A Song Flung Up to Heaven

A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya

Angelou's series of autobiographies. Set between 1965 and 1968, A Song Flung Up to Heaven
it begins where Angelou's previous book All God's Children Need
Traveling Shoes ends, with Angelou's trip from Accra, Ghana,
where she had lived for the past four years, back to the United
States. Two "calamitous events"[1] frame the beginning and end of
the book—the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther
King, Jr. Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and
the sweeping changes in both the country and in her personal life,
and how she coped with her return home to the U.S. The book
ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career",[2]
writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings.

As she had begun to do in Caged Bird, and continued throughout

her series, Angelou upheld the long tradition of African-American
autobiography. At the same time she made a deliberate attempt to
challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing,
changing, and expanding the genre. Most reviewers agreed that
the book was made up of a series of vignettes. By the time Song
The paperback version
was written in 2002, sixteen years after her previous
autobiography, Angelou had experienced great fame and Author Maya Angelou
recognition as an author and poet. She recited her poem "On the Country United States
Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in
Language English
1993, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation
since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's in 1961. She had become Genre Autobiography
recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and Published 2002 (Random
women. Angelou was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, House)
"without a doubt,  ... America's most visible black woman
autobiographer".[3] She had also become, as reviewer Richard ISBN 0-375-50747-7
Long stated, "a major autobiographical voice of the time".[2] Preceded by All God's Children
Need Traveling
The title of Song was based upon the same poem, by African- Shoes 
American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the basis of her first
autobiography. Like Angelou's other autobiographies, the book Followed by Mom & Me & Mom 
was greeted with both praise and disappointment, although
reviews were generally positive. Reviewers praised Angelou for "the culmination of a unique
autobiographical achievement",[4] while others criticized her for coming across as "smug".[5] The
2002 spoken word album by the same name, based on the book, received a Grammy Award for Best
Spoken Word Album in 2003.

Contents
Background
Title
Plot summary
Style and genre
Critical reception
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography

Background
A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) is the sixth of Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies, and at
the time of its publication it was considered to be the final installment. It was completed 16 years after
the publication of her previous autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) and
over thirty years after the publication of her first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.[6] Angelou
wrote two collections of essays in the interim, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993)
and Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997), which writer Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and
"homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".[7] She also continued her poetry with several
volumes, including a collection of her poems, The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
(1994). In 1993, Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of President
Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F.
Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.[8] Her recitation resulted in more fame and recognition for her
previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, economic, and educational boundaries".[9]

By 2002, when Song was published, Angelou had become recognized and highly respected as a
spokesperson for Blacks and women.[10] She was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a
doubt,  ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".[3] She had also become "a major
autobiographical voice of the time".[2] Angelou was one of the first African-American female writers
to publicly discuss her personal life, and one of the first to use herself as a central character in her
books.[7] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called her first autobiography "a work of art that eludes
description",[7] stated that Angelou's series set a precedent not only for other Black women writers,
but for the genre of autobiography as a whole.[7]

Als called Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more
negative aspects of her personality and choices.[7] For example, while Angelou was composing her
second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, she was concerned about how her readers
would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. Her husband Paul Du Feu talked her into
publishing the book by encouraging her to "tell the truth as a writer" and to "be honest about it".[11]
Song took 16 years to write because it was painful to relive the events she described, including the
assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.[2] She did not celebrate her birthday, April
4, for many years because it was also the anniversary of King's death, choosing instead to send his
widow Coretta Scott King flowers.[12] Although Song was considered the final installment in her series
of autobiographies, Angelou continued writing about her life story through essays,[13] and at the age
of 85, published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom (2013), which focused on her
relationship with her mother.[14] The spoken word album based on Song and narrated by Angelou
received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.[15]

Title

Angelou returned to the same poem she based the title of Caged Bird upon for the title of A Song
Flung Up to Heaven, from the third stanza of the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem "Sympathy". Along
with Shakespeare, Angelou has credited Dunbar with forming her "writing ambition".[16] The caged
bird, a symbol for the chained slave, is an image Angelou uses
throughout all her writings.[17]

