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The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou Modern Library HardcoverHardcover – September 21, 2004
by
Maya Angelou
(Author)
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NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER •Maya Angelou’s classic memoirs have had an enduring impact on American literature and culture. Her life story is told in the documentary filmAnd Still I Rise,as seen on PBS’sAmerican Masters.
This Modern Library edition containsI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, The Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes,andA Song Flung Up to Heaven.
WhenI Know Why the Caged Bird Singswas published to widespread acclaim in 1969, Maya Angelou garnered the attention of an international audience with the triumphs and tragedies of her childhood in the American South. This soul-baring memoir launched a six-book epic spanning the sweep of the author’s incredible life. Now, for the first time, all six celebrated and bestselling autobiographies are available in this handsome one-volume edition.
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 ofPorgy 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 Angeloutraces 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.
This Modern Library edition containsI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, The Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes,andA Song Flung Up to Heaven.
WhenI Know Why the Caged Bird Singswas published to widespread acclaim in 1969, Maya Angelou garnered the attention of an international audience with the triumphs and tragedies of her childhood in the American South. This soul-baring memoir launched a six-book epic spanning the sweep of the author’s incredible life. Now, for the first time, all six celebrated and bestselling autobiographies are available in this handsome one-volume edition.
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 ofPorgy 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 Angeloutraces 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.
- Print length1184 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherModern Library
- Publication dateSeptember 21, 2004
- Dimensions5.73 x 2.2 x 8.3 inches
- ISBN-100679643257
- ISBN-13978-0679643258
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“This testimony from a black sister marks the beginning of a new era in the minds and hearts of all black men and women....I Know Why The Caged Bird Singsliberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity. I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood, when the people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself so moved.... Her portrait is a biblical study in life in the midst of death.” —James Baldwin
“Simultaneously touching and comic.” —The New York Times
“It is a heroic and beautiful book.” —The Plain Dealer
“Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written and exceptional autobiographical narrative... a beautiful book—an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Simultaneously touching and comic.” —The New York Times
“It is a heroic and beautiful book.” —The Plain Dealer
“Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written and exceptional autobiographical narrative... a beautiful book—an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.” —Kirkus Reviews
From the Inside Flap
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.
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Maya Angelouwas raised in Stamps, Arkansas. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, includingI Know Why the Caged Bird SingsandThe Heart of a Woman,she wrote numerous volumes of poetry, among themPhenomenal Woman, And Still I Rise, On the Pulse of Morning,andMother.Maya Angelou died in 2014.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue
"What you looking at me for?
I didn't come to stay... "
I hadn't so much forgot as I couldn't bring myself to remember. Other things were more important.
"What you looking at me for?
I didn't come to stay... "
Whether I could remember the rest of the poem or not was immaterial. The truth of the statement was like a wadded-up handkerchief, sopping wet in my fists, and the sooner they accepted it the quicker I could let my hands open and the air would cool my palms.
"What you looking at me for...?"
The children's section of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was wiggling and giggling over my well-known forgetfulness.
The dress I wore was lavender taffeta, and each time I breathed it rustled, and now that I was sucking in air to breathe out shame it sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses.
As I'd watched Momma put ruffles on the hem and cute little tucks around the waist, I knew that once I put it on I'd look like a movie star. (It was silk and that made up for the awful color.) I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, "Marguerite [sometimes it was 'dear Marguerite'], forgive us, please, we didn't know who you were," and I would answer generously, "No, you couldn't have known. Of course I forgive you."
Just thinking about it made me go around with angel's dust sprinkled over my face for days. But Easter's early morning sun had shown the dress to be a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway. It was old-lady-long too, but it didn't hide my skinny legs, which had been greased with Blue Seal Vaseline and powdered with the Arkansas red clay. The age-faded color made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs.
Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten? My light-blue eyes were going to hypnotize them, after all the things they said about "my daddy must of been a Chinaman" (I thought they meant made out of china, like a cup) because my eyes were so small and squinty. Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs' tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.
