Essence Maya Angelou

Essence Maya Angelou
Author: The Editors of ESSENCE
Publisher: Essence
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781618931474

A celebration of the African American author, poet, and civil rights activist details her award-winning works and the legacy she left on the literary community.

My Journey with Maya

My Journey with Maya
Author: Tavis Smiley
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2015-04-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316341738

A remarkable story of friendship, love, and courage. When Maya Angelou and Tavis Smiley met in 1986, he was twenty-one and she was fifty-eight. For the next twenty-eight years, they shared an unlikely, special bond. Angelou was a teacher and a maternal figure to Smiley, and they talked often, of art, politics, history, race, religion, music, love, purpose, and -- more than anything -- courage. Courage to be open, to follow dreams, to believe in oneself. In My Journey with Maya, Smiley recalls a joyful friendship filled to the brim with sparkling conversation -- in Angelou's gardens surrounded by her caged birds, before lectures, sharing meals, and on breaks from it all, they sought each other out for comfort, advice, and above all else, friendship. It began when he, a recent college graduate and a poor kid from a big family in the Midwest, was invited to join the revered writer on a sojourn to Africa. He would be handling her bags, but Maya didn't let that stop a friendship waiting to happen. Angelou was generous, challenging, and inspirational. Like a mother to him, she was selfless. Here Tavis Smiley shares his personal memories of Maya Angelou, of a decades-long friendship with one of history's most fascinating women, one who left as indelible an imprint on American culture as she did on him.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-07-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030747772X

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. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. 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 the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” 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 (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin From the Paperback edition.

His Day Is Done

His Day Is Done
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 66
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0812997018

He was a son of Africa who became father to a nation and, for billions of people around the world, a beacon of hope, courage, and perseverance in the face of opposition. Now, acclaimed poet Maya Angelou honors the life and remarkable soul of Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa and Nobel laureate. In His Day is Done, Angelou delivers an authentically heartfelt and elegant tribute to Mandela, who stood as David to the mighty Goliath of Apartheid and who, after twenty-seven years of unjust imprisonment on the notorious Robben Island, emerged with “His stupendous heart intact / His gargantuan will / Hale and hearty” to lead his people into a new era. This poignant work of gratitude and remembrance offers condolences to the resilient people of South Africa on the loss of their beloved “Madiba” and celebrates a man like no other, whose life and work changed the world. Praise for His Day Is Done “Moving and heartfelt.”—The Washington Post “A powerful, gripping tribute.”—NewsOne “[His Day Is Done captures] how many were feeling.”—BBC News

Mom & Me & Mom

Mom & Me & Mom
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-04-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0679645470

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving memoir about the legendary author’s relationship with her own mother. Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick! The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. Praise for Mom & Me & Mom “Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou’s trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou’s forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.”—The Washington Post “Moving . . . a remarkable portrait of two courageous souls.”—People “[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies . . . [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.”—Elle “Mesmerizing . . . Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.”—Essence

Black Girl, Call Home

Black Girl, Call Home
Author: Jasmine Mans
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2021-03-09
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0593197143

A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Oprah Magazine • Time • Vogue • Vulture • Essence • Elle • Cosmopolitan • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Refinery 29 • Shondaland • Pop Sugar • Bustle • Reader's Digest “Nothing short of sublime, and the territory [Mans'] explores...couldn’t be more necessary.”—Vogue From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America—and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

Phenomenal Woman

Phenomenal Woman
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2011-10-05
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0307807622

A collection of beloved poems about women from the iconic Maya Angelou These four poems, “Phenomenal Woman,” “Still I Rise,” “Weekend Glory,” and “Our Grandmothers,” are among the most remembered and acclaimed of Maya Angelou's poems. They celebrate women with a majesty that has inspired and touched the hearts of millions. “Phenomenal Woman” is a phenomenal poem that speaks to us of where we are as women at the dawn of a new century. In a clear voice, Maya Angelou vividly reminds us of our towering strength and beauty.

Who Was Maya Angelou?

Who Was Maya Angelou?
Author: Ellen Labrecque
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2016-01-12
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0399542965

Born in Missouri in 1928, Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Jim Crow laws segregated blacks and whites in the South. Her family life was unstable at times. But much like her poem, "Still I Rise," Angelou was able to lift herself out of her situation and flourish. She moved to California and became the first black—and first female—streetcar operator before following her interest in dance. She became a professional performer in her twenties and toured the U.S. and Europe as an opera star and calypso dancer. But Angelou's writing became her defining talent. Her poems and books, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, brought her international acclaim.

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

A Song Flung Up to Heaven
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2003-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0553897314

The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American literature: the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been assassinated. Devastated, she tries to put her life back together, working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot she describes firsthand. Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help support King’s Poor People’s March. But once again tragedy strikes. King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heavenends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.

Essence

Essence
Author: Audrey Edwards
Publisher: ABRAMS
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1995
Genre: Photography
ISBN:

For 25 years, Essence has been addresing the concerns of African-American women.