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings.[18]

Paul Laurence Dunbar,

Plot summary whose poetry inspired both
the titles of Angelou's first
and sixth autobiographies in
A Song Flung Up to Heaven, which takes place between 1965 and 1968,
her series
picks up where Angelou's previous book, All God's Children Need
Traveling Shoes, ends, with Angelou's airplane trip from Accra, Ghana,
where she has spent the previous four years, back to the United States. Two "calamitous events"[1]
frame the beginning and end of the book—the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King,
Jr. Her nineteen-year-old son Guy is attending college in Ghana, and she is leaving a controlling
relationship—her "romantic other", whom she described as "a powerful West African man who had
swept into my life with the urgency of a Southern hurricane".[19] She had also been invited to return
to the U.S. by Malcolm X, whom she had become friends with during his visit to Accra, to help her
create the Organization of African Unity.

She postpones meeting with Malcolm X for a month and visits her
mother and brother in San Francisco. Malcolm X is assassinated two
days later. Devastated and grief-stricken, she moves to Hawaii to be near
her brother and to resume her singing and performing career, which she
had given up before leaving for Africa several years earlier. She realizes,
after seeing Della Reese perform, that she lacks the desire, commitment,
and talent to be a singer. She instead returns to her writing career, but
this time in Los Angeles instead of in New York City as she had earlier in
her life. To earn extra money, Angelou becomes a market researcher in
Watts and gets to know the neighborhood and its people. She witnesses
the 1965 Watts Riots, knowing that doing so could lead to her arrest, and
The assassinations of
she is genuinely disappointed that it does not.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Malcolm X frame the events
At one point, Angelou's lover from Ghana, whom she calls "the African",
in A Song Flung Up to
arrives in Los Angeles to take her back to Accra. Angelou enlists the aid
Heaven.
of her mother and brother; they come to her rescue once again by
diverting the African first to Mexico and then back to Ghana. Guy,
during a visit to his grandmother in San Francisco, gets into another car
accident, similar to what happened before he began college in Ghana.[note 1] His maturity is striking to
his mother, and she leaves him in the care of his grandmother.

Angelou returns to New York, where she dedicates herself to her writing and renews many of the
friendships made there in the past. She also describes her personal and professional relationships
with Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Beah Richards, and Frank Silvera. Martin Luther King, Jr. asks her to
travel around the country promoting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She agrees, but
"postpones again",[7] and he is assassinated on her 40th birthday. Again devastated, she isolates
herself until invited to a dinner party also attended by her friend James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules
Feiffer and his wife Judy. Judy Feiffer, inspired by Angelou's tales about her childhood, contacts
editor Robert Loomis, who challenges Angelou to write her autobiography as literature. She accepts
his challenge, and Song ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career",[2] writing the
opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings:

"What are you looking at me for. I didn't come to stay".[20]

Style and genre

Starting with Caged Bird, Angelou made a deliberate attempt while writing all her autobiographies,
including Song, to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and
expanding the genre.[21] Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and
thematic development has often led reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction.[22]
Angelou stated in a 1989 interview that she was the only "serious" writer to choose the genre to
express herself.[23] As critic Susan Gilbert stated, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but
the collective's.[24] Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe agreed, and viewed Angelou as representative of the
convention in African-American autobiography as a public gesture that spoke for an entire group of
people.[25] Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her into writing Caged Bird by
challenging her to write an autobiography that could be considered "high art",[26] which she
continued throughout her series, including her final autobiography.[1]

Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's standard structure: they were written by a single
author, they were chronological, and they contained elements of character, technique, and theme.[27]
In a 1983 interview with African-American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou called her books
autobiographies.[28] When speaking of her unique use of the genre, Angelou acknowledged that she
has followed the slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the
first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".[10] Reviewer Elsie B. Washington agreed, and
stated that A Song Flung Up to Heaven "offers a glimpse into the life of a literary icon in the making"
influenced by historical events and personalities such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and
James Baldwin.[29]