"What you looking..." The minister's wife leaned toward me, her long yellow face full of sorry. She whispered, "I just come to tell you, it's Easter Day." I repeated, jamming the words together, "Ijustcometotellyouit'sEasterDay," as low as possible. The giggles hung in the air like melting clouds that were waiting to rain on me. I held up two fingers, close to my chest, which meant that I had to go to the toilet, and tiptoed toward the rear of the church. Dimly, somewhere over my head, I heard ladies saying, "Lord bless the child," and "Praise God." My head was up and my eyes were open, but I didn't see anything. Halfway down the aisle, the church exploded with "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" and I tripped over a foot stuck out from the children's pew. I stumbled and started to say something, or maybe to scream, but a green persimmon, or it could have been a lemon, caught me between the legs and squeezed. I tasted the sour on my tongue and felt it in the back of my mouth. Then before I reached the door, the sting was burning down my legs and into my Sunday socks. I tried to hold, to squeeze it back, to keep it from speeding, but when I reached the church porch I knew I'd have to let it go, or it would probably run right back up to my head and my poor head would burst like a dropped watermelon, and all the brains and spit and tongue and eyes would roll all over the place. So I ran down into the yard and let it go. I ran, peeing and crying, not toward the toilet out back but to our house. I'd get a whipping for it, to be sure, and the nasty children would have something new to tease me about. I laughed anyway, partially for the sweet release; still, the greater joy came not only from being liberated from the silly church but from the knowledge that I wouldn't die from a busted head.
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
It is an unnecessary insult.
Chapter 1
When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed-- "To Whom It May Concern" --that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.
Our parents had decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and Father shipped us home to his mother. A porter had been charged with our welfare--he got off the train the next day in Arizona--and our tickets were pinned to my brother's inside coat pocket.
I don't remember much of the trip, but after we reached the segregated southern part of the journey, things must have looked up. Negro passengers, who always traveled with loaded lunch boxes, felt sorry for "the poor little motherless darlings" and plied us with cold fried chicken and potato salad.
Years later I discovered that the United States had been crossed thousands of times by frightened Black children traveling alone to their newly affluent parents in Northern cities, or back to grandmothers in Southern towns when the urban North reneged on its economic promises.
The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. It regarded us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children) it closed in around us, as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly, but not too familiarly.
We lived with our grandmother and uncle in the rear of the Store (it was always spoken of with a capitals), which she had owned some twenty-five years.
Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen in the lumberyard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade, when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time, assured her business success. From being a mobile lunch counter, she set up a stand between the two points of fiscal interest and supplied the workers' needs for a few years. Then she had the Store built in the heart of the Negro area. Over the years it became the lay center of activities in town. On Saturdays, barbers sat their customers in the shade on the porch of the Store, and troubadours on their ceaseless crawlings through the South leaned across its benches and sang their sad songs of The Brazos while they played juice harps and cigarbox guitars.
The formal name of the Store was the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store. Customers could find food staples, a good variety of colored thread, mash for hogs, corn for chickens, coal oil for lamps, light bulbs for the wealthy, shoestrings, hair dressing, balloons, and flower seeds. Anything not visible had only to be ordered.
Until we became familiar enough to belong to the Store and it to us, we were locked up in a Fun House of Things where the attendant had gone home for life.
Each year I watched the field across from the Store turn caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white. I knew exactly how long it would be before the big wagons would pull into the front yard and load on the cotton pickers at daybreak to carry them to the remains of slavery's plantations.
During the picking season my grandmother would get out of bed at four o'clock (she never used an alarm clock) and creak down to her knees and chant in a sleep-filled voice, "Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn't allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen."
Before she had quite arisen, she called our names and issued orders, and pushed her large feet into homemade slippers and across the bare Iye-washed wooden floor to light the coal-oil lamp.
The lamplight in the Store gave a soft make-believe feeling to our world which made me want to whisper and walk about on tiptoe. The odors of onions and oranges and kerosene had been mi xing all night and wouldn't be disturbed until the wooded slat was removed from the door and the early morning air forced its way in with the bodies of people who had walked miles to reach the pickup place.
