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.
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“Angelou’s performance captures the prickly early days when thirteen-year-old Maya first meets her mother. We hear Maya’s growing respect for Vivian’s indomitable spirit as Vivian proves to be Maya’s strongest supporter, encouraging her to go after life with ‘power and determination.’ You won’t want to stop listening to Angelou’s melodic cadences as she tells of a disastrous visit to her father, of being nearly beaten to death, and of her enviable relationship with her tenacious mother. Each character leaps into full-bodied life, and Angelou’s crisp, compressed prose creates unforgettable poetic imagery.”
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