The culmination of a unique achievementin modern American literature:
the six volumes of autobiography that began more thanthirty years ago
with the appearance ofI Know Why the Caged Bird SingsA Song Flung Up
to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United
States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to
California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does
she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been
assassinated. Devastated, she tries to put her life back together,
working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a
door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot
she describes firsthand. Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she
meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator
in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help
support King’s Poor People’s March. But once again tragedy strikes.
King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from
the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James
Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany
him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heaven ends as Maya
Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.
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