"Sister, I'll have two cans of sardines."
"I'm gonna work so fast today I'm gonna make you look like you standing still."
"Lemme have a hunk uh cheese and some sody crackers."
"Just gimme a couple them fat peanut paddies." That would be from a picker who was taking his lunch. The greasy brown paper sack was stuck behind the bib of his overalls. He'd use the candy as a snack before the noon sun called the workers to rest.
In those tender mornings the Store was full of laughing, joking, boasting and bragging. One man was going to pick two hundred pounds of cotton, and another three hundred. Even the children were promising to bring home fo' bits and six bits.
The champion picker of the day before was the hero of the dawn. If he prophesied that the cotton in today's field was going to be sparse and stick to the bolls like glue, every listener would grunt a hearty agreement.
The sound of the empty cotton sacks dragging over the floor and the murmurs of waking people were sliced by the cash register as we rang up the five-cent sales.
If the morning sounds and smells were touched with the supernatural, the late afternoon had all the features of the normal Arkansas life. In the dying sunlight the people dragged, rather than their empty cotton sacks.
Brought back to the Store, the pickers would step out of the backs of trucks and fold down, dirt-disappointed, to the ground. No matter how much they had picked' it wasn't enough. Their wages wouldn't even get them out of debt to my grandmother, not to mention the staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown.
The sounds of the new morning had been replaced with grumbles about cheating houses, weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty rows. In later years I was to confront the stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton pickers with such inordinate rage that I was told even by fellow Blacks that my paranoia was embarrassing. But I had seen the fingers cut by the mean little cotton bolls, and I had witnessed the backs and shoulders and arms and legs resisting any further demands.
Some of the workers would leave their sacks at the Store to be picked up the following morning, but a few had to take them home for repairs. I winced to picture them sewing the coarse material under a coal-oil lamp with fingers stiffening from the day's work. In too few hours they would have to walk back to Sister Henderson's Store, get vittles and load, again, onto the trucks. Then they would face another day of trying to earn enough for the whole year with the heavy knowledge that they were going to end the season as they started it. Without the money or credit necessary to sustain a family for three months. In cotton-picking time the late afternoons revealed the harshness of Black Southern life, which in the early morning had been softened by nature's blessing of grogginess, forgetfulness and the soft lamplight.
"What you looking at me for?
I didn't come to stay... "
I hadn't so much forgot as I couldn't bring myself to remember. Other things were more important.
"What you looking at me for?
I didn't come to stay... "
Whether I could remember the rest of the poem or not was immaterial. The truth of the statement was like a wadded-up handkerchief, sopping wet in my fists, and the sooner they accepted it the quicker I could let my hands open and the air would cool my palms.
"What you looking at me for...?"
The children's section of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was wiggling and giggling over my well-known forgetfulness.
The dress I wore was lavender taffeta, and each time I breathed it rustled, and now that I was sucking in air to breathe out shame it sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses.
As I'd watched Momma put ruffles on the hem and cute little tucks around the waist, I knew that once I put it on I'd look like a movie star. (It was silk and that made up for the awful color.) I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, "Marguerite [sometimes it was 'dear Marguerite'], forgive us, please, we didn't know who you were," and I would answer generously, "No, you couldn't have known. Of course I forgive you."
Just thinking about it made me go around with angel's dust sprinkled over my face for days. But Easter's early morning sun had shown the dress to be a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway. It was old-lady-long too, but it didn't hide my skinny legs, which had been greased with Blue Seal Vaseline and powdered with the Arkansas red clay. The age-faded color made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs.
Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten? My light-blue eyes were going to hypnotize them, after all the things they said about "my daddy must of been a Chinaman" (I thought they meant made out of china, like a cup) because my eyes were so small and squinty. Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs' tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.
