The final volume of Maya Angelou's extraordinary autobiography recounts her moving back to America from Ghana and returning to the civil rights movement. She appears restless: lives in several cities, tries various jobs, reconnects with old friends and former lovers, makes new connections, and deals with her son maturing. At the core of the book is shock and horror at the murders of Malcom X and Martin Luther King:

Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Mountains and skyscrapers and grand ideas are brought down to eye level or below. Great loves and large hates no longer cast such huge shadows or span so broad a distance. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow.

Everywhere I turned, life was repeating itself. The photograph of Coretta Scott King, veiled and standing with her children, reminded me of the picture of Jacqueline Kennedy with her children. Both women were under the probing, curious, and often sympathetic eye of the world. Yet each stood as if she and her children and her memories lived together in an unknowable dimension.

On radio and newspapers, Martin King's name was linked again and again with the name Malcolm X. As if the life and death of one confirmed the life and death of the other.

Angelou's six volume autobiography is a fascinating historical record of American racial politics, as well as a portrait of an amazing woman's life. She has a unique and vivid literary voice, which is compelling and profound to read. ( )

A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth in the series of Maya Angelou's autobiographies, all of which has been a personal reading project of mine in the past year or so. Not as substantive as the previous ones -- my edition is double-spaced and 210 pages long -- or as deep. Still good, however.

Beginning just after she leaves from her long-term stay in Ghana, Angelou has promised to go to work again for Malcolm X, but he is assassinated before she has the chance to do so. After a time, she finds work in Watts, Los Angeles, and is actually there while the riots erupt in 1965. She sees it all first-hand, but without going into depth about the whys of the riots.

It's really interesting how Angelou was close to so many historical events. She even made an agreement to collaborate with Martin Luther King on some civil-rights activities, but not to start until after a commitment she had to host her own birthday bash. He was assassinated just hours before the party was to start.

This autobiography ends with Angelou beginning the work on her very first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which, when it became a best-seller, made her more well-known than ever. Probably because of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , Angelou is best-known today for her writings than her music, dancing, theater work, civil rights works -- she was not completely unknown before she became a published author.

Interestingly, there is one story in here that lends to the often quoted phrase that's credited to her, although the words she uses aren't exact here. The famous (and a very wise one, indeed) phrase is "When people show you who you are, believe them the first time". Angelou tells of meeting someone who basically says he himself is a jerk -- and she is all, oh surely you are not, but then he does something that shows that he really is a jerk. She ends this story with "Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you...I didn't know him well enough to know if he was or wasn't a liar, but I found out he was certainly mean and he was ornery" (p. 92). ( )

When I reach for a Maya Angelou book, I do so because her thoughts center me. I think I have heard what she has to say and more of her story is likely more of what I already know. Yet, upon reading, I am always hearing new things from her. And I appreciate that she shares her mother's advice on living.

This book is about the year's after her return from Ghana. The leaving of her African love, her son's rebellious teen years, her involvement in US African-American civil rights, and "where she was" when Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr were killed.

It also seems to be the prelude to her establishment as a writer, describing her process of discovery and those who made writing possible for her. ( )

Not as rich and detailed as her previous biographies...I felt like it rushed along to the conclusion. ( )

The book starts at the point where Angelou is just now leaving Ghana and on her way back to the States, where she is to help Malcolm X in his campaign. She decides that she wants to go see her mother and brother before taking on the task proper, but by page 26, Malcolm X is shot dead. The book ends with another death, this time the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., just as as she is offered a position to help in his campaign. It is while coming to terms with King’s death that she is given the chance to write a memoir, a full circle back to how I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing started.

In this book, Maya Angelou tells you it’s okay to be emotional, to break down and cry, when things don’t go well. But she also tells you that after having that good cry, you must wipe your tears dry, stand up, and face another day with your head held high. And the best part is, she tells you all this without being preachy about it. ( )