A Song Flung Up to Heaven By Maya Angelou

A Song Flung Up to Heaven
By Maya Angelou
Random House - April 2, 2002
ISBN: 0375507477 - Hardback
Non-Fiction / Biography / African-American

Reviewed by: Sharon Hudson, MyShelf.com
Buy a Copy

A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the Sixth book in Ms. Angelou's autobiography. The series began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and this book ends appropriately with the first line of that book. This volume begins in 1964 when Ms. Angelou is beginning her journey home from Ghana, having left her nineteen year old son, Guy, with family friends. She's sojourning back to the states to work with Malcolm X. Having been in the States less than 24 hours, Malcolm X is assassinated which throws her life almost to the brink of utter silence again, if not for the everpresent compassion and understanding of her brother, Bailey.

Ms. Angelou's mother and brother are her rock. The pearls of wisdom that drip from her mother are stored for safekeeping in her mind and are often replayed when events descend upon her life. Maya's common-law husband - The African, arrives in the states and commands Maya to bow down to him. Finally in frustration and with rare profanity, Maya calls upon her mother, who personally reminds the African, "People use profanity because they have limited vocabularies or because they are lazy or too frustrated to search for the words they want. My daughter has an extensive vocabulary and doesn't have a lazy bone in her body. So she cursed out of frustration. Why are you frustrated, baby?" Again her brother, small in stature but mighty in wisdom, intervens and the African is gone. He returns years later to a much more richly grounded and fulfilled Maya.

The conclusion of this segment in her life again brings tragedy. Maya is presented with the opportunity to work for Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. However before beginning her assignment he was assassinated on her birthday. With the help of friends and family support, Maya has been able to express through her writings the character and lives of so many. I find that she personifies triumph over pain, victory over defeat, speech in spite of silence, and peace in the midst of turmoil. I thank Ms. Angelou for sharing her life from which others have drawn strength and grace. A Song Flung Up to Heaven is an excellent conclusion to a pivotal period in African-American history and memoir series.