From Booklist
Angelou’s highly acclaimed autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), chronicles her growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, with her paternal grandmother and the trauma that resulted from a visit to her mother’s family. In this loving recollection of a complicated relationship, Angelou for the first time details the mother-daughter journey to reconciliation and unwavering connection and support. After their reunion in San Francisco, angry and resentful at what she viewed as the abandonment of her and her brother, Angelou took years to warm to her mother, Vivian Baxter, calling her Lady rather than Mother. But Baxter’s unconditional acceptance and appreciation of her daughter, through unwed motherhood, a failed marriage, and career ups and downs, won Angelou’s love and respect. Angelou vividly portrays a spirited woman, unbowed by the limitations of race and sex, who ran a boardinghouse and gambling house and taught her daughter the determination, street smarts, and survival skills that have helped Angelou carve a space for her identity and formidable talents. Photos enhance this remarkable and deeply revealing chronicle of love and healing. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The celebrated author gives the backstory on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) in this revealing look at her relationship with her mother, which is sure to receive a tsunami’s worth of publicity. --Vanessa Bush
Review
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 “True to her style, [Angelou’s] writing cuts to the chase with compression and simplicity, and there in the background is a calypso smoothness, flurries and showers of musicality between the moments of wickedness. . . . A
tightly strung, finely tuned memoir about life with her mother.”—
Kirkus Reviews “In this loving recollection of a complicated relationship, Angelou for the first time details the mother-daughter journey to reconciliation and unwavering connection and support. . . . Angelou vividly portrays a spirited woman. . . . [A] remarkable and
deeply revealing chronicle of love and healing.”—
Booklist “Written with her customary eloquence . . . follows in the episodic style of Angelou’s earlier volumes of autobiography,
pulling the reader along effortlessly. The lessons and the love presented here will speak to those trying to make their way in the world.”—
Publishers Weekly “In straightforward style,
Mom & Me & Momdives deeply into Angelou’s complicated relationship with her mother. . . . At 84, Angelou shows few signs of slowing down.”—
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