A few years ago on a writers retreat I met a woman who was writing her memoir. Over the course of the weekend in various writing sessions and the kind of late-night conversations that only happen with groups of close friends or complete strangers, she shared stories from her life - some funny, others poignant and shocking, all often an indictment of the Ireland she grew up in. Her life was the personal story holding up the scaffolds of an Irish society that we have all come to know in the scandals of recent years.

I left feeling I had been given a privileged gift to have been invited into her story like this. As if she had taken my hand and said “This is who I am, this is where I came from, and through it all I survived and thrived”.

Reading Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings left me with the same feeling. Starting with her life growing up in Stamps, Arkansas moving through California and San Francisco, we learn not just of her experiences but the experience of growing up as a black girl in America. The internal and external struggles and dangers. The heartbreak at realising how her community is seen mixed with the determination to use her intelligence to better herself.

There are stories of violence and abuse that are difficult to read which are presented not to shock us but to show the reality of her life, mixed with sibling love and laughter, an indomitable grandmother and an interlude in a Mexican border town that I will leave you to discover.

Beautifully lyrical, honest and poignant. I encourage you all to take Angelous hand and let her lead you on a journey into her life. ( )

$1991 mxn