NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Maya Angelou's classic memoirs have
had an enduring impact on American literature and culture. Her life
story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on
PBS's American Masters.
This Modern Library edition contains I 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, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven.
When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was 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 of Porgy 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 Angelou traces 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.
