With a pen that is mightier than the sword, Maya Angelou takes us on an extraordinary journey.
WE Edinburgh and The Lothian's Branch of the Women's Equality Party invite you to join for our next 'Book Club', on Thursday 24th June at 19:30 via Zoom.
We will travel with Maya Angelou as she shares her path to living well and with meaning in this absorbing book of personal essays. Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.
Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Maya to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: 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.
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 endeavour,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice, Maya writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.
Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches: it is a book to cherish, savour, re-read, and share.
Letter to My Daughter is her third book of essays. She was recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Women of Colour, and had become "a major autobiographical voice of the time". Maya had no daughters herself, but was inspired to write Letter as she was going through 20 years of notes and essay ideas, some of which were written for her friend Oprah Winfrey. Maya wrote the book for the thousands of women who saw her as a mother figure, and to share the wisdom gained throughout her long life.
You are welcome to join us whether or not you have had time to read the book.
Meeting ID: 892 2806 2926