Of all the many things she says, shares, teaches, the words that reached in and grabbed my heart the most was in the chapter Keep the Faith Her spirituality is touching without being divisive, her view of the world, of people worldwide. My soul should always look back and wonder at the mountains I had climbed and the rivers I had forged and the challenges which still await down the road. In prose that is so quintessentially hers, I could hear her distinctive voice saying these words 'I came to understand that I can never forget where I came from. Most of all, her wisdom, the knowledge and understanding she shares on life and while this book is a letter to the daughters she never gave birth to, she acknowledges the bond with these daughters of divine creation with the offering of these words.Įighty plus years of trials and life lessons shared, only the ones she found to be useful, not her solutions ”knowing you are intelligent and creative and resourceful and will use them as you see fit.” There’s the other part of me that wants to share her message, abounding in beauty, grief, tenderness, joy, life lessons overflowing with wisdom, faith. There’s part of me that just wants to hold onto this lovely little gem of a book, to just hold onto these words a little longer in the hopes they’ll more thoroughly permeate my soul. Here is my offering to you.”-from Letter to My Daughter You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all.

You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. “I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share. Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family. Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.

Maya Angelou shares her path to living well and with meaning in this absorbing book of personal essays.ĭedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.

Letter to my daughter by maya angelou