Maya Angelou

Recounts Angelou's stay in Ghana, together with other African Americans, and her discoveries and reflections concerning her ancestors, Africa, American society, and herself. Reissue. 15,000 first printing.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

Marion R

 In Ghana, one unclaimed corpse merited prin- cipal news coverage, and Efua's emotional response, while in America, black bodies still quick with life demanded no such concern. Too often among ourselves, since lives were cheap, dying was cheaper. Since the end of slavery, black Americans running or walking, hitchhiking or hoboing from untenable place to unsupportable place, had died in fields, in prisons, hospitals, on battlegrounds, in beds and barns, and if pain ccOmpanied their births, only the dying knew of their deaths. Ihey had come and gone unrecorded save in symbolic lore, and unclaimed save by the soil which turned them into earth again.

This is the second of Maya Angelou collection of autobiographies I have read and I really enjoyed it. It’s set in 1960s, Maya is 33 a traveling performer and she lives in Ghana for a few years

The book is very well written and so engaging I was reading about 30 pages in each sitting. Maya was a poet so the book is so lyrical and beautifully written.

Also was quite surprised at how many civil rights leaders lived in Ghana from her book quite a number of African American civil rights leaders and revolutionaries emigrated to Ghana some seeking the elusive motherland(africa), some in exile.

The book talks about the tension between Ghanaians and their distrust and somewhat internalised prejudice against Afro Americans. Living Nkwame Nkurumah’s Ghana and the promise of a better world for descendents of slavery and how it failed to live up to that promise.

Really enjoyed this

This is the second of Maya Angelou collection of autobiographies I have read and I really enjoyed it. It’s set in 1960s, Maya is 33 a traveling performer and she lives in Ghana for a few years

The book is very well written and so engaging I was reading about 30 pages in each sitting. Maya was a poet so the book is so lyrical and beautifully written.

Also was quite surprised at how many civil rights leaders lived in Ghana from her book quite a number of African American civil rights leaders and revolutionaries emigrated to Ghana some seeking the elusive motherland(africa), some in exile.

The book talks about the tension between Ghanaians and their distrust and somewhat internalised prejudice against Afro Americans. Living Nkwame Nkurumah’s Ghana and the promise of a better world for descendents of slavery and how it failed to live up to that promise.



lara anand

Tameka Young

Maya Angelou's five volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In the fifth volume, Maya Angelou emigrates to Ghana only to discover that 'you can't go home again' but she comes to a new awareness of love and friendship, civil rights and slavery - and the myth of mother Africa.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

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