Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?

ANGELOU, Maya [Erica Jong].

Item Number: 142624

New York: Random House, 1983.

First edition of Angelou’s fourth collection of poetry. Octavo, original half coth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the dedication page, [Thanks to Eleanor Traylor for her radiance…] “and to Erica Jong, for your eloquent confessions of love, strength, weakness, insight and laughter. Joy! Maya Angelou 5/87.” The recipient, Erica Jong remains best known for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying which became famously controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. Written in the first person and narrated by its protagonist, 29-year-old American poet Isadora Wing, Fear of Flying was written in the throes of the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s and encapsulated the movement’s redefinition of female sexuality. In interviews, Jong stated: “At the time I wrote Fear of Flying, there was not a book that said women are romantic, women are intellectual, women are sexual—and brought all those things together… What [Isadora is] looking for is how to be a whole human being, a body and a mind, and that is what women were newly aware they needed in 1973.” The novel remains a feminist classic and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. With an additional autograph note signed by Angelou to Jong laid in. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket art by Janet Halverson. An exceptional association.

Lyrical and cadent, dramatic and sometimes playful, the poems in Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? speak of love, longing, parting; of Saturday night partying and the smells and sounds of Southern cities; of freedom and shattered dreams. Infused with passion and an exuberant vitality, Maya Angelou's poetry, as Kirkus Reviews has said is, "just as much a part of her autobiography as I Know Where the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, and Heart of a Woman.