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In this second volume of her poignant autobiographical series, Maya Angelou powerfully captures the struggles and triumphs of her passionate life with dignity, wisdom, humor, and humanity.“A curiously heartening story in which decency, honor, truth, love do exist, imperfectly, fractionally and flickeringly, not in some Platonic realm of the ideal, but in the flawed lives of real men and women.”—The Washington Post
Gather Together in My Name continues Maya Angelou’s personal story, show more begun so unforgettably in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The time is the end of World War II and there is a sense of optimism everywhere. Maya Angelou, still in her teens, has given birth to a son. But the next few years are difficult ones as she tries to find a place in the world for herself and her child. She goes from job to job–and from man to man. She tries to return home–back to Stamps, Arkansas–but discovers that she is no longer part of that world. Then Maya’s life takes a dramatic turn, and she faces new challenges and temptations. show less
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“Be the best of anything you get into. If you want to be a whore, it's your life. Be a damn good one. Don't chippy at anything. Anything worth having is worth working for.'
This is the second part of Angelou’s autobiography. It continues on from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings left off with Angelou giving birth of her son and leaving her grandmother in rural Arkansas to live in San Francisco. She is seventeen years old and the reader learns of her attempts to establish an independent life for herself and her son, taking a variety of low skill jobs including cook, waitress and perhaps most surprisingly of all as a brothel madam, her early love affairs including her ill-fated relationship with a married man. She is a precocious show more teenager who believes is tough enough to stand on her own two feet and she does often manage to get what she wants, at least in the short term, but it never lasts.
The title refers to all the mistakes that Angelou made in this period of her life and she certainly made some. As a single mother she had little option from working long, anti-social hours often leaving her son to be brought up by others and it is not until he goes missing does she acknowledge that she is little more than a child herself. She is naive and wants to believe in the best of others but this trust and desire to please often leads her down some very dark alleys, yet she never shies away from admitting to her mistakes.
Angelou’s life is undoubtedly extraordinary but never fantastical. She, like everyone else, learns that decisions made by ourselves and other people as well as forces outside of our control when we are young often affects our later life choices. The career paths that we set ourselves as teenagers can be deflected by unforeseen events meaning that the life that we actually live is often very different from the one we envisaged. This book is a fine example of that fact and also proves that sexual grooming is not a new phenomenon. show less
This is the second part of Angelou’s autobiography. It continues on from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings left off with Angelou giving birth of her son and leaving her grandmother in rural Arkansas to live in San Francisco. She is seventeen years old and the reader learns of her attempts to establish an independent life for herself and her son, taking a variety of low skill jobs including cook, waitress and perhaps most surprisingly of all as a brothel madam, her early love affairs including her ill-fated relationship with a married man. She is a precocious show more teenager who believes is tough enough to stand on her own two feet and she does often manage to get what she wants, at least in the short term, but it never lasts.
The title refers to all the mistakes that Angelou made in this period of her life and she certainly made some. As a single mother she had little option from working long, anti-social hours often leaving her son to be brought up by others and it is not until he goes missing does she acknowledge that she is little more than a child herself. She is naive and wants to believe in the best of others but this trust and desire to please often leads her down some very dark alleys, yet she never shies away from admitting to her mistakes.
Angelou’s life is undoubtedly extraordinary but never fantastical. She, like everyone else, learns that decisions made by ourselves and other people as well as forces outside of our control when we are young often affects our later life choices. The career paths that we set ourselves as teenagers can be deflected by unforeseen events meaning that the life that we actually live is often very different from the one we envisaged. This book is a fine example of that fact and also proves that sexual grooming is not a new phenomenon. show less
I have to admit, this was a strange read for me. There was something more perfunctory about this book than Caged Bird...it mostly just careened from one episode to the next with little time for reflection. At times it had the most cringe-worthy moments. She was rather viciously homophobic when she exploited her lesbian friends, though she attributed it to wanting revenge (for something fairly innocuous), and I was worried I'd reach the end of the book before she realized how terrible L.D. was. But then I realized I'd found its beauty. This installment of her autobiographical series is uncomfortable...exactly as uncomfortable as it is to remember myself at her age. So naive and stubborn in thinking we know it all. Angelou is a better show more person than I because she had the courage to write it without letting hindsight soften the foolhardiness. And it being so episodic requires the reader to spend more time reading between the lines and not just rely upon an interpretation from Angelou. She is, indeed, a phenomenal woman. show less
It’s hard to read such an honest book full of uncomfortable truths. The author picks up where Caged Bird left off, telling her story from ages 17-19. It’s a story of beginnings and endings as she struggles to define herself as a person and find her way as an adult in a harsh world, as her family disintegrates around her. She tries on and discards personas like costumes – short order cook, grand sophisticate, professional dancer, giddy young mistress, sternly remote woman, whorehouse madam, aspiring junkie. This last venture ends the book and what an emotional nuclear bomb it was.
