Independent Reading Level: 8th-12th grade.
Awards: N/A

A candid chronicle of the author's life, this is a continuation of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Angelou-Un-billet-davion-pour-lAfrique/281343
> Entre les lignes, vol. 8 n° 1 (automne 2011), p. 40 : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/64925ac
> BAnQ (Guy C., La presse, 7 oct. 2011) : https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2415763
> BAnQ (Giguère S., Le devoir, 12 nov. 2011) : https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2930363

I read this book years ago but was discussing it again today with a friend. A book that becomes part of my life - what a gift! Maya Angelou is telling two stories at once - no,3 - layered so you might think you're reading just one.
Maya Angelou is teaching in Ghana and marveling in the feel of people-who-look-like-me, with this sense of having come home to Mother Africa. She slowly unpacks how the USA is her home, in fact, and she lets go of Mother Africa. At the same time her son accompanies her to Ghana - and he is letting go of his mother, too. Ms. Angelou lives both the coming and the going at the same time, the embracing and the letting go. And then there is the third story, which is that of an ex-patriate, a person of privilege, living in a country of cultural richness emerging from a colonial "mother". There's a probably a fourth story going on here simultaneously. I'm just amazed that this book is not part of the high school canon. It's accessible and complex at the same time. Thank you, Maya Angelou. ( )

I've been reading through the autobiographies of Maya Angelou. This is the next for me - fifth in the series of seven written by this extraordinary woman. The title derives from a Negro Spiritual, and describes Angelou's years spent in Ghana in the early 1960s. She became part of the ex-pat community and felt both at home because of her ancestry and apart because she was immediately recognized as a Black American. Although she made many Ghanaian friends she was surprised at the attitudes of the people who wondered why she would leave America. Angelou felt they did not understand the conditions of race relations in America.

I enjoyed this book and the adventures she describes as she discovers Ghana. But I feel the best of the series so far was the first, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." ( )