"What you looking..." The minister's wife leaned toward me, her long yellow face full of sorry. She whispered, "I just come to tell you, it's Easter Day." I repeated, jamming the words together, "Ijustcometotellyouit'sEasterDay," as low as possible. The giggles hung in the air like melting clouds that were waiting to rain on me. I held up two fingers, close to my chest, which meant that I had to go to the toilet, and tiptoed toward the rear of the church. Dimly, somewhere over my head, I heard ladies saying, "Lord bless the child," and "Praise God." My head was up and my eyes were open, but I didn't see anything. Halfway down the aisle, the church exploded with "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" and I tripped over a foot stuck out from the children's pew. I stumbled and started to say something, or maybe to scream, but a green persimmon, or it could have been a lemon, caught me between the legs and squeezed. I tasted the sour on my tongue and felt it in the back of my mouth. Then before I reached the door, the sting was burning down my legs and into my Sunday socks. I tried to hold, to squeeze it back, to keep it from speeding, but when I reached the church porch I knew I'd have to let it go, or it would probably run right back up to my head and my poor head would burst like a dropped watermelon, and all the brains and spit and tongue and eyes would roll all over the place. So I ran down into the yard and let it go. I ran, peeing and crying, not toward the toilet out back but to our house. I'd get a whipping for it, to be sure, and the nasty children would have something new to tease me about. I laughed anyway, partially for the sweet release; still, the greater joy came not only from being liberated from the silly church but from the knowledge that I wouldn't die from a busted head.
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
It is an unnecessary insult.
Chapter 1
When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed-- "To Whom It May Concern" --that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.
Our parents had decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and Father shipped us home to his mother. A porter had been charged with our welfare--he got off the train the next day in Arizona--and our tickets were pinned to my brother's inside coat pocket.
I don't remember much of the trip, but after we reached the segregated southern part of the journey, things must have looked up. Negro passengers, who always traveled with loaded lunch boxes, felt sorry for "the poor little motherless darlings" and plied us with cold fried chicken and potato salad.
Years later I discovered that the United States had been crossed thousands of times by frightened Black children traveling alone to their newly affluent parents in Northern cities, or back to grandmothers in Southern towns when the urban North reneged on its economic promises.
The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. It regarded us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children) it closed in around us, as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly, but not too familiarly.
We lived with our grandmother and uncle in the rear of the Store (it was always spoken of with a capitals), which she had owned some twenty-five years.
Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen in the lumberyard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade, when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time, assured her business success. From being a mobile lunch counter, she set up a stand between the two points of fiscal interest and supplied the workers' needs for a few years. Then she had the Store built in the heart of the Negro area. Over the years it became the lay center of activities in town. On Saturdays, barbers sat their customers in the shade on the porch of the Store, and troubadours on their ceaseless crawlings through the South leaned across its benches and sang their sad songs of The Brazos while they played juice harps and cigarbox guitars.
The formal name of the Store was the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store. Customers could find food staples, a good variety of colored thread, mash for hogs, corn for chickens, coal oil for lamps, light bulbs for the wealthy, shoestrings, hair dressing, balloons, and flower seeds. Anything not visible had only to be ordered.
Until we became familiar enough to belong to the Store and it to us, we were locked up in a Fun House of Things where the attendant had gone home for life.
Each year I watched the field across from the Store turn caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white. I knew exactly how long it would be before the big wagons would pull into the front yard and load on the cotton pickers at daybreak to carry them to the remains of slavery's plantations.
During the picking season my grandmother would get out of bed at four o'clock (she never used an alarm clock) and creak down to her knees and chant in a sleep-filled voice, "Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn't allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen."
Before she had quite arisen, she called our names and issued orders, and pushed her large feet into homemade slippers and across the bare Iye-washed wooden floor to light the coal-oil lamp.
The lamplight in the Store gave a soft make-believe feeling to our world which made me want to whisper and walk about on tiptoe. The odors of onions and oranges and kerosene had been mi xing all night and wouldn't be disturbed until the wooded slat was removed from the door and the early morning air forced its way in with the bodies of people who had walked miles to reach the pickup place.
"Sister, I'll have two cans of sardines."
"I'm gonna work so fast today I'm gonna make you look like you standing still."
"Lemme have a hunk uh cheese and some sody crackers."
