Maya Angelou's five 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. In the fifth volume, Maya Angelou emigrates to Ghana only to discover that 'you can't go home again' but she comes to a new awareness of love and friendship, civil rights and slavery - and the myth of mother Africa.
It is 1964 and Maya Angelou is on her way back home, leaving behind her beloved - and now seriously teenage - son Guy, to finish university in Ghana. America is pulsing with the challenge of change, the civil rights movement is in full swing and that's where Maya Angelou wants to be, working alongside her friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.In this marvellous account, Maya Angelou provides, with her customary wisdom, compassion and wit, a first-hand record of an extraordinarily exciting and tragic political period. She writes of 'Jimmy' Baldwin, Eldridge Cleaver, and of friends and family, and finishes with the beginnings of her career as one of America's most impressive memoir writers.
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
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. In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother's lover.'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it's like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again' Maya Angelou
Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to my Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: it's part guidebook, part memoir, part poetry - and pure delight.Here in short essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons about compassion and fortitude. Whether she is recalling lost friends, extolling honesty or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice, Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women.Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches. It is a book to cherish, savour, reread and share.
Maya Angelou's 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. In the sequel to her best-selling I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou is a young mother in California, unemployed, embarking on brief affairs and transient jobs in shops and night-clubs, turning to prostitution and the world of narcotics.
Maya Angelou's five 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. In this her third marvellous volume, music and her son are the focus of Maya Angelou's life. She is on the edge of a new world: marriage, show business and a triumphant tour of 'Porgy and Bess'.
'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 & Me & Mom shares the intimate, emotional story about her own family.
Maya Angelou's poetry - lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful - speaks of love, longings, partings; of Saturday night partying and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams. Of her poetry, Kirkus Reviews has written, 'It is just as much a part of her autobiography as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, and The Heart of a Woman'.
There is no-one quite like Maya Angelou. Poet to the president, champion of the people, best-selling autobiographer, her experiences as dancer, singer, waitress, activist, director, teacher, wife and mother, have made her one of the few people truly qualified to share her lessons of a lifetime. With her customary courage and humour - and always with style and grace - she reflects on the people and places she has known. She talks about Africa and ageing, she gives us a profile of her great friend and 'daughter' Oprah Winfrey, she sings the praises of sensuality. But here too are her thoughts on the end of a much-wanted marriage, confessions of rage and the importance of solitude. EVEN THE STARS LOOK LONESOME is the work of a wonderful woman who is not afraid to admit to the mistakes and vulnerabilities that make us human.
From this best-selling author comes a marvellous collection of poetry. Poems of love and regret, of racial strife and confrontation, songs of the people and songs of the heart - all are charged with Maya Angelou's zest for life and her rage at injustice. Lyrical, tender poems of longing, wry glances at betrayal and isolation combine with a fierce insight into 'hate and hateful wrath' in an unforgettable picture of the hopes and concerns of one of America's finest contemporary Black writers.
Since the publication of her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou has been celebrated as one of America's most important writers and her words are indelibly imprinted on the hearts of millions.Inspired by the woman who has inspired us all, Rainbow in the Cloud offers nearly 300 of Dr Angelou's wonderful quotes, organised in themed sections (including art, love, spirituality, womanhood, and life in the American South) - from sage advice and beautiful stanzas to humorous quips and pointed observations - drawn from each of her published works and from her celebrated (and much shared) social media posts. This collection also features special words of wisdom she shared often with her family, chosen by her son, Guy Johnson.
Maya Angelou's poetry - lyrical and dramatic, exuberant and playful - speaks of love, longing, partings; of Saturday night partying, and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams. '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.' Of her poetry, KIRKUS REVIEWS has written, 'It is just as much a part of her biography as I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, GATHER TOGETHER in MY NAME, SINGIN' AND SWINGIN' AND GETTING MERRY LIKE CHRISTMAS, and HEART OF A WOMAN.
The woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory' says Maya Angelou, bestselling author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS and one of our best-loved writers. Here she writes about family, argues for spirit and grace, insists on the importance of laughter and style and reflects on brutality and crime. She has the courage to say the unfashionable: 'virtue, purity, temperance, goodness, worth or even moderation...we must return them to a vigorous role in our lives', and the wit to call for them with humour. As lessons in living, they are a unique inspiration.
Following her first cookbook, HALLELUJAH! The Welcome Table, Maya Angelou has provided us with a second, healthier collection. With food that is just as delicious, GREAT FOOD, ALL DAY LONG contains dozens of new recipes which can be eaten in small portions--and more importantly, can be converted into several variations of the main dish. Roast beef to beef hash, to beef and barley soup, for instance. And
interspersed are those wonderfully personal stories that only Maya Angelou can tell. She recalls the delicious dishes from her childhood and some of the wonderful food she's encountered in her travels around the world.Maya Angelou has given us recipes, for instance, that can be eaten at 8:30 in the morning just as well as 8:30 at night. And like all successful cookbooks, she makes you want to eat the food she writes about so enticingly.
Grace, dignity, and eloquence have long been hallmarks of Maya Angelou's poetry. Her measured verses have stirred our souls, energized our minds, and healed our hearts. Celebrations is a collection of timely and timeless poems: the inspiring 'On the Pulse of Morning', read at President William Jefferson Clinton's 1993 inauguration; the heartening 'Amazing Peace'; 'A Brave and Startling Truth', which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations; and 'Mother', which beautifully honours the first woman in our lives. Angelou writes of celebrations public and private.Angelou is a chronicler of history, an advocate for peace, and a champion for the planet, as well as a patriot, a mentor, and a friend. To be shared and cherished, the wisdom and poetry of Maya Angelou proves there is always cause for celebration.
