Gather Together in My Name (Paperback)

What I know of Maya Angelou is that she is a celebrated author who has written volumes of poetry and autobiography and that she seems to be a friend and favorite guest of Oprah Winfrey. The woman she is now, from all that I can tell, is a beautiful soul. What I didn't know was the experiences of her life and how she came to be the woman she is. These series of autobiographies tell of Angelou's life and the reality far surpasses anything I could have imagined.

In this volume alone Maya worked as a dancer, a cook (multiple times), a Madam, a waitress, and briefly as a prostitute. The power comes in the how, the why, and in the telling of the story of these jobs and in Maya's raising of her son and interactions with her family, co-workers, false friends, and with men.

Each volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography is fairly slim (this one was 181 pages), but the life she has lived is so fascinating that I would highly recommend reading it (any of them). It will not take up much of your time, but it shows the life of a young woman growing up and living a life uncommon.

Summary:
"Gather Together in My Name" is an autobiograpghy of Maya Angelou and how she as an independent young teenager girl around 17, struggle her life in San Fran. On her journey she had to find jobs that could support her and her son, Guy. Through her experience as a teenager, she had to deal with racism, looking for jobs, and watching out for dangerous men. Ever since she starts working in resturants, she falls in love with couple of guys and had later dumped her and used her. Some of the men even made her became a prositute so that they can get her money out of her. After getting tricked and get fooled by "pimps," she return to her normal life and through her obstacles and experiences, she realized that she was not just a little girl, but a woman.

Important Scence:
The most important scence that really captured me was when Maya met 2 white women in a store in downtown of Arkansas shopping for her clothes. One of the white woman was being rude to her as if Maya was a pet, yelling and screaming with disrespectful manners. The white woman says, "How do you pronoun your name, gal? Speak up!" Maya mentioned,"In that moment I became rootless, nameless, pastless." So Maya decide to talked back and said, "is Miss Johnson. If you have occasion to use my name, which I seriously doubt, I advise you to address me as Miss Johnson. For if I need to allude to your pitiful selves, I shall call you Miss Idiot..."(pg. 76-77) The two white women were speechless. I thought it was a courageous thing to do because Maya stood up and say what she beleived in and nobody could take her rights away from that.

Opinions:
After I finished reading this book, it really helped me to understand how a teenager's life can be when you have to face many obstacles and many experiences. Also it really helped me to understand that life is not easy for teenagers. I really liked this book and how it influence me a lot.

Reommendations:
I would want to recommend this book to my peers, because some of my friends I know are mostly teenagers under pressure of living in a world of indenpendence. I wouldn't recommend this to adults, because I guess most of adults have already challenge obstacles and what it is like when they were teenagers. I would also recommend this book to other schools, because the book deals with racism and deals with a lot of history.

Ponder This:
a.) Keep in mind that during this time period, most men are "pimps/players."
b.) Watch for setting, b/c the authors travel a lot in this book.
c.) Also keep in mind that the author falls in love a lot.