The Heart Of A Woman

In The Heart of a Woman Maya Angelou leaves California with her son Guy to goto New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists andwriters. No... » 

In The Heart of a Woman Maya Angelou leaves California with her son Guy to goto New York. There she enters the society and world of black artists andwriters. Not since her childhood has she lived in an almost black environmentand she is surprised at the obsession her new friends have with the white worldaround them. She stays for a while with John and Grace Killens and begins toread her writing at the Harlem Writers Guild. She continues to sing mostnotably at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem but more and more she begins to takepart in the struggle of black Americans for their rightful place in the world.She helps organize a benefit cabaret for the Southern Christian LeadershipConference and then is appointed Martin Luther Kings Northern Coordinator.Shortly after that through her friend Abbey Lincoln she takes one of the leadparts in Genets The Blacks it was a remarkable cast including GodfreyCambridge Roscoe Lee Brown James Earl Jones Cicely Tyson Raymond St.Jacques and Lou Gossett and even writes music for the production.In the meantime her personal life has taken a tempestuous turn. She has leftthe New York bail bondsman she was intending to marry and has fallen in lovewith a South African freedom fighter named Vusumzi Make who sweeps her off herfeet and eventually takes her to London and then to Cairo where as hermarriage begins to break up she becomes the first female editor of theEnglishlanguage magazine.The Heart of a Woman is filled with unforgettable vignettes of famous peoplefrom Billie Holiday to Malcolm X but perhaps most important is the story ofMaya Angelous relationship with her son. Because this book chroniclesfinally the joys and the burdens of a black mother in America and how the sonshe had cherished so intensely and worked for so devotedly finally grows to bea man. «