As she tells her story, Angelou seems to regard her younger self with both impatience and sympathy, never trying to justify her thoughts and actions, but show more only demonstrating how she reacted to and attempted to control her circumstances, made mistakes and learned from them, and through it we see how she grew to become the woman who inspired so many.
Vintage hardcover, picked up secondhand at a used bookshop.
I read this for The 24 Festive Tasks 2019 for Door 22 New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31): Read a book about endings, new starts, or books where things go BOOM! with fireworks on the cover, set in medieval times, about the papacy, or where miracles of any sort are performed. show less
As she tells her story, Angelou seems to regard her younger self with both impatience and sympathy, never trying to justify her thoughts and actions, but show more only demonstrating how she reacted to and attempted to control her circumstances, made mistakes and learned from them, and through it we see how she grew to become the woman who inspired so many.
Vintage hardcover, picked up secondhand at a used bookshop.
I read this for The 24 Festive Tasks 2019 for Door 22 New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31): Read a book about endings, new starts, or books where things go BOOM! with fireworks on the cover, set in medieval times, about the papacy, or where miracles of any sort are performed. show less
This book had me laughing and feeling so much. Her second installment is just a beautiful as the first. I felt I was seeing her not only grow in age but wisdom. And young maya was not the brightest. Things would happen to her that blew my mind. So many red flags that she was simply color blind to. I am excited to read the third autobiography to find out what is next for her, guy, her brother, and mother. Will she finally learn that writing is her gift? Will she have confidence in love in her self? I have no idea anything is possible in in the next five books.
The second volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography covers a couple of years in her late teens up to the age of nineteen. She was single mother to a baby son and tried out many ways to make a living, including cooking, waitressing, tapdancing, chauffeuring, trying to join the army, and sex work. She moved around several cities, fell in love a couple of times, and observed the impact of heroin addiction on people close to her. While the previous volume dealt with Angelou's childhood, this one covers her growing up, including this realisation about her son:
Angelou sets the scene of post-war America elegantly at the start of the book:
Her writing is as lucid and insightful as ever. While I didn't find [b:Gather Together in My Name|130200|Gather Together in My Name|Maya Angelou|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1171992084l/130200._SX50_.jpg|208700] quite as powerful as [b:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings|13214|I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)|Maya Angelou|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327957927l/13214._SY75_.jpg|1413589], it continues the story of Angelou's life with great verve and sensitivity. I look forward to reading [b:Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas|130957|Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #3)|Maya Angelou|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1171995964l/130957._SY75_.jpg|395437]. show less
I had loved him and never considered that he was an entire person. Seperate from my boundaries, I had not known before that he had and would have a life beyond being my son, my prettyshow more
baby, my cute doll, my charge. In the plowed farmyard near Bakersfield, I began to understand the uniqueness of the person. He was three and I was nineteen, and never again would I think of him as a beautiful appendage of myself.
Angelou sets the scene of post-war America elegantly at the start of the book:
I thought that if war did not include killing, I'd like to see one every year. Something like a festival.
All the sacrifices had won us victory and now the good times were coming. Obviously, if we earned more than rationing would allow us to spending during wartime, things were really going to look up when restrictions were removed.
