Mom & Me & Mom (2013) is the seventh and final book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. The book was published shortly before Mother's Day and Angelou's 85th birthday. It focuses, for the first time in her books, on Angelou's relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter. The book explains Baxter's behavior, especially Baxter's abandonment of Angelou and Angelou's older brother when they were young children, and fills in "what are possibly the final blanks in Angelou's eventful life". The book also chronicles Angelou's reunion and reconciliation with Baxter.
Mom & Me & Mom is an overview of Angelou's life and revisits many of the same anecdotes she relates in her previous books. The first section, entitled "Mom & Me", centers on Angelou's early years, before the age of 17, and her transition from resentment and distrust of her mother to acceptance, support, and love towards her. After Baxter helps her through the birth of her son, Angelou goes from calling Baxter "Lady" to "Mom". In the book's second section, entitled "Me & Mom", Angelou chronicles the unconditional love, support, and assistance they gave to each other, as Baxter helps her through single motherhood, a failed marriage, and career ups and downs. As she had begun to do in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and continued throughout her series, Angelou upheld the long traditions 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. She had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women. Angelou 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".
Like Angelou's previous autobiographies, Mom & Me & Mom received mostly positive reviews. Most reviewers state that Baxter is presented well in the book. Angelou celebrates the unconditional acceptance and support of her mother, who comes across "as a street-smart, caring woman who shaped the author's life and legacy by her words and example". The book has been called "a profoundly moving tale of separation and reunion, and an ultimately optimistic portrait of the maternal bond".
Pictures of Angelou, Baxter, and members of their family appear through the book. An audio version, read by Angelou, was released in CD form and as a digital download.
Background Mom & Me & Mom (2013) is the seventh of Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies. It was completed 11 years after the publication of her previous autobiography, A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and more than forty years after she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Mom & Me & Mom, in which Angelou relates her relationship with her mother Vivian Baxter, was published shortly before Mother's DayDriscoll, Molly (13 May 2013). "Maya Angelou: 'Mom & Me & Mom' explores a powerful mother-daughter dynamic". The Christian Science Monitor. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved 25 February 2014. and Angelou's 85th birthday. In the time period between the publication of her sixth and seventh autobiographies, Angelou was the first African-American woman and living poet selected by Sterling Publishing, who placed 25 of her poems in a volume of their Poetry for Young People series in 2004."Maya Angelou Still Rises". CBS News. 11 February 2009. Retrieved 25 February 2014. In 2009, Angelou wrote "We Had Him", a poem about Michael Jackson, which was read by Queen Latifah at his funeral,Harris, Dana (7 July 2009. "Michael Jackson's mega-farewell". Variety. Retrieved 25 February 2014. and wrote "His Day is Done", a poem honoring Nelson Mandela after his death in 2013.Eby, Margaret (12 December 2013). "Maya Angelou pens poem for Nelson Mandela: 'His Day is Done'", New York Daily News. Retrieved 25 February 2014. She published a book of essays, Letter to My Daughter, in 2009, and two cookbooks, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table in 2004 and Great Food, All Day Long in 2010. During this period, she was awarded the Lincoln Medal in 2008Metzler, Natasha T. (1 June 2008). "Stars perform for president at Ford's Theatre gala" , Fox News. Associated Press. Retrieved 25 February 2014. and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.Norton, Jerry (15 February 2011). "Obama awards freedom medals to Bush, Merkel, Buffett", Reuters. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
Angelou had become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women"Maya Angelou", Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 25 February 2014. and was, as scholar Joanne Braxton has stated, "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".Braxton, Joanne M. (1999). "Symbolic Geography and Psychic Landscapes: A Conversation with Maya Angelou". In Joanne M. Braxton,Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook. New York: Oxford Press, p. 4. . She had also become "a major autobiographical voice of the time".Long, Richard (November 2005). "Maya Angelou". Smithsonian 36 (8): 84. 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.Als, Hilton (5 August 2002). "Songbird: Maya Angelou takes another look at herself", The New Yorker. Retrieved 25 February 2014. 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. Scholar Hilton 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.
