Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. - book reviews

National Review, Nov 29, 1993 by Richard Grenier

THIS WORK'S intellectual level can be divined from its dedication: 'To Oprah Winfrey, with immeasurable love." But its most avid reader will doubtless be President Bill Clinton, who raised Miss Angelou from the ranks of an ordinary affirmative-action black female writer to the pinnacle of glory as Inaugural Poet.

At her present dizzying height of achievement, any collection of odd scribblings from Miss Angelou is apparently considered a "book," and the present volume is a collection--set off by numerous ornamental blank pages-of 24 journalistic homilies ranging from a lengthy few hundred words to a modest 63--this last on "Jealousy," of which the reader learns: "A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure." We have her wisdom on women, who should be "tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives." She encourages travel "to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure." She devotes five paragraphs to her resentment at being told she's "too much." On human brotherhood she declares, "It is time for the preachers, the rabbis, the priests and pundits, and the professors to believe in the awesome wonder of diversity." The book, indeed, is of a remarkably coherent tone, being from first page to last of a truly awesome emptiness.