Even the Stars Look Lonesome

On audio, it's priceless. Gorgeous vignettes about her parents, about her past, about men, and most delightfully, about architecture: homes that "hated" and constricted her, contrasted with her present home in North Carolina that keeps expanding to fit her. Listen to it the first time if at all possible, so that the teaching of this American legend will echo deep into you. She is luminous, her insights are rich and full; it was a better world by far with Maya in it.

Of twenty essays, I found only about three that I could relate to on a personal level, and Angelou deals with these topics wisely from her own experience. These were "A Song to Sensuality" where she tells us how as she ages she appreciates sensuality almost as much or more than sexuality, "Vacationing" in which she observes that even on vacation people can hardly resist working, and finally the title essay "Even the Stars Look Lonesome Sometimes" in which she tells us, essentially, that it is okay - even good - to be alone with ourselves sometimes.

Despite the seeming irrelevance of much of this book to me personally, the quality of Angelou's writing is undeniable. She has a beautifully poetic prose that absorbs readers and lends itself show more in some measure to being read aloud.

From "A Song to Sensuality":

I would have my ears filled with the world's music, the grunts of hewers of wood, the cackle of old folks sitting in the last sunlight and the whir of busy bees in the early morning. I want to hear the sharp sound of tap dancing and the mournful murmur of a spiritual half remembered and then half sung. I want the clashing of cymbals of a marching band and the whisper of a lover entreating a beloved. Let me hear anxious parents warning their obstreperous offspring and a pedantic pedagogue teaching a bored class the mysteries of thermodynamics. All sounds of life and living, death and dying are welcome to my ears.
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