"Just gimme a couple them fat peanut paddies." That would be from a picker who was taking his lunch. The greasy brown paper sack was stuck behind the bib of his overalls. He'd use the candy as a snack before the noon sun called the workers to rest.
In those tender mornings the Store was full of laughing, joking, boasting and bragging. One man was going to pick two hundred pounds of cotton, and another three hundred. Even the children were promising to bring home fo' bits and six bits.
The champion picker of the day before was the hero of the dawn. If he prophesied that the cotton in today's field was going to be sparse and stick to the bolls like glue, every listener would grunt a hearty agreement.
The sound of the empty cotton sacks dragging over the floor and the murmurs of waking people were sliced by the cash register as we rang up the five-cent sales.
If the morning sounds and smells were touched with the supernatural, the late afternoon had all the features of the normal Arkansas life. In the dying sunlight the people dragged, rather than their empty cotton sacks.
Brought back to the Store, the pickers would step out of the backs of trucks and fold down, dirt-disappointed, to the ground. No matter how much they had picked' it wasn't enough. Their wages wouldn't even get them out of debt to my grandmother, not to mention the staggering bill that waited on them at the white commissary downtown.
The sounds of the new morning had been replaced with grumbles about cheating houses, weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty rows. In later years I was to confront the stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton pickers with such inordinate rage that I was told even by fellow Blacks that my paranoia was embarrassing. But I had seen the fingers cut by the mean little cotton bolls, and I had witnessed the backs and shoulders and arms and legs resisting any further demands.
Some of the workers would leave their sacks at the Store to be picked up the following morning, but a few had to take them home for repairs. I winced to picture them sewing the coarse material under a coal-oil lamp with fingers stiffening from the day's work. In too few hours they would have to walk back to Sister Henderson's Store, get vittles and load, again, onto the trucks. Then they would face another day of trying to earn enough for the whole year with the heavy knowledge that they were going to end the season as they started it. Without the money or credit necessary to sustain a family for three months. In cotton-picking time the late afternoons revealed the harshness of Black Southern life, which in the early morning had been softened by nature's blessing of grogginess, forgetfulness and the soft lamplight.
Product details
- Publisher : Modern Library; F First Edition Used (September 21, 2004)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 1184 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679643257
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679643258
- Item Weight : 2.36 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.73 x 2.2 x 8.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank:#382,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,874 inAuthor Biographies
- #4,499 inWomen's Biographies
- #12,030 inMemoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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Maya Angelou has been waitress, singer, actress, dancer, activist, filmmaker, writer and mother. As well as her autobiography she has written several volumes of poetry, including 'On the Pulse of the Morning' for the inauguration of President Clinton. She now has a life-time appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
Customer reviews
4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
1,126 global ratings
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book amazing, beautifully written, and emotionally pulling. They also describe the storyline as fascinating, inspiring, and terrific. Readers praise the author as amazing and a literary genius with a unique and powerful voice. They describe the writing style as marvelous and the book collection as beautiful and awesome. Customers also appreciate the author's wit, humor, and heart. They say her life is fascinating and she tells her story with courage and humor.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
67 customers mention "Readability"67 positive0 negative
Customers find the book amazing, beautifully written, and emotionally pulling. They also say it's an excellent autobiographical book, featuring amazing stories. Customers also say the book makes them smile, laugh, cry, and feel.
"I've read it several times.this is a great book.The seller sent it right on time. I had no problems. "Read more
"...It's truly amazing.... "Read more
"...I absolutely loved this book. It was one of thebest booksI have ever read. "Read more
"...She has such a way with words. They made you smile, laugh, cry,love,feel, etc.... "Read more
52 customers mention "Storyline"52 positive0 negative
Customers find the storyline fascinating, inspirational, and eye-opening. They also appreciate Maya's amazing tales, adventures, twists, and turns. Readers say the book is hard to put down, with a lot of surprises and an education about history and life itself. They mention that the connections are impressive and the book sheds light on universal insecurities and desires.
