All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, published in 1986, is the fifth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1962 and 1965, the book begins when Angelou is 33 years old, and recounts the years she lived in Accra, Ghana. The book, deriving its title from a Negro spiritual, begins where Angelou's previous memoir, The Heart of a Woman, ends — with the traumatic car accident involving her son Guy — and closes with Angelou returning to America.
As she had started to do in her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and continued throughout her series, Angelou upholds the long tradition of African-American autobiography. At the same time she makes a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Angelou had matured as a writer by the time she wrote Traveling Shoes, to the point that she was able to play with the form and structure of the work. As in her previous books, it consists of a series of anecdotes connected by theme. She depicts her struggle with being the mother of a grown son, and with her place in her new home.
Angelou examines many of the same subjects and themes that her previous autobiographies covered. Although motherhood is an important theme in this book, it does not overwhelm the text as it does in some of her other works. At the end of the book, she ties up the mother/son plot when she leaves her son in Ghana and returns to America. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, "Angelou's exploration of her African and African-American identities" is an important theme in Traveling Shoes. By the end of the book, Angelou comes to term with what scholar Dolly McPherson calls her "double-consciousness", the parallels and connections between the African and American parts of her history, character, and identity. Racism continues to be an important theme in this book. Journey and a sense of home is another important theme in this book; Angelou upholds the African-American tradition of the slave narrative and of her own series of autobiographies. This time she focuses on "trying to get home", or on becoming assimilated in African culture, a goal she finds unattainable.
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes received a mixed reception from critics, but most of their reviews were positive.
Background
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, published in 1986, is the fifth installment of Maya Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The success of Angelou's previous autobiographies and the publication of four volumes of poetry had brought Angelou a considerable amount of fame by 1986. And Still I Rise (1978), her third volume of poetry, reinforced Angelou's success as a writer. Her first volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
As writer Hilton Als states, 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, something she continues in Traveling Shoes. Writer Julian Mayfield, who calls her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, "a work of art that eludes description", says that Angelou's work sets a precedent not only for other Black women writers, but for the genre of autobiography as a whole.
Als called Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. 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 "be honest about it". Through the writing of her life stories, Angelou has become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. It made her, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt,... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".
According to McPherson, Traveling Shoes is "a mixture of Maya Angelou's personal recollection and a historical document of the time in which it is set", the early 1960s. This was the first time that many Black Americans, due to the independence of Ghana and other African states, as well as the emergence of African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, viewed Africa in a positive way. Ghana was "the center of an African cultural renaissance" and of Pan-Africanism during this time.
Title
According to Angelou, the title of Traveling Shoes comes from a spiritual. African-American scholar Lyman B. Hagen reports that the title comes from the spiritual "All God's Chillun Got Wings", Angelou's "clever reference"McPherson, p. 107. to her ongoing search for a home while being aware of "our ultimate home". The title demonstrates Angelou's love of African-American spirituals and deep sense of religion that appears in all of her works. Scholar Annie Gagiano agrees that Angelou draws upon African-American musical heritage in her title of the book; as she puts it, "the spiritual promises enslaved people free exploration of the celestial territory that will compensate for the restrictions suffered in life". Gagiano also says that the title is a subtle criticism of the American capitalist and racist society that makes leaving it in order to experience other cultures desirable and necessary. Critic Mary Jane Lupton finds the appearance of the word "traveling" purposeful, since it emphasizes the journey theme, one of Angelou's most important themes of the book. Like Angelou's previous volumes in her series, the title contributes to its plot and thematic impact.
British singer-songwriter Tanita Tikaram uses the title of Traveling Shoes in her song "Twist in My Sobriety" (1988) in its opening line: "All God's children need traveling shoes". Tikaram said during an interview on Polish television that she used the line because it sounded poetic and spiritual to her and because it evoked feelings of isolation. She later described "Twist in My Sobriety" as a "kind of road song" with a description of a landscape, and called the imagery in the song "very bookish". The song also fit with the imagery of the album in which it appears, Ancient Heart, which is full of Tikaram's love of literature.
