porgy and Bess on a European tour, a journalist in Egypt and Ghana, a coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a close friend and collaborator of Malcolm X, an eyewitness to the Watts riots, and a woman who was present, in one capacity or another, at some of the most consequential moments of the American twentieth century. She knew King and Malcolm, Billie Holiday and Abbey Lincoln. Linguist John McWhorter put it well: to know her life story is to simultaneously wonder what on earth you have been doing with your own life and feel glad that you didn't have to go through half the things she did.

Her brother Bailey called her "Maya," his version of "my sister." I call her Maya too, for the same reason I call Shakespeare "Will" after reading and reviewing his complete works: a certain intimacy develops over the course of seven books that makes the formal last name feel wrong.

The Seven Books

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) covers Maya's life from 1931 to 1945 — her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, with her grandmother, the rape, the years of silence, her adolescence in California, the birth of her son at seventeen. It is the most celebrated of the seven volumes and the most fully achieved as a literary work. The prose has the compression and the controlled fury of great poetry:

"The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of male prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power." (p. 291)

"Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware." (p. 290)

Gather Together in My Name (1974) covers 1945 to 1948 — Maya's late teens, her work as a madam for two prostitutes, her near-descent into heroin addiction. This is the book that most surprised me. I was not prepared for the darkness here, the levels of desperation and moral compromise that the sweet grandmother of the public image had passed through. The prose is not quite as beautiful as in Caged Bird, but the honesty is extraordinary:

"Though I prided myself on tender sensitivity, I have never known when a great love affair was beginning. Some barricade lies midway in my mind, and I'm usually on my back scrutinizing a ceiling before it is borne in on me that this is the man I fantasized in my late night fingering."

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976) covers 1949 to 1955 — her marriage, her career as a performer, her tour with Porgy and Bess through Europe and Africa. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, this marked the first time a well-known African American autobiographer had written a third volume about her life. It opens one of the great themes of the series — the complicated relationship between Black Americans and Europe, between Black Americans and Africa:

"I hadn't been in Europe long enough to know that Europeans often made as clear a distinction between Black and white Americans as did the most confirmed Southern bigot. The difference, I was to discover, was that more often than not, Blacks were liked, whereas white Americans were not."

The Heart of a Woman (1981) covers 1957 to 1962 — Maya's return to the United States, her work with the SCLC, her meetings with King and Malcolm X, her encounters with jazz musicians including Max Roach, who meets singer Billie Holiday shortly before her death in 1959. This is the civil rights volume, and the awakening it describes is one of the most beautifully rendered in American literature:

"It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom."

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) covers 1962 to 1965 — Maya's years in Ghana, her friendships with other Black American expatriates, her complicated relationship to Africa as homeland and as foreign country, and her friendship with Malcolm X after his transformative journey to Mecca. The Malcolm X passages are particularly extraordinary for anyone, like me, who considers him a hero. He had arrived, through suffering and thought, at the same universal humanism that makes him one of the most important intellectual figures of the twentieth century:

"Malcolm [X] said, 'Sister listen and listen carefully. Picture American racism as a mountain. Now slice that mountain from the top to the bottom and open it like a door. Do you see all the lines, the strata?' I could barely see the road ahead, but I nodded. 'Those are the strata of American life and we are being attacked on each one. We need people on each level to fight our battle. Don't be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn't do what you do, or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.'" (p. 145)

The closing passage of this volume is one of the most quietly profound in all seven books:

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from London's Soho, to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it." (p. 196)

A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) covers 1965 to 1968 — Maya's return to America, the assassination of Malcolm X, her work with King, and King's assassination on her fortieth birthday. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on Angelou's birthday, leading her to stop celebrating her birthday for years afterward. She sent flowers to Coretta Scott King for more than thirty years, until Coretta's death in 2006. This is the weakest of the six chronological volumes — the long timeline requires a more episodic structure and some of the prose does not reach the heights of the earlier books — but the James Baldwin passages are extraordinary:

"Jimmy [James Baldwin] said, 'We survived slavery.... You know how we survived?....We put surviving into our poems and into our songs. We put it into our folk tales. We danced surviving in Congo Square in New Orleans and put it in our bots when we cooked pinto beans. We wore surviving on our backs when we clothed ourselves in the colors of the rainbow. We were pulled down so low we could hardly lift our eyes, so we knew, if we wanted to survive, we better lift our own spirits. So we laughed whenever we got the chance.'"

The book ends as Maya begins writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — closing the loop, the series swallowing its own tail.

