''A Song Flung Up to Heaven'' is the sixth book in author
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and ...
's series of
autobiographies
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
. Set between 1965 and 1968, it begins where Angelou's previous book ''
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
''All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes'', published in 1986, is the fifth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1962 and 1965, the book begins when Angelou is 33 years old, and ...
'' ends, with Angelou's trip from
Accra, Ghana
Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...
, where she had lived for the past four years, back to the United States. Two "calamitous events"
frame the beginning and end of the book—the assassinations of
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...
and
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and the sweeping changes in both the country and in her personal life, and how she coped with her return home to the U.S. The book ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career",
writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, ''
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of charact ...
''.
As she had begun to do in ''Caged Bird'', and continued throughout her series, Angelou upheld the long tradition of African-American autobiography. At the same time she made a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Most reviewers agreed that the book was made up of a series of vignettes. By the time ''Song'' was written in 2002, sixteen years after her previous autobiography, Angelou had experienced great fame and recognition as an author and poet. She recited her poem "
On the Pulse of Morning
"On the Pulse of Morning" is a poem by writer and poet Maya Angelou that she read at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993. With her public recitation, Angelou became the second poet in history to read a poem ...
" at the inauguration of President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
in 1993, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloq ...
at
John F. Kennedy's in 1961. She had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. Angelou was, as scholar
Joanne Braxton
Joanne Margaret Braxton (born May 25, 1950) is an American author, teacher, and literary critic, an ordained minister, and CEO and President of the Board of the Braxton Institute. She has written about topics including Maya Angelou and the book '' ...
has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".
She had also become, as reviewer
Richard Long stated, "a major autobiographical voice of the time".
The title of ''Song'' was based upon the same poem, by African-American poet
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American C ...
, the basis of her first autobiography. Like Angelou's other autobiographies, the book was greeted with both praise and disappointment, although reviews were generally positive. Reviewers praised Angelou for "the culmination of a unique autobiographical achievement",
while others criticized her for coming across as "smug".
[McWhorter, p. 35.] The 2002
spoken word album A spoken word album is a recording of spoken material, a predecessor of the contemporary audiobook genre. Rather than featuring music or songs, the content of spoken word albums include political speeches, dramatic readings of historical documents ...
by the same name, based on the book, received a
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.
Background
''A Song Flung Up to Heaven'' (2002) is the sixth of
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and ...
's series of autobiographies, and at the time of its publication it was considered to be the final installment. It was completed 16 years after the publication of her previous autobiography, ''
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
''All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes'', published in 1986, is the fifth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1962 and 1965, the book begins when Angelou is 33 years old, and ...
'' (1986) and over thirty years after the publication of her first, ''
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of charact ...
''. Angelou wrote two collections of essays in the interim, ''
Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now'' (1993) and ''
Even the Stars Look Lonesome'' (1997), which writer
Hilton Als
Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for ''The New Yor ...
called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".
She also continued her poetry with several volumes, including a collection of her poems, ''
The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
''The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou'' is author and poet Maya Angelou's collection of poetry, published by Random House in 1994. It is Angelou's first collection of poetry published after she read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at ...
'' (1994). In 1993, Angelou recited her poem ''
On the Pulse of Morning
"On the Pulse of Morning" is a poem by writer and poet Maya Angelou that she read at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993. With her public recitation, Angelou became the second poet in history to read a poem ...
'' at the
inauguration
In government and politics, inauguration is the process of swearing a person into office and thus making that person the incumbent. Such an inauguration commonly occurs through a formal ceremony or special event, which may also include an inaugu ...
of President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloq ...
at
John F. Kennedy's inauguration
In government and politics, inauguration is the process of swearing a person into office and thus making that person the incumbent. Such an inauguration commonly occurs through a formal ceremony or special event, which may also include an inaugu ...
in 1961. Her recitation resulted in more fame and recognition for her previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, economic, and educational boundaries".
By 2002, when ''Song'' was published, Angelou had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.
She was, as scholar
Joanne Braxton
Joanne Margaret Braxton (born May 25, 1950) is an American author, teacher, and literary critic, an ordained minister, and CEO and President of the Board of the Braxton Institute. She has written about topics including Maya Angelou and the book '' ...
has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".
She had also become "a major autobiographical voice of the time".
Angelou was one of the first African-American female writers to publicly discuss her personal life, and one of the first to use herself as a central character in her books.
