Review by beckyyreadss - Mom & Me & Mom

beckyyreadss 's review for:

Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou

4.0

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

I decided to read this book because I bought a poster with 100 books to read in your lifetime. I enjoyed the first book in the series and wanted to carry on with it. I'm just inspired and in awe of her. I knew I wanted to carry on with this series and learn more about her life. This book is about being the daughter of Vivian Baxter.

In this book, Maya Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite sized belied her larger-than-life presence – a presence absent during much of Maya’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Maya for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never been told before. In Mom & Me & Mom, Maya dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.

Usually I struggle with non-fiction books, I find them slow, boring and I can never really dig into them and thoroughly enjoy it. However, this book I managed to enjoy. This book still discusses serious and difficult topics but it’s a journey of her rocky relationship with her mother and the advice that her mother gave her difficult times. It’s almost as if she was writing about a fiction character in a storyline that I had to remind myself several times that she was the main character she is talking about and that she is talking about her life. Seeing her relationship grow with her mother and how she felt during some pivotal times, I just wanted to hug her the whole way through this book.

Some of the events had already been told, so I found myself skimming through the first twenty-five percent as it had already been described and was a bit rough and dark of the childhood of Maya. Which I found is needed but we already knew about it from the first couple of books.

Overall, I love this series and I'm in awe of Maya Angelou, I would love to hug her or even have met her. I think everyone should read this series and know Maya’s story; it is very important.

Content Warnings