A Song Flung Up to Heaven

A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal womanThe poems and stories she wrote … were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and graceShe moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace … She will always be the rainbow in my cloudsShe was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicateShe has the knack of guiding us along the seamier side of life while making us feel refreshed and restored like a terrific gospel blues singer * Guardian *Told with the humorous, unsentimental wisdom that has gained her such a devoted following * Sunday Times *Angelou conveys a sense of the period, complete with the pulsating rhythms of local slang, while her own elegantly gentle view provides the bigger perspective … Angelou has lived a life that deserves writing about, and only she can make that story sing with life * Scotsman *It delivers the same essential charge of uplifting warmth, clear-eyed sagacity and indefatigable generosity of spirit, leaving us only to hope that another series, covering the latter portion of the roller-coaster’s progress, might be in the offering * Scotland on Sunday *It’s been a long time coming, but A Song Flung Up To Heaven triumphantly completes the six volumes of autobiography that began nearly thirty years ago with Maya Angelou’s astonishingly successful I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - a work that changed readers’ perceptions of what autobiographical writing could achieve – Barry Forshaw

Maya Angelou was one of the world’s most important writers and activists. Born 4 April 1928, she lived and chronicled an extraordinary life: rising from poverty, violence and racism, she became a renowned author, memoirist, poet, playwright, civil rights’ activist - working with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. She wrote and performed a poem, ‘On the Pulse of Morning’, for President Clinton on his inauguration. She was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and was honoured by more than seventy universities throughout the world.

She first thrilled the world with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). This was followed by six volumes of autobiography, the seventh and final volume, Mom & Me & Mom, published in 2013. She wrote three collections of essays; many volumes of poetry, including His Day is Done, a tribute to Nelson Mandela; and two cookbooks. She had a lifetime appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University of North Carolina. She died in 2014.

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