Writer Julian Mayfield, who called her first autobiography "a work of art that eludes description",
stated that Angelou's series set a precedent not only for other Black women writers, but for the genre of autobiography as a whole.
Als called Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices.
For example, while Angelou was composing her second autobiography, ''
Gather Together in My Name
''Gather Together in My Name'' (1974) is a memoir by American writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The book begins immediately following the events described in ''I Know Why the Cage ...
'', she was concerned about how her readers would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. Her husband Paul Du Feu talked her into publishing the book by encouraging her to "tell the truth as a writer" and to "be honest about it". ''Song'' took 16 years to write because it was painful to relive the events she described, including the assassinations of
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...
and
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
She did not celebrate her birthday, April 4, for many years because it was also the anniversary of King's death, choosing instead to send his widow
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King ( Scott; April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader who was married to Martin Luther King Jr. from 1953 until his death. As an advocate for African-American equality, she w ...
flowers. Although ''Song'' was considered the final installment in her series of autobiographies, Angelou continued writing about her life story through essays, and at the age of 85, published her seventh autobiography ''
Mom & Me & Mom
''Mom & Me & Mom'' (2013) is the seventh and final book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. The book was published shortly before Mother's Day and Angelou's 85th birthday. It focuses, for the first time in her books, on Angelo ...
'' (2013), which focused on her relationship with her mother. The
spoken word album A spoken word album is a recording of spoken material, a predecessor of the contemporary audiobook genre. Rather than featuring music or songs, the content of spoken word albums include political speeches, dramatic readings of historical documents ...
based on ''Song'' and narrated by Angelou received a
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.
Title
![Paul Laurence Dunbar](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Paul_Laurence_Dunbar.jpg)
Angelou returned to the same poem she based the title of ''Caged Bird'' upon for the title of ''A Song Flung Up to Heaven,'' from the third stanza of the
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American C ...
poem "
Sympathy
Sympathy is the perception of, understanding of, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form. According to David Hume, this sympathetic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint from a personal perspective to the perspective of ano ...
". Along with
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
, Angelou has credited Dunbar with forming her "writing ambition". The caged bird, a symbol for the chained
slave
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, is an image Angelou uses throughout all her writings.
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings.
Plot summary
''A Song Flung Up to Heaven'', which takes place between 1965 and 1968, picks up where Angelou's previous book, ''All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes'', ends, with Angelou's airplane trip from
Accra, Ghana
Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...
, where she has spent the previous four years, back to the United States. Two "calamitous events"
frame the beginning and end of the book—the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Her nineteen-year-old son Guy is attending college in Ghana, and she is leaving a controlling relationship—her "romantic other", whom she described as "a powerful West African man who had swept into my life with the urgency of a Southern hurricane". She had also been invited to return to the U.S. by Malcolm X, whom she had become friends with during his visit to Accra, to help her create the
Organization of African Unity
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU; french: Organisation de l'unité africaine, OUA) was an intergovernmental organization established on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with 32 signatory governments. One of the main heads for OAU's ...
.
![MLK and Malcolm X USNWR cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/MLK_and_Malcolm_X_USNWR_cropped.jpg)
She postpones meeting with Malcolm X for a month and visits her mother and brother in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. Malcolm X is assassinated two days later. Devastated and grief-stricken, she moves to
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
to be near her brother and to resume her singing and performing career, which she had given up before leaving for Africa several years earlier. She realizes, after seeing
Della Reese
Delloreese Patricia Early (July 6, 1931 – November 19, 2017), known professionally as Della Reese, was an American jazz and gospel singer, actress, and ordained minister whose career spanned seven decades. She began her long career as a s ...
perform, that she lacks the desire, commitment, and talent to be a singer. She instead returns to her writing career, but this time in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
instead of in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
as she had earlier in her life. To earn extra money, Angelou becomes a market researcher in Watts and gets to know the neighborhood and its people. She witnesses the 1965
Watts Riots, knowing that doing so could lead to her arrest, and she is genuinely disappointed that it does not.
At one point, Angelou's lover from Ghana, whom she calls "the African", arrives in Los Angeles to take her back to Accra. Angelou enlists the aid of her mother and brother; they come to her rescue once again by diverting the African first to Mexico and then back to Ghana. Guy, during a visit to his grandmother in San Francisco, gets into another car accident, similar to what happened before he began college in Ghana. His maturity is striking to his mother, and she leaves him in the care of his grandmother.