Plot summary All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes takes place during Ghana in the 1960s, "a historical epoch in which independence from British colonial rule was still a new phenomenon". It begins as Angelou's previous book, The Heart of a Woman, ends: with her depiction of a serious automobile accident involving her son Guy. After spending two years in Cairo, they come to Accra to enroll Guy in the University of Ghana, and the accident occurs three days after they arrive. Following Guy's long convalescence, they remain in Ghana, Angelou for four years, from 1962 to 1965. Angelou describes Guy's recovery, including her deep depression. She is confronted by her friend Julian Mayfield, who introduces her to writer and actor Efua Sutherland, the Director of the National Theatre of Ghana. Sutherland becomes Angelou's "sister-friend" and allows her to cry out all her pain and bitterness.
Angelou finds a job at the University of Ghana and "falls in love" with the country and with its people, who remind her of African Americans she knew in Arkansas and California. As the parent of a young adult, she experiences new freedoms, respects Guy's choices, and consciously stops making her son the center of her life. She creates new friendships with her roommates and native Africans, both male and female. She becomes part of a group of American expatriates whom she calls the "Revolutionist Returnees", people such as Mayfield and his wife Ana Livia, who share her struggles.
Angelou strengthens her ties with Africa while traveling through eastern Ghanaian villages, and through her relationships with several Africans. She describes a few romantic prospects, one of which is with a man who proposes that she become his "second wife" and accept West African customs. She also becomes a supporter of Ghana president Kwame Nkrumah and close friends with tribal leader Nana Nketsia and poet Kwesi Brew. During one of her travels through West Africa, a woman identifies her as a member of the Bambara tribe based solely upon her appearance and behavior, which helps Angelou discover the similarities between her American traditions and those of her West African ancestors.
Although Angelou is disillusioned with the nonviolent strategies of Martin Luther King Jr., she and her friends commemorate his 1963 march on Washington by organizing a parallel demonstration in Ghana. The demonstration becomes a tribute to African-American W.E.B. Du Bois, who died the previous evening. A few pages later, she allies herself with Malcolm X, who visits Ghana in 1964 to elicit the support of Black world leaders. He encourages Angelou to return to America to help him coordinate his efforts, as she had done for King in The Heart of a Woman. While driving Malcolm X to the airport, he chastises her for her bitterness about Du Bois' wife Shirley Graham's lack of support for the civil rights movement.
Angelou and her roommates reluctantly hire a village boy named Kojo to do housework for them. He reminds her of her brother Bailey, and he serves as a substitute for her son Guy. She accepts a maternal role with Kojo, helping him with his schoolwork and welcoming the thanks of his family. Traveling Shoes, like Angelou's previous autobiographies, is full of conflicts with Guy, especially surrounding his independence, his separation from his mother, and his choices. When she learns that he is dating a woman older than her, she reacts with anger and threatens to strike him, but he patronizes her, calls her his "little mother", and insists upon his autonomy from her.
The African narrative in Traveling Shoes is interrupted by "a journey within a journey" when she decides to join a theatrical company in a revival of The Blacks, a play by French writer Jean Genet. As she had done in New York City and described in The Heart of a Woman, she plays the White Queen and tours Berlin and Venice with the company, which include Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, Lou Gossett Jr., and Roscoe Lee Browne. While in Berlin, she accepts a breakfast invitation with a racist, wealthy German family.
The book ends with Angelou's decision to return to America. At the airport, a group of her friends and associates, including Guy, are present to wish her farewell as she leaves. She metaphorically connects her departure from the African continent and her departure from Guy with the forced enslavement of her ancestors.
Genre All seven of Angelou's installments of her life story continue the long tradition of African-American autobiography. Starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou made a deliberate attempt while writing her books to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development has often led reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction. In a 1989 interview, Angelou stated that she was the only "serious" writer to choose the genre to express herself. According to Lupton, Angelou does not report one person's story, but the collective's. She represents the convention in African-American autobiography, which serves as a public gesture that speaks for an entire group of people. As Angelou had done in her previous autobiographies, she uses elements of the African-American slave narrative, including as Lupton puts it, "the journey, the quest for freedom; [and] empathy for the horrors suffered by slaves".