Mom & Me & Mom (2013) is different from the other six. Published when Maya was eighty-five, it does not cover a specific period of years but ranges across her whole life, 1928 to 2013, with a single focus: her relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter. Where the other volumes show us what Maya did and saw and survived, this one asks how she became who she became — and finds the answer, complicated and painful and ultimately loving, in the woman who sent her three-year-old daughter alone on a train to Arkansas and spent the rest of her life trying to make it right:

"I missed you but I knew you were in the best place for you. I would have been a terrible mother. I had no patience. Maya, when you were about two years old, you asked me for something. I was busy talking, so you hit my hand, and I slapped you off the porch without thinking. It didn't mean I didn't love you; it just meant I wasn't ready to be a mother. I'm explaining to you, not apologizing. We would have all been sorry had I kept you." (p. 24)

The book is the weakest of the seven, necessarily episodic and occasionally redundant if you have read the earlier volumes. But that passage alone earns its place.

Why It Belongs on the List

I include the collected autobiographies among my ten books that have stayed with me because of what Maya's life demonstrates about the relationship between suffering and selfhood, and because of the quality of witness she brought to the most significant decades of the American twentieth century. She was not a saint or a symbol. She was a complicated, sometimes morally compromised, enormously gifted human being who lived through things that would have destroyed most people and came out the other side still capable of love, still capable of art, still capable of the kind of intellectual honesty that makes these books worth reading.

The line I return to most, from the first volume, is perhaps the best one-sentence summary of what the whole series is about: "She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy." (p. 287).

5/5 stars.

Individual reviews:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1931–1945)
Gather Together in My Name (1945–1948)
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1949–1955)
The Heart of a Woman (1957–1962)
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1962–1965)
A Song Flung Up to Heaven (1965–1968)
Mom & Me & Mom (1928–2013)

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[Image: Book Cover — I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings]

Citations:

Angelou, M. (2015). I know why the caged bird sings. Random House. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00... (Original work published 1969)

Angelou, M. (2010). Gather together in my name. Vintage. (Original work published 1974)

Angelou, M. (2009). Singin' and swingin' and gettin' merry like Christmas. Virago. (Original work published 1976)

Angelou, M. (2009). The heart of a woman. Virago. (Original work published 1981)

Angelou, M. (2010). All God's children need traveling shoes. Vintage. https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Children-... (Original work published 1986)

Angelou, M. (2013). A song flung up to heaven. Bantam. (Original work published 2002)

Angelou, M. (2013). Mom & me & mom. Random House.

Title: The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou
Author: Maya Angelou (1928–2014)
Year: 1969–2013
Genre: Nonfiction — Memoir
Date(s) read: 2/1/23–3/30/23

[Aimee Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such powerful wise words, inspirational

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm on page 380. Zipped through I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, almost finished with Gather Together in My Name. Maya Angelou is now only 19 and has lived more than many in a lifetime. She is a vivid writer and very readable. Such a page turner! Next up, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' a Merry Christmas.

Update, still a page turner...almost done with the fourth book now, page 780-ish. 8/18/14
She's still in her 30's. Starting Book 5, Swing Low Sweet Chariot...she's in Africa , we'll see where she ends up. From the title, it seems this book is 'comin' for to carry her home."

The most memorable one thing about this woman is her resourcefulness and proactivism in the face of downturns. Over and over she gets up and gets going!

Finished Labor Day Weekend. Good one all the way through. My favorites were the first two, which were freshest and most vivid. But easy read and interesting from page one to the end.

[Dilshad · Rating 5 out of 5]

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

- I know why the caged bird sings.


Marguerite Ann Johnson's autobiography is one of the most genuine account I have come across, laying out in the open her victories and slips as she explores her identity as a Black woman and finds her place in the world, it is full of uplifting and powerful life lessons.

Reading about her life experiences has been thoroughly entertaining and thought provoking at the same time.

This remarkable woman's life story is highly recommended.


"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

― Maya Angelou

[Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely a book worth reading, especially if one's interested in the history of racism in America and the civil right's movement. It was a long read, but I learned greatly from Maya Angelou's life experiences. Her writing is thought provoking. There were many lines in the book that I read several times because of the powerful message they conveyed and the elegance with which it was expressed.
The first half of the book (especially where she talks about her childhood) was truly interesting. I could not put the book down. The second half however was less absorbing for me. Overall, she writes beautifully, even about the most mundane subjects.
This is definitely the best autobiography I have read so far.

