Recommended by
- Richard Branson — Listed in Richard Branson's own 'My Top 65 Books To Read In A Lifetime' published on Virgin.com source ↗
Summary
Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography, the first of seven volumes, chronicling her childhood and adolescence from age three to seventeen in the segregated American South. She recounts her abandonment by her parents, a childhood rape by her mother's boyfriend, her years as a mute after his murder, and her eventual emergence through literature, dance, and the birth of her son. The book broke ground for its unflinching treatment of racial trauma and sexual violence and for the dignity with which Angelou transformed her pain into art; it was one of the first autobiographies by a Black woman to reach a mass white audience.