Angelou returns to New York, where she dedicates herself to her writing and renews many of the friendships made there in the past. She also describes her personal and professional relationships with
Ruby Dee,
Ossie Davis
Raiford Chatman "Ossie" Davis (December 18, 1917 – February 4, 2005) was an American actor, director, writer, and activist. He was married to Ruby Dee, with whom he frequently performed, until his death. He and his wife were named to the NAACP ...
,
Beah Richards
Beulah Elizabeth Richardson (July 12, 1920 – September 14, 2000), known professionally as Beah Richards and Bea Richards, was an American actress of stage, screen, and television. She was also a poet, playwright, author and activist.
Rich ...
, and
Frank Silvera
Frank Alvin Silvera (July 24, 1914 – June 11, 1970) was a Jamaican-born American character actor and theatrical director.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica and raised in Boston, Silvera dropped out of law school in 1934 after winning his first stage ...
. Martin Luther King Jr. asks her to travel around the country promoting the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civi ...
. She agrees, but "postpones again",
and he is assassinated on her 40th birthday. Again devastated, she isolates herself until invited to a dinner party also attended by her friend
James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
and cartoonist
Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer (born January 26, 1929)''Comics Buyer's Guide'' #1650; February 2009; Page 107 is an American cartoonist and author, who was considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 as North- ...
and his wife Judy. Judy Feiffer, inspired by Angelou's tales about her childhood, contacts editor
Robert Loomis
Robert Duane Loomis (August 24, 1926 – April 19, 2020) was an American book editor who worked at Random House from 1957 until his retirement in 2011. He has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors."
Many of Loomis's authors had w ...
, who challenges Angelou to write her autobiography as literature. She accepts his challenge, and ''Song'' ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career",
writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'':
"What are you looking at me for. I didn't come to stay".
Style and genre
Starting with ''Caged Bird'', Angelou made a deliberate attempt while writing all her autobiographies, including ''Song'', to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development has often led reviewers to categorize her books as
autobiographical fiction
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
. Angelou stated in a 1989 interview that she was the only "serious" writer to choose the genre to express herself. As critic Susan Gilbert stated, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but the collective's. Scholar
Selwyn R. Cudjoe agreed, and viewed Angelou as representative of the convention in African-American autobiography as a public gesture that spoke for an entire group of people. Angelou's editor
Robert Loomis
Robert Duane Loomis (August 24, 1926 – April 19, 2020) was an American book editor who worked at Random House from 1957 until his retirement in 2011. He has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors."
Many of Loomis's authors had w ...
was able to dare her into writing ''Caged Bird'' by challenging her to write an autobiography that could be considered "high art", which she continued throughout her series, including her final autobiography.
Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's standard structure: they were written by a single author, they were chronological, and they contained elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with African-American literature critic
Claudia Tate
Claudia Tate (December 14, 1947 – July 29, 2002)Yolanda Williams Page (ed.)"Claudia Tate (1946-2002)" ''Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers'', Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007, pp. 544–56. was a noted literary critic and professo ...
, Angelou called her books autobiographies. When speaking of her unique use of the genre, Angelou acknowledged that she has followed the
slave narrative
The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved Africans, particularly in the Americas. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as s ...
tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".
Reviewer
Elsie B. Washington
Elsie Bernice Washington (December 28, 1942 – May 5, 2009) was an American author whose 1980 work ''Entwined Destinies'' has been considered the first romance novel written by an African-American author featuring African-American characters ...
agreed, and stated that ''A Song Flung Up to Heaven'' "offers a glimpse into the life of a literary icon in the making" influenced by historical events and personalities such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Baldwin.
Angelou recognized that there were fictional aspects to all her books; she tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". Her approach paralleled the conventions of many African-American autobiographies written during the
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
period in the U.S., when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection. Author Lyman B. Hagen has placed Angelou in the long tradition of African-American autobiography, but insisted that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form. In a 1998 interview with journalist
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 – September 25, 2003) was an American writer. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found ''The Paris Review'', as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was also known for " ...
, Angelou discussed her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs. When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about". Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen stated, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work".
[Hagen, p. 18.] Hagen also stated that Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis, agreed, stating that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.
