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In "The Heart of a Woman," her fourth, and again self-contained, volume of her autobiography, Maya Angelou tells how she began her writing career and first became politically active. She describes further encounters with the Harlem Writers Guild, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abbey Lincoln, among others. Most important, perhaps, is the story of her relationship with her son, as she chronicles the joys and the burdens of a black mother in America.
Maya Angelou has written five volumes of autobiography, including the bestselling "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," and many collections of poetry, as well as "On the Pulse of Morning," the poem she read at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton in 1993. She is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Gather Together in My Name
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now
POETRY
And Still I Rise
I Shall Not Be Moved
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie
Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
On the Pulse of Morning
Phenomenal Woman
Brave and Startling Truth
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?
Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
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Ninah Huff is the granddaughter of the founder of the Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind, an isolated southern religious community ruled by its patriarch. Ninah is fourteen and full of contradictory feelings. She sees the outside world only at school, where her long dresses and uncut hair mark her as odd and keep her apart from the other girls. Sheloves her family but is never sure that she is truly "holy" enough. In particular, she worries about the sanctity of her feelings for James, her prayer partner, as they spend an hour a day together in prayer and meditation, "being Jesus to each other."
When Ninah is discovered to be pregnant, the community is outraged. But in the midst of her tragedy and loneliness, Ninah continues to maintain that she is not guily of the sin of fornication; she says that a holy child grows inside her. No amount of punishment can make her recant.
And in the end there is a miracle, though like most miracles it takes an unpredictable form. Ninah must face with sudden clarity the things she must do for the sake of her own life, and her child's. She will come to understand at last that to embrace the life of the normal world can be a holy act.
Sheri Reynolds lives in Richmond and teaches part-time at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has also taught at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and she is now at work on a new novel.
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"The Deep End of the Ocean" by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Viking Press
"Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison
New American Library Trade (reissue edition)
"The Book of Ruth" by Jane Hamilton
Anchor Books
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