{"id":1599894,"date":"2020-07-04T13:09:48","date_gmt":"2020-07-04T17:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/?p=1599894"},"modified":"2020-07-04T13:09:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-04T17:09:48","slug":"divine-reads-mom-me-mom-by-maya-angelou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/divine-reads-mom-me-mom-by-maya-angelou\/","title":{"rendered":"DIVINE Reads: Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mom & Me & Mom is the second book in our monthly series featuring black authors<\/a>.\u00a0 The series would not be complete without a book by Maya Angelou.\u00a0 She is an inspiration in every sense of the word.\u00a0 If you have ever had the privilege of hearing the late poet laureate speak, you witnessed something amazing.\u00a0 She had a simple way of speaking and her books are in the same tone. Don\u2019t let simplicity fool you, Maya Angelou was exceptionally bright.\u00a0 She just didn\u2019t need to use her voice to flaunt her intelligence \u2013 she let her words speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

Mom & Me & Mom<\/a> is Maya Angelou\u2019s seventh and final book in her autobiographical series.\u00a0 You do not need to read the series in any kind of order.\u00a0 She wrote it so that each book reflects a snapshot of one aspect of her life and how that impacted her.\u00a0 The books are stand alone, but that does not mean that you shouldn\u2019t read each and every one of them.<\/p>\n

About the Book<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"Maya<\/p>\n

For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence\u2014a presence absent during much of Angelou\u2019s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call \u201cLady,\u201d revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.<\/p>\n

Delving into one of her life\u2019s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou\u2019s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.<\/p>\n

The Review<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Mom & Me & Mom explores Angelou\u2019s complicated relationship with her mother Vivian.\u00a0 The book speaks to how Vivian went from being called \u201cLady\u201d to being \u201cMom\u201d.\u00a0 Angelou honestly portrays how \u201cLady\u201d upended her comfortable world and the abandonment issues that plagued her.\u00a0 Their relationship went from contentious to loving.\u00a0 Vivian was not your typical mother, but, she came through for Angelou when she needed her most once they reunited.<\/p>\n

Vivian believed in her daughter fiercely and made her believe that she could do anything.\u00a0 One of the most touching moments of the book was when Vivian asked Angelou what she would like to do during a semester of school when Angelou was ahead of her class.\u00a0 When Angelou said that she wanted to be a conductorette on San Francisco\u2019s famous streetcars, her mother told her that she could do it.\u00a0 Angelou was the first African American woman to work on the streetcars.\u00a0 Her mother not only drove her daughter to work, she kept driving behind the streetcar to keep her safe.<\/p>\n

“I told her, ‘That’s what you were \u2014 you were my great protection.’ She said, ‘I was more than that. You were mine, too.’ “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book is filled with violence, sorrow and pain but also great joy.\u00a0 The bond between mother and daughter was slow to come, easy to rend, but eventually became unbreakable.\u00a0 Angelou went through a lot in her life, from molestation at a young age (written about in \u201cI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings).\u00a0 She was attacked by her stepmother, beaten by her boyfriends, but in life, and in prose, she never resorts to self-pity.\u00a0 She has a spare, simple writing style that makes her books easy to read.\u00a0 The messages are always more complicated than the writing.<\/p>\n

Maya Angelou does the impossible in this book.\u00a0 She humanizes a mother who essentially abandoned her children.\u00a0 She shows how a relationship, however broken, can be fixed.\u00a0 The book highlights the most loving and complicated relationship a woman can have \u2013 the relationship with her mother.\u00a0 It would have been easier to pick a better known, and frankly, better reviewed book, but there is something about \u201cMom & Me & Mom\u201d that stays with you, long after you have finished it that made it the logical choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mom & Me & Mom is the second book in our monthly series featuring black authors.\u00a0 The series would not be complete without a book by Maya Angelou.\u00a0 She is…<\/div>\n
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