For the first time, Angelou focuses on her relationship with her mother in this book, and fills in what reviewer Fiona Sturges calls "possibly the final blanks in Angelou's eventful life". According to Candace Smith, who reviewed the audio version of the book for Booklist, Angelou and Baxter's relationship was "touched upon but never fully described" in Caged Bird, but Mom & Me & Mom explains Baxter's actions, especially the reasons she sent Angelou and her older brother Bailey to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The book also chronicles Angelou's initial uncomfortable reunion and eventual reconciliation with Baxter.Smith, Candace (1 June 2013). "Mom & Me & Mom." Booklist, 109 (19–20), p. 120. Pictures of Baxter, Angelou, and their family and close friends appear throughout the book and enhance the text.Bush, Vanessa (15 February 2013). "Mom & Me & Mom". Booklist 109 (12), p. 17. An audio version of the book, read by Angelou, was released in CD form and as a digital download.Kingsbury, Pam (15 June 2013). "Mom & Me & Mom". Library Journal, 138 (11).
Angelou explains in the book's prologue why she wrote the book, which was to explain how she became, despite being born poor, Black, and female, a renowned author and poet. The book is divided into two sections: the first 13 chapters are grouped into the first section, called "Mom & Me", and the remaining chapters make up the second section, called "Me & Mom". Angelou thanks her mother, "who generously taught me how to be a mother", which allowed her to dedicate the book to her son, Guy Bailey Johnson, whom she calls "one of the most courageous and generous men I know".Angelou, dedication page.
Plot summary
Angelou's mother, Vivian Baxter, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, at the turn of the 20th century, the oldest of six children of her Trinidadian father and her Irish mother. Baxter's family was violent, yet religious and musical. Baxter, "who was to remain a startling beauty",Angelou, p. 8. met Angelou's father, Bailey Johnson, a dietitian and cook, in 1924, upon Johnson's return from serving in World War I. They married and moved to California, where Angelou and her older brother, Bailey, Jr., were born. When she was three and Bailey was five, their parents divorced and sent their children, by train with identification tags and no adult supervision, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas.
Angelou and her brother lived with their grandmother and her son, Uncle Willie, until Angelou was thirteen. They briefly visited their mother in St. Louis, but at the age of eight Angelou was raped, and in retaliation the rapist was killed by members of her family. She felt so guilty for his death that she chose to stop talking to everyone but Bailey for several years. They were sent back to Stamps, but when Bailey turned 14, they returned to their mother's care in San Francisco for his protection. At first, Angelou was resistant and angry towards her mother for abandoning her and Bailey, choosing to call her "Lady", and it took her several years to warm to her.
One summer, Bailey and Angelou made separate trips to visit their father in San Diego, in what Kirkus Reviews called "a seriously ugly meeting"."Mom & Me & Mom" (15 February 2013). Kirkus Reviews, 81 (4). Angelou did not get along with her stepmother. During her visit, her father took Angelou to Mexico; he became so drunk, she had to drive him back across the border, even though she had never driven a car before. When they returned to San Diego, Angelou's stepmother cut Angelou with a pair of scissors during an argument. Angelou chose to live on the streets until her wound was healed. When she returned to San Francisco, she decided she wanted a job as a streetcar conductor; at first, she was not hired because she was Black, but upon her mother's encouragement, she was persistent with the streetcar company until she became the first Black to work on the railway. Baxter provided security by following Angelou with a pistol.
When Angelou was seventeen, she became pregnant after a one-time encounter with a neighbor boy. She told Bailey, who advised her to hide it from their mother and stepfather until she graduated from high school. Three weeks before the birth of her son, she told them. Baxter's reaction was to run a bath; as Angelou said, "In our family, for some unknown reason, we consider it an honor to run a bath, to put in bubbles and good scents for another person".Angelou, p. 73. Baxter helped Angelou through the birth; from then on, Angelou began to call her "Mother", and later, "Mom".
The rest of the book consists of a series of anecdotes about the ways that Baxter supported and accepted her daughter and continued to win her love and respect, through unwed motherhood, a failed marriage, and career ups and downs. Angelou relates several stories of Baxter, including her support of Angelou as an independent single mother, her life-saving intervention after a jealous ex-boyfriend beat Angelou, and her initial resistance and then acceptance of Angelou's first marriage to Greek sailor Tosh Angelos. Angelou recounts the beginning of her career as a dancer and entertainer in San Francisco; Baxter cared for her grandson as Angelou traveled Europe as a member of the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. Angelou felt so guilty about leaving her son that she returned and resumed her relationship with her mother and son, eventually moving to New York City and starting a new career as a writer and poet.