A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. Set between 1965 and 1968, 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" 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", 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 was written in 2002, sixteen years after her previous autobiography, Angelou had experienced great fame and recognition as an author and poet. She recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's in 1961. She had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. Angelou was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". She had also become, as reviewer Richard Long stated, "a major autobiographical voice of the time".

The title of Song was based upon the same poem, by African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the basis of her first autobiography. Like Angelou's other autobiographies, the book was greeted with both praise and disappointment, although reviews were generally positive. Reviewers praised Angelou for "the culmination of a unique autobiographical achievement", while others criticized her for coming across as "smug".McWhorter, p. 35. The 2002 spoken word album by the same name, based on the book, received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.

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. 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". 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. Her recitation resulted in more fame and recognition for her previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, economic, and educational boundaries".

By 2002, when Song was published, Angelou had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. She was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". She had also become "a major autobiographical voice of the time". 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. Writer Julian Mayfield, who called her first autobiography "a work of art that eludes description", stated that Angelou's series set 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 to "be honest about it".Lupton, p. 14. 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. 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. Although Song was considered the final installment in her series of autobiographies, Angelou continued writing about her life story through essays, and at the age of 85, published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom (2013), which focused on her relationship with her mother. The spoken word album based on Song and narrated by Angelou received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003.

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".Tate, p. 158. The caged bird, a symbol for the chained slave, is an image Angelou uses throughout all her writings.Lupton, p. 66.

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.

Plot summary A Song Flung Up to Heaven, which takes place between 1965 and 1968, 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" 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".Angelou, p. 6. 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 she is genuinely disappointed that it does not.

At one point, Angelou's lover from Ghana, whom she calls "the African", arrives in Los Angeles to take her back to Accra. Angelou enlists the aid 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. 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", 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", 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".Angelou, p. 210.

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.Lupton, p. 98. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development has often led reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction.Lupton, pp. 29–30. Angelou stated in a 1989 interview that she was the only "serious" writer to choose the genre to express herself.Lupton, p. 30. As critic Susan Gilbert stated, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but the collective's. 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. 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", which she continued throughout her series, including her final autobiography.

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.Lupton, p. 32. In a 1983 interview with African-American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou called her books autobiographies.Tate, p. 153. 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'". 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.