Play Book Tag discussion

This memoir traces Maya Angelou's early life from the age of three to her late teenage years. It begins when Maya and her brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas when their parents marriage breaks up. This is her first memoir, dealing with her childhood and adolescence.

Periodically, they would stay with one or other of their parents which were usually low points in their life. They returned to their grandmother where they both excelled in school.

Maya Angelou was a poet and Nobel laureate who won multitudes of awards and honors. The book presents things in a direct and extremely vivid fashion, but it is not needlessly graphic. She addresses issues of molestation, rape, racism. This is a beautifully written memoir, even in its moments of describing life's ugliness.