Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 24, 2016

Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies include racism, identity, family, and travel. Angelou (1928–2014), an African-American writer, achieved critical acclaim for her first of seven autobiographies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). That book and the second in the series, Gather Together in My Name (1974), are about the lives of Black women in America. Her autobiographies all have the same structure, a narrative of how she coped within the larger white society she inhabited. In her third autobiography, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), she showed the integrity of the African-American character as she experienced more positive interactions with whites. The series continues with The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and Mom & Me & Mom (2013). Angelou's autobiographies take place from Arkansas to Africa and back to the US, and span almost thirty years, from the start of World War II to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.