The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou.

ANGELOU, Maya.

Item Number: 127692

New York: Modern Library, 2004.

First Modern Library edition of Angelou’s classic memoirs. Octavo, original gray cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “Winona Chestnut Joy! Maya Angelou 6/2005.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Gabrielle Bordwin. Jacket illustration by Janet Halverson. This work contains I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, The Heart of a Woman, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven. Rare and desirable signed and inscribed.

"This testimony from a black sister marks the beginning of a new era in the minds and hearts of all black men and women... I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity. I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood, when the people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself so moved... Her portrait is a biblical study in life in the midst of death" (James Baldwin).