Angelou recognized that there were fictional aspects to all her books; she tended to "diverge from the
conventional notion of autobiography as truth".[30] Her approach paralleled the conventions of many
African-American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the U.S., when truth was
often censored for purposes of self-protection.[31] Author Lyman B. Hagen has placed Angelou in the
long tradition of African-American autobiography, but insisted that she has created a unique
interpretation of the autobiographical form.[32] In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton,
Angelou discussed her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and
memoirs.[33] When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she stated, "Sometimes I
make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is
not sufficiently strong to be written about".[34] Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the
facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen stated, "One
can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work".[35] Hagen also stated that
Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis, agreed,
stating that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different
impact on the reader.[35]

Critical reception
Like Angelou's previous autobiographies, Song received mostly positive reviews, although as the
Poetry Foundation has said: "Most critics have judged Angelou's subsequent autobiographies in light
of her first, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings remains the most highly praised."[10] Kim
Hubbard of People, for example, found Song unsatisfying and "hastily assembled", but poetic like
Caged Bird.[36] Many reviewers appreciated what Kirkus Reviews called Angelou's "nice structural
turn" of framing Song with two assassinations.[37] Paula Friedman of The New York Times Book
Review appreciated Angelou's "occasions of critical self-assessment and modesty" not present in
many other autobiographies.[38] Patricia Elam of The New Crisis agreed, stating that there is much to
admire both about the book and about the "large life", full of tension, laughter, and love, it describes.
Elam also called Song "a spirit-moving work that describes Angelou's journey through an authentic
and artistic life".[39]

Reviewer Margaret Busby, who saw this book "not so

much an ending as a beginning", called Song "the This new book is like an inspired
culmination of a unique autobiographical achievement, a conversation—the kind you might have
with a wise and comfortable stranger
glorious celebration of indomitable spirit".[4] Like other seated next to you on a long bus ride. It
reviewers, Busby considered Song a series of "beautifully doesn't wrench or disturb the way her first
crafted vignettes" and found the book concise and book did, but instead shares with subtlety
readable. [4] Scholar John McWhorter did not look at and sometimes intimacy, experiences from
a well-traveled life. Rather than struggling
Angelou's use of vignettes as positively, and stated that all to recall the details of a distant past,
of her books were short, divided into "ever shorter" Angelou sketches the scenes with broad
chapters as her series progressed, and "sometimes seem familiarity, as if using a memory brush,
written for children rather than adults". [40] McWhorter and the reader is transported just the
recognized, however, that Angelou's precise prose and same.
"striking and even jarring simplicity"[40] was due to Patricia Elam, The New Crisis
Angelou's purposes of depicting African-American culture
(2002)[39]
in a positive way. Busby also recognized Angelou's ability
to find inspirational lessons from adversity, both
nationally and personally, although the emphasis in this
book was on the personal, especially her dilemmas as a mother and as a lover.[4]

Amy Strong of The Library Journal, perhaps because Angelou's life during the time the book took
place was full of more personal loss than conflict and struggle, considered Song less profound and
intense than the previous books in Angelou's series. She predicted that Song′s direct and plainspoken
style would be popular.[41] Publishers Weekly, in its review of the book, agreed with Strong and saw "a
certain resignation" in Song, instead of "the contentiousness" in Angelou's other autobiographies. The
reviewer also stated that those who lived through the era Angelou described would appreciate her
assessment of it, and that Song was "a story of tragedy and triumph, well stated and clearly stamped
by her own unique blend of Afro-Americanism".[1] The assassinations in Song provided the book with
depth as Angelou described the events of her life, which would be "mere meanderings" if described by
a less skilled writer. The reviewer was able to see Angelou's "gracious spirit" and found the book
"satisfying", although he considered it a "sometimes flat account" that lacked "the spiritual tone of
Angelou's essays, the openness of her poetry and the drama of her other autobiographies".[1]

