Word: mayas
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...calling to an emotional memory--that sings, "The ole ark's a-moverin', a-moverin', a-moverin', the ole ark's a-moverin' along." The ole ark is Black people, now moving to realize the goals of the Civil Rights Movement and Malcolm X. The heroine is again Maya Angelou, no longer a little girl but now a single mother trying to raise her only son. The book tries to illustrate how closely allied the political lives of Angelou and other activists and artists were to their personal and creative lives...
...Angelou does explain it, she does not do so nearly as effectively as she portrayed the relationship between the South's social code and Black children in the 30s and 40s. She writes very well, however, of the challenging intimacy between herself and her son, Guy. The rest of Maya's life pales in comparison to the poignancy of the mother-son bond. She ends up a loving and concerned mother but a boring social observer...
...point, Maya Angelou enjoys the unique experience of meeting Billie Holiday and even singing for Lady Day. Billie invites herself to Angelou's nightclub act and in the middle of the set begins to scream. "Stop that bitch. Stop her, goddamit. Stop that bitch. She sounds just like my goddam Mamma." When Angelou confronts Billie for interrupting her song, she is told that all Black women sing alike--a mold Billie tried to break. But there is no exploration of why the connection between Black women, particularly mothers, would incite such rage in Billie Holiday. Once the anguish is presented...
...wait and wait through the 272 pages of the book, for Maya Angelou to bare the real emotion she feels when looking at her past and all of the roles society forced her to play, but the real person never appears. At best, Angelou describes her own superficiality, the lack of depth in her own exploration, when she writes...
...resembles Lena Horne draped across a window singing Stormy Weather and paying tribute to a special era in Black history. Lena Horne is a lovely monument, but her affected pain was sometimes unconvincing, her song a false anthem to Black achievement. Unfortunately, Maya Angelou inherited Hollywood's trick vision. Her prose gets as misty as the camera did with Bill Bojangle's memories. Not much heart shows through in this book, despite all the tears