There was no need to discuss racial prejudice. Hadn't we all, black and white, just snatched the remaining Jews from the hell of concentration camps? Race prejudice was dead. A mistake made by a young country. Something to be forgiven as an unpleasant act committed by an intoxicated friend.
Her writing is as lucid and insightful as ever. While I didn't find [b:Gather Together in My Name|130200|Gather Together in My Name|Maya Angelou|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1171992084l/130200._SX50_.jpg|208700] quite as powerful as [b:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings|13214|I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)|Maya Angelou|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327957927l/13214._SY75_.jpg|1413589], it continues the story of Angelou's life with great verve and sensitivity. I look forward to reading [b:Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas|130957|Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #3)|Maya Angelou|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1171995964l/130957._SY75_.jpg|395437]. show less
While this installment doesn't hold the same humor as Angelou's first autobiography, it presents just as much entertainment and poetic movement. Covering her late teen years, Angelou's movement from childhood into the unsteady footfalls of a young woman is fascinating and full of heart just so much as the heartbreak you'd expect from those years. It also moves just so quickly as a novel, illustrating a talent for narrative pacing that has only grown since her first part, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Anyone who enjoyed the first portion will undoubtedly enjoy this second installment--what is lost with the childhood innocence of that first part is only gained with the ironic observations and hopes served up here. Absolutely recommended.
I could not put this book down. I read it in one day. The second in a series of autobiographies by Maya Angelou, "Gather Together in My Name" covers a shorter time frame (only about two years, but so much happened to her during that time) than "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". This installment begins shortly after the birth of her son when she was still just a teenager, and continues on with her struggles to support herself and her baby. Being young, she doesn't make very many good choices -- her taste in men at this time was appalling -- and often leaves her son with people she barely knew in order to try to make a living at a range of jobs that included restaurant cook, dancer, madam, and prostitute (the latter two for just short show more periods). It boggles the mind knowing that Angelou eventually became a highly acclaimed author (deservingly so, her prose is wonderful here although not quite as good as her first memoir) and poet. There is not yet any hint that she will take this path and I really want to continue this autobiographical series to find out when, where, and how it all "clicked" for her -- although I know it could not have been an overnight process. show less
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Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in Saint Louis, Missouri. At the age of 16, she became not only the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco but the first woman conductor. In the mid-1950s, she toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. In 1957, she recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. show more In 1958, she became a part of the Harlem Writers Guild in New York and played a queen in The Blacks, an off-Broadway production by French dramatist Jean Genet. In 1960, she moved to Cairo, where she edited The Arab Observer, an English-language weekly newspaper. The following year, she went to Ghana where she was features editor of The African Review and taught music and drama at the University of Ghana. In 1964, she moved back to the U.S. to become a civil rights activist by helping Malcolm X build his new coalition, the Organization of African American Unity, and became the northern coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Even though she never went to college, she taught American studies for years at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. In 1993, she became only the second poet in United States history to write and recite an original poem at a Presidential Inauguration when she read On the Pulse of Morning at President Bill Clinton's Inauguration Ceremony. She wrote numerous books during her lifetime including: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, and Mom and Me and Mom. In 2011, President Barack Obama gave her the Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, for her collected works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She appeared in the movie Roots and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1977 for her role in the movie. She also played a part in the movie, How to Make an American Quilt and wrote and produced Afro-Americans in the Arts, a PBS special for which she received a Golden Eagle Award. She was a three-time Grammy winner. She died on May 28, 2014 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Virago Modern Classics (731)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Dans om het bestaand
- Original title
- Gather Together in My Name
- Original publication date
- 1974
- People/Characters
- Maya Angelou
- Dedication
- This book is dedicated to my blood brother Bailey Johnson and to the other real brothers who encouraged me to be bodacious enough to invent my own life daily: James Baldwin, Kwesi Brew, David Du Bois, Samuel Floyd, John O. Ki... (show all)llens, Vagabond King, Leo Maitland, Vusumzi Make, Julian Mayfield, Max Roach. A special thanks to my friend Dolly McPherson.
- First words
- It was a "come as you are" party and "all y'all come."
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I swore I'd never lose it again.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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