A Song Flung Up to Heaven. . - nonfiction reviews - book review

A Song Flung Up to Heaven by Maya Angelou Random House, April 2002, $22.95 ISBN 0-375-50747-7

Maya Angelou is the black woman's poet laureate, a title that means the most-respected poet of a nation. Her literary work embraces a nation of African Americans, and her poems are our anthems. Still I Rise and Phenomenal Woman have been quoted since they were written, in praise of our fortitude, strength and beauty.

Angelou has been writing her autobiography in memoirs since her first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in 1970. Four others followed, the last being All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. This latest installment, A Song Flung Up to Heaven--the sixth volume of her memoirs--begins with Maya Angelou's departure from Ghana in late 1964.

After many years in Africa, Angelou was returning to the United States to work with Malcolm X, who she had met during his trip to Ghana. Shortly after arriving in San Francisco to spend a month with her mother and brother, Bailey, Angelou was visiting a friend when she received a phone call. It's another friend, who in the course of conversation observed how "crazy the Negroes" in the United States are. "Otherwise, why would they have just killed that man in New York?"

That man, of course, was Malcolm X, who was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in front of his wife and children. Strickened with grief and confused about what to do and where to go, Maya's brother, her lifelong rescuer, once again saves her by finding her a nightclub gig singing in Hawaii. The work was easy, but she enjoyed only limited success. She discovered that a "real singer" (Della Reese) was packing them in every night at another club.

Realizing that she wasn't a singer, Angelou decided to give up her job and returned to California--this time to Los Angeles. There, she found a job canvassing residents in Watts, where she got to know the neighborhood, and indirectly, the people. She saw the devastation that joblessness and the lack of education created, and felt the futility and anger of the black men who lived there. So the Watts riots in 1965 were no surprise to her.

However, the enormity of the riots and the press reaction to them did stun her. She remembers talking to one French journalist who insisted that the French had never had slaves. His persistence stopped when Angelou reminded him that France had ruled Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique. "None of the Africans went there on the Ile de France," she said. "They were taken there on slave ships."

Things quieted down in Los Angeles for Angelou when her bombastic lover from Ghana--who she refers to as "the African"--arrived to take her back "home" he told her. But Angelou had her ever-present allies close at hand in San Francisco. She called her mother and Bailey for their help, and once again they came to her rescue, somehow diverting the African to Mexico and then back to Ghana, while Angelou eventually landed in New York City.

Sometime thereafter, Maya writes, Dr. Martin Luther King sought her out to get her to work for him on his Poor People's March and campaign. As he explained it, "I need someone to travel this country and talk to black preachers ... I need you, Maya," he said. How could she turn down the offer? She did not.

She was preparing to travel to the South when she learned that Dr. King had been shot. Angelou became despondent and reclusive for a time. It wasn't until her friend James Baldwin invited her to a dinner at the home of cartoonist Jules Feiffer that she finally came out of hibernation. The dinner somehow succeeded in invigorating Angelou's passion for writing, and it was there that she was encouraged by her friends to first write about her life. She moved to Stockton, California, and while there, in a quiet moment, she wrote the first line of what would eventually become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Though relatively short--only 159 pages --her latest memoir offers a glimpse into the life of a literary icon in the making, profoundly influenced by historical events and history makers--Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, among others. Told with a measure of hindsight, this installment only adds to the wonderful riches that have come from Maya Angelou since her first memoir. A Song Flung Up to Heaven reveals what it takes to make a phenomenal woman.

--Elsie B. Washington is a writer and editor and author of Uncivil Wars.

Elsie B. Washington is a freelance writer living in New York who also reviews books for various publications. She has worked as a researcher for Newsweek, Time, and Life magazines and as a writer and editor at Essence. Her most recent publication was Uncival Wars: The Struggle Between Black Men and Women. See page 56 for Washingtons review of A Song Flung Up to Heaven, Maya Angelou's latest installment in her six-volume autobiography.

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