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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2014
The story is engaging, although not riveting. Her life was terribly difficult, but she both survived and thrived. I realize that this is supposedly the most popular of all books among college girls. This says a great deal about how so-called "higher education" in this country is not a great deal at all. While this is a unique book by a wonderful human being, it is not high literature. As biography, it certainly is engaging; as uplifting reading, it serves to some degree; as a testament to a black woman's triumph over racism and many kinds of adversity, it is warming and interfused with a comforting spirituality. But the author is the topic of her writing, not the exemplar we can celebrate. Hers is a story, not an odyssey. It recounts, but does not inspire, perhaps because the book is contaminated with a trace of narcissism. Only a trace, and perhaps--given what she went through--Maya Angelou has a right to this. Which is only to say that she wrote a good and worthy book, but not a great and wonderful book. Certainly I recommend that anyone read this one. As for her other books, I would recommend that they not read them--I think they all are just plain bad. But as a human being, I admire this woman, and would love to have her as a next-door neighbor. (If she could forgive my not being one of her literary admirers.) And I hasten, here, to note that I almost feel like a curmudgeonly detractor, thus taking exception to her writing even while praising it. But after all, I am assessing Maya Angelou's literary creation, not Maya Angelou as a person.
