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The Heart Of A Woman

© Nichel Anderson

The extraordinary poet and literary icon, Maya Angelou, captivates us once more in the tale of her life story, The Heart Of A Woman. She was born April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri to Baidley and Vivian Johnson. In this chronicle of her life starting in 1957, Maya has just returned from a European tour as a premier dancer with Porgy and Bess. Later on she decides to leave California with her young son, Guy, and heads to New York City where she attends the Harlem Writers Guild. Here she gains in-depth literary advice from some well known artists. Maya is opened to a new area of her own many talents from singing to acting.

Maya takes the lead part in Genet's "The Blacks" which included James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Godfrey Cambridge, Roscoe Lee Brown, Raymond St. Jacques, and Lou Gossett. She also wrote the music for the production, which was enormously well received. Maya's focus was on the Black American's struggle. She organized a benefit cabaret for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in which she was appointed the Martin Luther King's Northern Coordinator.

Eventually, her personal life takes center stage and she leaves New York City after being swept off her feet by a South African Freedom figher named Vusumzi Make. They travel to London and then to Cairo - where she becomes the first editor of the English-language magazine. With her career rising, her personal life continues to deteriorate. However, Maya sustains her main focus within and pulls out strength while her failing marriage to Vusmuzi Make sheds no hope. Insteads, she concentrates on her connection with her son and she finds new ways to express her bond with Guy.

At times Maya brings the reader into her own concept of what is really our life purpose. Maya has an phenomenal way of showing emotion through her writing that makes the reader reflect how life sometimes knocks us off our feet - but we must get back up. One of these ways is by forgiving all and learning from life lessons. This, in part, will bring out the very best in oneself: Maya Angelou delivers this in her autobiography. As in The Heart of the Woman, we all need to forgive ourselves as well as others and take life as it comes from within the heart. As James Balwin stated, "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."