"...It is inspirational andeye-opening.It is, to put it succinctly, a noteworthy book.Buy it as a gift for others.... "Read more
"...Her writing is eloquent, unapologetic andrevealing.... "Read more
"...But then, one by one, I became completely entranced andfascinated by Maya's amazing tales,adventures, twists, turns and wisdom from her life.... "Read more
"I liked it, it was very well written and very,very interesting.The life she led was unexpected, by me.... "Read more
45 customers mention "Character traits"45 positive0 negative
Customers find the character traits in the book inspiring, raw, and unfiltered. They also say the author's wit, wisdom, and grit are spellbinding, amazing, and inspiring. Readers also mention that the book makes them laugh, cry, and feel pride. They appreciate the insight and unique and powerful voice.
"...It isinspirationaland eye-opening.It is, to put it succinctly, a noteworthy book.Buy it as a gift for others.... "Read more
"...deeply inspiring gift from such an amazing woman: her honesty, wit, herwise,wild ways of exploring life head on, all left me feeling lucky to have... "Read more
"...She did it. Her ambition was endless.Her optimism was amazing.Her writing style is beautiful. I absolutely loved this book.... "Read more
"I liked it, it wasverywell written and very, very interesting. The life she led was unexpected, by me.... "Read more
38 customers mention "Writing style"38 positive0 negative
Customers find the writing style marvelous.
"...Most especially Maya Angel herself! Herwriting is eloquent,unapologetic and revealing.... "Read more
"...The book is printed on excellent paper, withvery good readable font.... "Read more
"...Her ambition was endless. Her optimism was amazing. Herwriting style is beautiful.I absolutely loved this book.... "Read more
"I liked it, it wasvery well writtenand very, very interesting. The life she led was unexpected, by me.... "Read more
25 customers mention "Book collection"25 positive0 negative
Customers find the book collection beautiful, incredible, and a treat. They also say the writings are amazing.
"This is atruly incredible collectionby the amazing Maya Angelou.... "Read more
"...However, the writing is amazing, exposition is vivid andbeautiful.... "Read more
"Loved having all of her works in one place.Book is beautifuland I am proud to have it in my library. "Read more
"...Thebook is beautifuland I'm extremely happy! "Read more
17 customers mention "Author"17 positive0 negative
Customers find the author amazing, interesting, and one of the most interesting people of the 20th century. They also say her ambition was endless and her optimism was amazing.
"...What shines through is herenormous talent to face numerous challengesin life, albeit certain periods of depression.... "Read more
"...This collection feels like a deeply inspiring gift from such anamazing woman:her honesty, wit, her wise, wild ways of exploring life head on, all... "Read more
"...She did it.Her ambition was endless.Her optimism was amazing. Her writing style is beautiful. I absolutely loved this book.... "Read more
"...What awide range of talent she had.For me it was an advantage to have all of the books in one volume.... "Read more
13 customers mention "Tone"13 positive0 negative
Customers find the tone of the book entertaining, hysterically funny, poignant, and timeless. They also say the sagacious words are timeless.
"...journey that spans over 40 years and is full of love,laughter and heartache."Read more
"...like a deeply inspiring gift from such an amazing woman: her honesty,wit,her wise, wild ways of exploring life head on, all left me feeling lucky... "Read more
"...She has such a way with words. They made you smile,laugh,cry, love, feel, etc.... "Read more
"...with the main events and figures of her time and wasfilled with dignity and humor."..."Read more
12 customers mention "Personal growth"12 positive0 negative
Customers find the life of the author fascinating, heartfelt, and fully human. They also say the book makes her fully human and insightful.
"Angelou was a bold and courageous soul, an eloquent andmoving narrator of her history.What a life!... "Read more
"...along the way, has made her more than an icon for me, it hasmade her fully human."Read more
"...It is anexciting journey through her amazing life,full of trials and tribulations, while revealing incredible vulnerability, honesty, and courage.... "Read more
"Maya Angelou's autobiographies are anamazing and intimate journey through her life.... "Read more
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2024
I've read it several times. this is a great book. The seller sent it right on time. I had no problems.
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2013
My grandstepdaughter was about to graduate from high school and I was wondering what to get for this deserving young woman of color.
