"Thoroughly enjoyable . . . an important document drawing more much-needed attention to the hidden history of a people both African and American."--Los Angeles Times Book Review. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Maya Angelou, author of the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name and Heart of a Woman, has also written four collections of poetry: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, And Still I Rise and Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? In theater, she produced, directed and starred in Cabaret for Freedom, in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New York's Village Gate, starred in Genet's The Blacks at the St. Mark's Playhouse and adapted Sophocles' Ajax, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974. In film and television, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film, Georgia, Georgia and wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life. In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she became the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1975 Maya Angelou received the Ladies' Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in Communications. She has received numerous honorary degrees, was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, and was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford to the American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. One of the few woman members of the Directors Guild, Maya Angelou is author of the television screenplays I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Sisters. Most recently, she wrote the lyrics for the musical King: Drum Major for Love, and was both host and writer for a series of documentaries, Maya Angelou's America: A Journey of the Heart, along with Guy Johnson. Maya Angelou is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.