A Song Flung Up to Heaven
A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya Angelou’s series of autobiographies. It was completed 16 years after the publication of her previous autobiography, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. The title of Song was based upon the same poem, by African-American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, that was the basis of her first autobiography. The book was greeted with both praise and disappointment, although reviews were generally positive.
About A Song Flung Up to Heaven in brief
A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya Angelou’s series of autobiographies. It was completed 16 years after the publication of her previous autobiography, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. The title of Song was based upon the same poem, by African-American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, that was the basis of her first autobiography. The 2002 spoken word album by the same name, based on the book, received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003. The book was greeted with both praise and disappointment, although reviews were generally positive. Angelou was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, “without a doubt,… America’s most visible black woman autobiographer’s”. She had also become “a major autobiographical voice of the time,” according to reviewer Richard Long. She was concerned about how readers would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. For example, she talked into her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, into her husband Paul Feuuu. She also wrote two collections of essays in the interim, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now and Even the Stars Look Lonesome, which writer Hilton Als called her ‘wisdom books’ and ‘homilies strung together with autobiographical texts’ The book ends with Angelou at ‘the threshold of her literary career’, writing the opening lines to her first book, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ It was considered to be the final installment in her series of books.
The first to discuss her personal life, it was one of the first to use herself as a central character in the books. It also set a precedent for not only Black women writers, but other writers, for the genre of autobiography of autobiography. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. Her recitation resulted in more fame and recognition for her previous works, and broadened her appeal across racial, economic, and educational boundaries. By 2002, when Song was published, she had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. She has also continued her poetry with several volumes, including a collection of her poems, The Complete Collected Poems of MayaAngelou. She was also the first African American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for her work in 2000. She died in 2007, at the age of 83, and is survived by her husband, Paul Duuu, and her three children. She is married to the former mayor of Accra, Ghana, where she had lived for the past four years, and has a son, Michael, and two step-daughters. Her husband, Michael Duu, is a former U.S. congressman.
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