Money? Although she would certainly be thankful for, and make excellent use of, any money given to her, it didn't seem like it was.... well, "enough".
I wanted her to have something that would offer more than just temporary enjoyment, something more lasting. Something that was meaningful.
I thought for a long time and can't say as I was succeeding in my search. To be honest, I was getting somewhat frustrated
One morning I woke up, though, with a thought in mind: "Maya Angelou". I'm not certain where that thought had come from, or the source of its development, but I felt that this was the answer.
I was only, unfortunately, just slightly familiar with some of her works, and that was mainly from her poetry. I got on the modern version of the Library of Alexandria (internet) and sought out examples of her works and recommendations of others.
"The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou" seemed to be what I was looking for, so we ordered it.
When it came, I speed read sections of this collection and was very happy with our choice.
So my step-granddaughter received a card for her graduation. Inscribed on the inside of the card were congratulations on graduating and well wishes for her future. Included in the card was a monetary gift.
Also included in the card was a separate handwritten note that said:
"The gift of money is from us for you to get what YOU would truly like, but just realize:
The book chose you ".
And that is, in my opinion, true.
This collection would be appropriate for any young person, male or female, regardless of race.
It is inspirational and eye-opening.
It is, to put it succinctly, a noteworthy book.
Buy it as a gift for others. Buy it as a gift for yourself. And enjoy.
Money? Although she would certainly be thankful for, and make excellent use of, any money given to her, it didn't seem like it was.... well, "enough".
I wanted her to have something that would offer more than just temporary enjoyment, something more lasting. Something that was meaningful.
I thought for a long time and can't say as I was succeeding in my search. To be honest, I was getting somewhat frustrated
One morning I woke up, though, with a thought in mind: "Maya Angelou". I'm not certain where that thought had come from, or the source of its development, but I felt that this was the answer.
I was only, unfortunately, just slightly familiar with some of her works, and that was mainly from her poetry. I got on the modern version of the Library of Alexandria (internet) and sought out examples of her works and recommendations of others.
"The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou" seemed to be what I was looking for, so we ordered it.
When it came, I speed read sections of this collection and was very happy with our choice.
So my step-granddaughter received a card for her graduation. Inscribed on the inside of the card were congratulations on graduating and well wishes for her future. Included in the card was a monetary gift.
Also included in the card was a separate handwritten note that said:
"The gift of money is from us for you to get what YOU would truly like, but just realize:
The book chose you ".
And that is, in my opinion, true.
This collection would be appropriate for any young person, male or female, regardless of race.
It is inspirational and eye-opening.
It is, to put it succinctly, a noteworthy book.
Buy it as a gift for others. Buy it as a gift for yourself. And enjoy.
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2023
These autobiographies are full of people you want to meet! Most especially Maya Angel herself! Her writing is eloquent, unapologetic and revealing. I highly recommend that you take this journey that spans over 40 years and is full of
love, laughter and heartache.
love, laughter and heartache.
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2017
This a collection of all 6 books & make an almost continuous narrative of Maya's early to mid-life, when she was in her early forties. What shines through is her enormous talent to face numerous challenges in life, albeit certain periods of depression. She doesn't deny that, beside a 2-year training in dance & song, she's not qualified for any profession. BUT, maybe because of it she learns basics of several languages, attracts friends, jobs & boyfriends so quickly & efficiently. It's truly amazing. I think the highest point in her life was being accepted & trained, on the spot, to perform a leading role in the first international performance of Gershwin's Porgy & Bess. It's shockingly eye-openning that it was in her late thirties that she realized there're quite a few white people who understand the blacks' incredible injustices in this country & are prepared to devote money & time to make a difference. The book is printed on excellent paper, with very good readable font. I highly recommend it to ALL people who can go through 1166 pages at any pace. For me it was page-turner: a unique story of a unique talent.
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2017
This is a truly incredible collection by the amazing Maya Angelou.
