by Maya Angelou
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Published: 2013
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Feminism, Memoir
Hardback pages: 224
Rating: 5
First sentence(s):
Frequently, I have been asked how I got to be this way.
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.
My two-bits:
I was delighted to listen to the audio version of this narrated by the author. Her words pack a punch in the telling although in a gentle and subtle way.
Although off to a rocky start, the relationship between Maya and her mother grows into its own kind of relationship. One that shapes and affects each other throughout their lives.
It was amazing to listen to all that Maya went through in this book. After a bit of googling about her, I found that her life continued to present more trials for her to endure and conquer until her death.
What a woman!
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