Letter to My Daughter (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781400066124)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Maya Angelou 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 Angelou 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 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.

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.

"I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you."--from Letter to My Daughter

Author: Maya Angelou
ISBN-10: 1400066123
ISBN-13: 9781400066124
Publisher: Random House
Language: English
Published: 09/23/2008
Pages: 192
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 0.90d
Award: Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary_award - Honor Book

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 06/01/2008 pg. 74
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2008 pg. 921
Essence 10/01/2008 pg. 85
Booklist 09/15/2008 pg. 4
Ebony 11/01/2008 pg. 63
Library Journal 11/01/2008 pg. 64
Publishers Weekly Best Books 03/23/2009 pg. 21