Maya Angelou's Autobiography

This paper is an examination of the fourth volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography, The Heart of a Woman, an account that covers five remarkable years of an astonishing, remarkable life. A single mother, struggling to support herself and her son through her singing career, Angelou begins her chronicle by fighting racial discrimination in order to rent a house in Los Angeles. There, she meets the legendary Billie Holiday during the final months of the singer's life. Her quest for fulfillment eventually leads her to New York City and the start of a career as a writer. She meets and joins the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and begins to find her voice on paper and in the turbulent society of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her quest leads her to Broadway and, by the end of the book, to the beginnings of a new life in Africa, returning to personal and political struggles as she tries to define herself and her purpose in life.

The full scope of the events, celebrities, history, and drama that Maya Angelou is able to fit into half a decade of living is simultaneously breathtaking and intimidating. On the one hand, she is an ordinary woman, fighting against the terrors and oppression of discrimination and the need to support herself and her son, Guy. She is plagued with doubts about her ability to be both mother and father to Guy. She is unsure of her talents, her place in the world, and even what she wants to achieve with her life. She is tentative, questioning, petty,

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an police. She learns to distrust his undependable financial sense, liberal views on marital fidelity, and demands of her housekeeping skills, eventually breaking with him after she and Guy have followed him to Cairo. Their "divorce" is conducted according to the customs of Africa, during a remarkable and very public palaver among their friends and members of their community. Meanwhile, Angelou's talents (which she often underestimates but which are obviously evident to those around her) have landed her an editorship with a new international newspaper being published in Cairo, allowing her to continue to develop her skills as a writer. The job also permits her to regain her independence and take her son into the heart of her newly discovered homeland. As this chapter in her life ends, she is helping Guy to recover from a serious car accident which has put a temporary halt to her plans for them both. As her son moves into his dormitory, starting his college career at the University of Ghana, he tells her, "I love you, Mom. Maybe now you'll have a chance to grow up" (324). Her story is filled with remarkable events and fascinating people, many of them famous, all of them richly described with the strong impressions they m

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