Critical reception
Like Angelou's previous autobiographies, ''Song'' received mostly positive reviews, although as the
Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation is an American literary society that seeks to promote poetry and lyricism in the wider culture. It was formed from ''Poetry'' magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ru ...
has said: "Most critics have judged Angelou's subsequent autobiographies in light of her first, and ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' remains the most highly praised."
Kim Hubbard of ''
People
A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of pr ...
'', for example, found ''Song'' unsatisfying and "hastily assembled", but poetic like ''Caged Bird''. Many reviewers appreciated what ''Kirkus Reviews'' called Angelou's "nice structural turn" of framing ''Song'' with two assassinations. Paula Friedman of ''
The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'' appreciated Angelou's "occasions of critical self-assessment and modesty" not present in many other autobiographies. Patricia Elam of ''The New Crisis'' agreed, stating that there is much to admire both about the book and about the "large life", full of tension, laughter, and love, it describes. Elam also called ''Song'' "a spirit-moving work that describes Angelou's journey through an authentic and artistic life".
Reviewer
Margaret Busby
Margaret Yvonne Busby, , Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisherJazzmine Breary"Let' ...
, who saw this book "not so much an ending as a beginning", called ''Song'' "the culmination of a unique autobiographical achievement, a glorious celebration of indomitable spirit".
Like other reviewers, Busby considered ''Song'' a series of "beautifully crafted vignettes" and found the book concise and readable.
Scholar
John McWhorter
John Hamilton McWhorter V (; born October 6, 1965) is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches Amer ...
did not look at Angelou's use of vignettes as positively, and stated that all of her books were short, divided into "ever shorter" chapters as her series progressed, and "sometimes seem written for children rather than adults".
[McWhorter, p. 40.] McWhorter recognized, however, that Angelou's precise prose and "striking and even jarring simplicity"
was due to Angelou's purposes of depicting African-American culture in a positive way. Busby also recognized Angelou's ability to find inspirational lessons from adversity, both nationally and personally, although the emphasis in this book was on the personal, especially her dilemmas as a mother and as a lover.
Amy Strong of ''
The Library Journal
''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...
'', perhaps because Angelou's life during the time the book took place was full of more personal loss than conflict and struggle, considered ''Song'' less profound and intense than the previous books in Angelou's series. She predicted that ''Song''′s direct and plainspoken style would be popular.
''
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'', in its review of the book, agreed with Strong and saw "a certain resignation" in ''Song'', instead of "the contentiousness" in Angelou's other autobiographies. The reviewer also stated that those who lived through the era Angelou described would appreciate her assessment of it, and that ''Song'' was "a story of tragedy and triumph, well stated and clearly stamped by her own unique blend of Afro-Americanism".
The assassinations in ''Song'' provided the book with depth as Angelou described the events of her life, which would be "mere meanderings" if described by a less skilled writer. The reviewer was able to see Angelou's "gracious spirit" and found the book "satisfying", although he considered it a "sometimes flat account" that lacked "the spiritual tone of Angelou's essays, the openness of her poetry and the drama of her other autobiographies".
Both McWhorter and scholar Hilton Als found Angelou's writing throughout her series self-important. Although McWhorter has admitted to being charmed by Angelou's sense of authority she has inserted into her works, which he calls her "black-mother wit", he considered Angelou's autobiographies after ''Caged Bird'' "smug", and has stated that she "implicitly dares the reader to question her private line to God and Truth".
Als agreed, stating what made ''Song'' different from her preceding volumes is her "ever-increasing unreliability".
Als stated that Angelou, in her six autobiographies, "has given us ... the self-aggrandizing, homespun, and sometimes oddly prudish story of a black woman who, when faced with the trials of life, simply makes do".
Als believed that Angelou's essays, written in the 1990s, were a better culmination of her work as an autobiographer.
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
* Angelou, Maya. (2002). ''A Song Flung Up to Heaven''. New York: Random House.
* Hagen, Lyman B. (1997). ''Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou''. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
* Lupton, Mary Jane (1998). ''Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion''. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
* McWhorter, John. (2002)
"Saint Maya" ''The New Republic'' 226, no. 19: 35–41.
* Tate, Claudia (1999). "Maya Angelou: An Interview". In ''Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook'', Joanne M. Braxton, ed. New York: Oxford Press.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Song Flung Up to Heaven
2002 American novels
African-American autobiographies
Books by Maya Angelou
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album