Letter to My Daughter - Maya Angelou

Letter to My Daughter

By Maya Angelou

  • Release Date: 2008-09-23
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 197 Ratings

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Maya Angelou shares her path to living well and with meaning in this absorbing book of personal essays.
 
Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.

Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.

Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.

Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.

“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”—from Letter to My Daughter

Reviews

  • Thank you

    4
    By Someonesdaughter2
    What I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it.
  • Great ready

    5
    By Marie Michaelle
    I read this in 1.5 hours. This woman is amazing in her wisdom and honest in her breathing . I appreciate her perspective and see myself in her writings. Her voice is my voice. This book went way to fast. I want more!
  • A letter to my daughter

    4
    By Emelias mom
    Excellent book. Leaving the father of my child n was looking for a strong woman's words n found them. While reading this I can definitely relate to the confusion of evil that lurks in man...... If he chooses to allow it in his life. All that said ..... I will miss what should have been......