Book of the week-Mom & me and Mom

Explore the healing and love that evolved between two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou's rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.

“Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

You just read a quote from Maya Angelou's Mom & Me & Mom. This page-turner from 2013 is the seventh and final book in her series of autobiographies. Interestingly, the book was published shortly before Mother's Day and Angelou's 85th birthday.

As you must've gathered, this book carries the beauty of motherly relations, and how them being in any form can turn out to be perfect.

Since it's her life story by the author herself, you are sure to get touched by every passing word in Angelou's divergent style of writing. She always challenged the usual structure of autobiographies by changing, critiquing, and expanding the genre. Moreover, reviewers are ever bent to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction, which means this book will bring in an experience like none other.

Not to give you much spoilers, but just the plot, this book is the first to put light on Angelou's relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter. Through the flips, you'll understand Baxter's behavior, especially why she abandoned both of her kids and why Angelou chose to not call her mother.

Wait a min tho it's not "all sad", Mom & Me & Mom also chronicles Angelou's happy, heartwarming reunion and reconciliation with Baxter. The reconciling which took years to occur, between the “Lady” and Maya, revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Which delved into Angelou's most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships.

Before you go, here's another piece from this beaut...

“I missed you but I knew you were in the best place for you. I would have been a terrible mother. I had no patience. Maya, when you were about two years old, you asked me for something. I was busy talking, so you hit my hand, and I slapped you off the porch without thinking. It didn’t mean I didn’t love you; it just meant I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I’m explaining to you, not apologizing. We would have all been sorry had I kept you.”