Both McWhorter and scholar Hilton Als found Angelou's writing throughout her series self-
important. Although McWhorter has admitted to being charmed by Angelou's sense of authority she
has inserted into her works, which he calls her "black-mother wit", he considered Angelou's
autobiographies after Caged Bird "smug", and has stated that she "implicitly dares the reader to
question her private line to God and Truth".[5] Als agreed, stating what made Song different from her
preceding volumes is her "ever-increasing unreliability".[7] Als stated that Angelou, in her six
autobiographies, "has given us  ... the self-aggrandizing, homespun, and sometimes oddly prudish
story of a black woman who, when faced with the trials of life, simply makes do".[7] Als believed that
Angelou's essays, written in the 1990s, were a better culmination of her work as an autobiographer.[7]
Footnotes
1. Guy's first accident was described in two of Angelou's previous autobiographies, at the end of The
Heart of a Woman, her fourth autobiography, and at the beginning of All God's Children Need
Traveling Shoes, her fifth.

Citations
1. "A Song Flung Up to Heaven (Book)". Publishers Weekly. 249 (5): 61. 2 April 2002.
2. Long, Richard (November 2005). "Maya Angelou". Smithsonian. 36 (8): 84.
3. Braxton, Joanne M. (1999). "Symbolic Geography and Psychic Landscapes: A Conversation with
Maya Angelou" (https://archive.org/details/mayaangelousikno00joan). In Joanne M. Braxton (ed.).
Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook (https://archive.org/details/maya
angelousikno00joan/page/4). N.Y.: Oxford Press. p. 4 (https://archive.org/details/mayaangelousikn
o00joan/page/4). ISBN 0-19-511606-2.
4. Busby, Margaret (14 June 2002). "I am headed for higher ground" (https://www.theguardian.com/b
ooks/2002/jun/15/biography.highereducation). The Guardian. London. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
5. McWhorter, p. 35.
6. Gillespie, Marcia Ann; Butler, Rosa Johnson; Long, Richard A. (2008). Maya Angelou: A Glorious
Celebration (https://archive.org/details/mayaangelouglori00gill/page/175). New York: Random
House. p. 175 (https://archive.org/details/mayaangelouglori00gill/page/175). ISBN 978-0-385-
51108-7.
7. Als, Hilton (29 July 2002). "Songbird: Maya Angelou takes another look at herself" (http://www.ne
wyorker.com/archive/2002/08/05/020805crbo_books?currentPage=all). The New Yorker.
Retrieved 25 May 2020.
8. Manegold, Catherine S. (20 January 1993). "An Afternoon with Maya Angelou; A Wordsmith at
Her Inaugural Anvil" (https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5D81E30F933A1575
2C0A965958260&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FPeople%2FA%2FAngelou%2
C%20Maya). The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
9. Berkman, Meredith (26 February 1993). "Media star Maya Angelou" (http://www.ew.com/ew/articl
e/0,,305716,00.html). Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
10. "Maya Angelou" (https://web.archive.org/web/20100805001507/http://www.poetryfoundation.org/a
rchive/poet.html?id=180#). Poetry Foundation. Archived from the original (http://www.poetryfound
ation.org/archive/poet.html?id=180) on 5 August 2010. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
11. Lupton, p. 14.
12. Minzesheimer, Bob (26 March 2008). "Maya Angelou Celebrates Her 80 Years of Pain and Joy" (h
ttps://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-03-26-maya-angelou_N.htm). USA Today.
Retrieved 26 May 2020.
13. Connolly, Sherryl (14 April 2002). "Angelou Puts Finishing Touches on the Last of Many Memoirs"
(https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=EP4aAAAAIBAJ&pg=2450,1415376&dq). New York
Daily News. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
14. Gilmor, Susan (7 April 2013). "Angelou: Writing about Mom emotional process" (http://www.journal
now.com/relishnow/the_arts/books_and_literature/article_a103ef34-9f04-11e2-ad1f-0019bb30f31
a.html). Winston-Salem Journal. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
