Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou

Hello my lovely readers! I'm slowly making my way through all seven of Maya Angelou's autobiographies and this is book number two. It's also part of my 10 Books, 10 Decades Challenge. Let's get into it!  

SYNOPSIS
In Gather Together in My Name, Maya Angelou continues her stunning autobiography. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, passionate and mellow, she fills the pages with both wisdom and wonder as she brings us along in her struggle and dance through life.

I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings by Maya Angelou

 

Hello my lovely readers! This was another re-read for me. I've been unintentionally re-reading a lot of books from my youth and a lot of them still hold up!

This book was no different. I first read this when I was 16 and spending the summer with my grandparents in Florida. Ah, the memories. This was such a beautifully written memoir and I'm so thankful to have read it again as a grown woman.

SYNOPSIS

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is the beginning in a string of autobiographies about her life. 

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. 

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and racial prejudice.  At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. 

Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors  will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.