[Makoto Asing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maya is an amazing writer! She is poetically beautiful and rich in experience. I love her blunt innocence and desire for life. She really captures her memories of childhood traumas and takes you there to where you feel compassion for both victim and perpetrator. It’s a hard read but I'm just taking it slow and really enjoying her literature. So far I have finished “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” and started “Gather in My Name”. It’s been a great history lesson for me of real segregation in the 1930's and pictures of early San Francisco.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

7/16/14
RIP Ms. Maya - I will miss your wisdom.

4/17/14
I think I want to read this again. Got it on my Nook so not so bulky to carry around. Love Ms. Maya - and love reading about her life.

10/25/12
Finished "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" - will read "Heart of a Woman" next - but want to read something else in between...

9/22/12
I've read these several times before and am in the mood to read them again. This volume is actually all of them - I'm reading them one at a time - started "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" today.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maya Angelou is a fantastic story teller and now I see why. Her engagement with life in 1950s and 60s America is an incredible journey. Her love affair with Africa and her experiences as part of the Civil Rights movement- in her engagement with Dr King and Malcolm X provide a fantastic insight into life at that time and the very real struggles that a black woman, as a lone parent with incredible self made opportunities faced.
A really uplifting read for all women.

[Ron Stafford · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can be said about all the Autobiographies of Maya in one tome. It is witty, beautiful written, soul stirring and humors all at once. I had previously read Caged Bird and All God's Children, but to read them all together marvelous. The many twist and turns her life took, she was a Women Phenomenal.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved discovering the back story behind this woman of great wisdom. Her past becomes the bedrock upon which her wisdom was constructed. Behind every great person is a messy story that shapes who they become. Her stories give me hope!

[Beth Shields-Szostak]

1st edition thus, signed & inscribed by author

[Haplila · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

[Roya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome - Read it.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maya is an inspiration and a role model. Every female should read these books.

[S.E. Bourne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angelou was one of my saviors as a kid, she was a guiding adult for me on the page, someone that tried to point the way.

[Gloria]

I enjoyed reading Maya's 1st memoire. I found it wholly engulfing. The next 6 were not as exciting to me although they were very good and worth reading. The life she lead was unbelievable. If anything, her life makes me appreciate mine much more. I admire her writing and personality.

Dedicated fans and newcomers alike can follow the continually absorbing chronicle of Angelou’s life: her formative childhood in Stamps, Arkansas; the birth of her son, Guy, at the end of World War II; her adventures traveling abroad with the famed cast of Porgy and Bess; her experience living in a black expatriate “colony” in Ghana; her intense involvement with the civil rights movement, including her association with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X; and, finally, the beginning of her writing career.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou traces the best and worst of the American experience in an achingly personal way. Angelou has chronicled her remarkable journey and inspired people of every generation and nationality to embrace life with commitment and passion.

[Larissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maya Angelou’s biographies are both inspiring and humbling. Between her incredible life, astounding prose, and generosity in sharing with the world her perspective on female blackness in 20th century America—her books sometimes made me wonder how much she herself felt they were the way she described the play “The Blacks” in which she performed as the White Queen, an exercise of walking a fine line between reflection and scorn, thoughtfulness and release—they make me want to be better (more courageous, more hardworking, open my mind) while being certain I am partially impeded to do so by my own privilege, my comfortable life. Maya shows us black artistic brilliance is not an innate racial quality; it is a survival requirement.
Being swept away into Maya’s world from her journey to Stamps alone by train with her brother when they were both very little children until her 40th year was the most beautiful, heartbreaking and extraordinary thing that happened to me this year and it is an experience I recommend to the entire world.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people have lived amazing lives--but to be able to write about one's experiences in a fresh and powerful way that wrenches readers, makes us cry and laugh and gasp and mourn and reflect, is a true gift.

And what a life, from growing up in the segregated South, to being raped as a child and then not speaking for six years, to becoming a madam in California in the 1950s, to performing in Porgy and Bess, to being a young single mother, to living in Ghana and Honolulu and New York City, to working for Martin Luther King, Jr. and befriending Malcom X and James Baldwin, to writing poetry, plays and a PBS series on Black Americans--and there's so much more.

I'd read "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" at least twice and a few excerpts of her others--but I wanted the experience of reading all six of her memoirs in a row. By the end I found myself holding my breath at her reflection on how African American women have been able to rise in spite of it all. Angelou certainly rose--and sang about it.