I friend recommended this book and to be honest I had never read Maya Angelou before and was doubtful I would read the entire collection - it's very long! But then, one by one, I became completely entranced and fascinated by Maya's amazing tales, adventures, twists, turns and wisdom from her life. Following her from the deep south of Alabama, to Europe, to Africa, to so many poignant highs and lows was entrancing. I found myself some 1,000 pages later sad that the book ended, I had so enjoyed, and learned so much from being in Maya's world...
This collection feels like a deeply inspiring gift from such an amazing woman: her honesty, wit, her wise, wild ways of exploring life head on, all left me feeling lucky to have been on this remarkable journey with Maya Angelou.
Begin with "I know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and I think you will also find yourself on a much longer adventure.
I friend recommended this book and to be honest I had never read Maya Angelou before and was doubtful I would read the entire collection - it's very long! But then, one by one, I became completely entranced and fascinated by Maya's amazing tales, adventures, twists, turns and wisdom from her life. Following her from the deep south of Alabama, to Europe, to Africa, to so many poignant highs and lows was entrancing. I found myself some 1,000 pages later sad that the book ended, I had so enjoyed, and learned so much from being in Maya's world...
This collection feels like a deeply inspiring gift from such an amazing woman: her honesty, wit, her wise, wild ways of exploring life head on, all left me feeling lucky to have been on this remarkable journey with Maya Angelou.
Begin with "I know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and I think you will also find yourself on a much longer adventure.
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2015
These books, collected into 1 book, are excellent and life changing. So disappointed to see Maya's book ' I know why the caged bird sings ' on the banned book list. It is specifically for her mentioning her child rape. I would recommend this for older teens and this should be REQUIRED reading for young girls. Maya was truly 'fake it till you make it'. I had no idea how awesome she was. She never let any opportunity pass her by. You need a creole cook? sure, that's me. It wasn't, but she took a weekend to learn some stuff, and she did it. Broadway star? you got it. Documentary producer? yep. She went to the library, read some books on TV - boom. She did it. Her ambition was endless. Her optimism was amazing. Her writing style is beautiful. I absolutely loved this book. It was one of the best books I have ever read.
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2017
I liked it, it was very well written and very, very interesting. The life she led was unexpected, by me. I was too young to know that what the blacks wanted was what the whites already had, by law. But the law didn't apply, to them..I'm happy that things have changed and everything seems to be somewhat in balance. There will always be radicals out there, but... there will be a change.
Top reviews from other countries
LUZ ELENA LANGLE GOMEZ
5.0 out of 5 stars
Estupenda obra
Reviewed in Mexico on August 16, 2023
Conmovedora, inspiradora, una lectura ágil y llena de riqueza en lenguaje e imágenes. Mujer extraordinaria, conocer su biografía es tanto su historia individual como parte de la historia de lo afro-americano. Maravillosa!!
A.A
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great all in one Book
Reviewed in Canada on December 2, 2020
I love Maya Angelou and just finished reading "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings." Instead of buying them at Indigo all separately this book is great because it includes all of them in chronological order. Next up I shall order her poetry;)
JMP
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 11, 2021
Superb reading. Have now ordered the complete collection!
Ruska
5.0 out of 5 stars
He disfrutado muchísimo
Reviewed in Spain on September 7, 2016
¡Me ha dado tanta pena acabar esta serie de autobiografías! Quizás la primera sea la mejor, pero, para mí, no pierde interés mientras avanza el libro. ¡Y son los primeros 40 años de su vida! ¿Cómo cabe tanta vida en tan pocos años? Ojalá hubiese tenido la oportunidad de conocer a esta mujer en persona, aunque tengo la impresión de que la conozco más que a mucha gente de mi entorno. Los libros son valientes y honestos, la personalidad de la autora te enamora y la narrativa es tan fluida, tan deliciosa. Enseña mucho sobre racismo y feminismo sin intentar adoctrinar en ningún momento. Muy, muy recomendable.
CB
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interessantissimo
Reviewed in Italy on February 4, 2016
Un libro incredibile, che apre una finestra sulla storia americana recente, dal punto di vista di una protagonista delle lotte per l'uguaglianza di diritti. A tratti anche ironico e di gradevole lettura.
