A Song Flung Up to Heaven, Maya Angelou
A Song Flung Up to Heaven, Maya Angelou
26 Rating(s)
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A Song Flung Up to Heaven

Author: Maya Angelou

Narrator: Maya Angelou

Unabridged: 4 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/02/2002


Synopsis

The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American literature: the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been assassinated.

Devastated, she tries to put her life back together, working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot she describes firsthand.

Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help support King’s Poor People’s March.

But once again tragedy strikes. King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heaven ends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.

About The Author

Maya Angelou was raised in Stamps, Arkansas. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman, she wrote numerous volumes of poetry, among them Phenomenal Woman, And Still I Rise, On the Pulse of Morning, and Mother. Maya Angelou died in 2014.


Reviews

Goodreads review by destiny ♡ on March 29, 2022

Gospel, blues, and love songs often suggest that birthing is hard, dying is difficult and there isn't much ease in between. After how thoroughly I enjoyed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I thought for sure that this book would be another slam dunk, but unfortunately, it wasn't. I love Maya and e......more

Goodreads review by Deacon Tom on December 28, 2020

4 1/2 Stars. Excellent book I really enjoyed, “A Song Flung Up to Heaven” by Maya Angelou. Like the rest of her books, this one is a very easy reading book. This book is the last of 6 incredible volumes. Her writing, as always, is superb with vivid detail and precise description. As for a plot, she r......more

Goodreads review by Ying Ying on March 24, 2018

I read this book right after I finished All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes. Maya's writing is so addictive that I always want more. Pages are filled with lessons and impactful stories.......more

Goodreads review by Alvin on August 14, 2019

Like all of Ms. Angelou's memoirs, ASFUTH is compulsively readable. There's no way you can't root for her as she blazes through the treacherous waters of the mid-20th century.......more


Quotes

Praise for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“I know that not since the days of my childhood, when people in
books were more real than the people one saw every day,
have I found myself so moved.”
—James Baldwin

Gather Together in My Name

“Gather Together in My Name is part of a select body of literature that includes The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Claude Brown’s
Manchild in the Promised Land and Ernest J. Gaines’
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Maya Angelou
regards the world and herself with intelligence and wit; she records the events of her life with style and grace.”
—William McPherson, The Washington Post Book World

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

“This is a superb account by a great woman who has embraced a
difficult destiny with rare intelligence and
infectious joie de vivre.”
— The Boston Globe


Awards

  • GRAMMY Awards (Best Spoken Word Album)