15. "The Winners" (https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3FxIAAAAIBAJ&pg=4569,5619173&dq=
a+song+flung+up+to+heaven&hl=en). The Vindicator. 24 February 2003. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
16. Tate, p. 158.
17. Lupton, p. 66.
18. Dunbar, Paul Laurence (1993). Joanne M. Braxton (ed.). The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence
Dunbar (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18338/18338-h/18338-h.htm). Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-8139-1438-8.
19. Angelou, p. 6.
20. Angelou, p. 210.
21. Lupton, p. 98.
22. Lupton, pp. 29–30.
23. Lupton, p. 30.
24. Gilbert, Susan (1999). "Paths to Escape" (https://archive.org/details/mayaangelousikno00joan). In
Joanne M. Braxton (ed.). Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook (https://
archive.org/details/mayaangelousikno00joan/page/104). New York: Oxford Press. pp. 104–105 (ht
tps://archive.org/details/mayaangelousikno00joan/page/104). ISBN 0-19-511606-2.
25. Cudjoe, Selwyn R. (1984). "Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement" (https://archive.or
g/details/blackwomenwriter00evan). In Mari Evans (ed.). Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A
Critical Evaluation (https://archive.org/details/blackwomenwriter00evan/page/10). Garden City,
New York: Doubleday. pp. 10–11 (https://archive.org/details/blackwomenwriter00evan/page/10).
ISBN 0-385-17124-2.
26. Walker, Pierre A. (October 1995). "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Form in Maya Angelou's I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". College Literature. 22 (3): 91–108. JSTOR 25112210 (https://w
ww.jstor.org/stable/25112210).
27. Lupton, p. 32.
28. Tate, p. 153.
29. Washington, Elsie B. (March–April 2002). "A Song Flung Up to Heaven". Black Issues Book
Review. 4 (2): 57.
30. Lupton, p. 34.
31. Sartwell, Crispin (1998). Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity
(https://archive.org/details/actlikeyouknowaf0000sart). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
p. 26 (https://archive.org/details/actlikeyouknowaf0000sart/page/26). ISBN 0-226-73527-3.
32. Hagen, pp. 6–7.
33. Rogers, Ronald R. (Spring 2006). "Journalism: The Democratic Craft". Newspaper Research
Journal: 84. doi:10.1177/073953290602700207 (https://doi.org/10.1177%2F07395329060270020
7).
34. Plimpton, George (Fall 1990). "Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction No. 119" (http://www.theparisrevi
ew.org/interviews/2279/the-art-of-fiction-no-119-maya-angelou). The Paris Review. 116. Retrieved
19 July 2013.
35. Hagen, p. 18.
36. Hubbard, Kim (6 May 2002). "A Song Flung Up to Heaven (Book)". People. 57 (17): 56.
37. "A Song Flung Up to Heaven (Book)". Kirkus Reviews. 70 (1): 25. January 2002.
38. Friedman, Paula (19 May 2002). "Books in Brief: Nonfiction". New York Times Book Review: 49.
39. Elam, Patricia (May 2002). "A Triumphant Last Song". The New Crisis. 109 (3): 49.
40. McWhorter, p. 40.
41. Strong, Amy (Spring 2006). "A Song Flung Up to Heaven (Book)". Library Journal. 127 (5): 79.

Bibliography
Angelou, Maya. (2002). A Song Flung Up to Heaven. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-553-
38203-9
Hagen, Lyman B. (1997). Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical
Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
ISBN 0-7618-0621-0
Lupton, Mary Jane (1998). Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion. Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30325-8
McWhorter, John. (2002). "Saint Maya" (http://www.tnr.com/article/saint-maya). The New Republic
226, no. 19: 35–41.
 Tate, Claudia (1999). "Maya Angelou: An Interview". In Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings: A Casebook, Joanne M. Braxton, ed. New York: Oxford Press. ISBN 0-19-511606-2

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Song_Flung_Up_to_Heaven&oldid=962744652"

This page was last edited on 15 June 2020, at 20:13 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.