The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou

First published: 1981

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: Late 1950’s and early 1960’s

Locale: San Francisco, California; New York; Cairo, Egypt; Ghana

Principal Personages:

• Maya Angelou, an African American woman who moves and changes careers frequently
• Guy Johnson, Angelou’s teenage son
• Billie Holiday, a legendary jazz singer
• Godfrey Cambridge, a New York taxi driver, comedian, and producer
• John Killens, a writer and the founder of the Harlem Writers Guild
• Rosa Guy, a Harlem novelist
• Thomas Allen, a bail bondsman and Angelou’s fiancé
• Vusumzi Make, an African freedom fighter and Angelou’s husband
• Abbey Lincoln, a jazz singer and composer

Form and Content

The Heart of a Woman is the fourth book in Maya Angelou’s series of memoirs, which includes I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). The author’s fourth memoir chronicles the years 1957-1963 and finds Angelou in transition, moving across the country to New York City to join John Killens in the Harlem Writers Guild and hoping to hone her writing skills after years of performing as a singer and dancer.

Beginning the story in California, Angelou and her twelve-year-old son, Guy, find themselves unexpectedly entertaining a houseguest, the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday. Nearing the end of her life, Holiday seeks solace and comfort in the normalcy of Angelou’s life, eating Maya’s fried chicken and singing Guy to sleep with a repertoire of jazz standards. Though Holiday plays the role of spoiled diva and rants in a string of freestyle curses during her stay, Angelou chooses to look beyond the rough image and instead appreciate the tenderness Holiday displays in her interactions with Guy.

New York City offered new opportunities and challenges for Angelou, including the production of Cabaret for Freedom that she staged with Godfrey Cambridge. This fund-raising venture brings her to the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who recruits her to succeed Bayard Rustin as the northern coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a post she holds for six months. Meanwhile, Angelou attends weekly meetings of the Harlem Writers Guild and suffers through the initial critical comments of her fellow members. As an activist, Angelou helps organize a demonstration at the United Nations, protesting the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Republic of the Congo.

New York City not only provides the background for Angelou’s creative endeavors and civil rights work but also plays an important role in her love life. Thomas Allen, a bail bondsman, strikes her fancy. He also suits her fantasies, as Angelou imagines herself as a domestic goddess, preparing delicious, wholesome meals in her kitchen while waiting for her man to come home. As her teenage son grows older, Angelou dreams of a steady male influence in the home, and this dream may be the impetus for her unlikely love affair with a man who gives her confiscated luggage as a wedding gift.

Fate steps in to deliver Angelou from her engagement to Allen. At a party one night, Angelou meets Vusumzi (Vus) Make, an African freedom fighter. A rotund, well-dressed, patriarchal man of Africa, Make utilizes his considerable charms to woo Angelou. Though they never actually have a wedding ceremony, the two live as husband and wife. Vus takes Guy under his wing and begins to teach him what it mean to be an African man. All seems to be going well, but little by little telltale signs of Make’s infidelity arise. To make matters worse, the bills are not being paid. Angelou confronts Vus with both of these problems, and her solution is for the family to move to Cairo.

Once in Egypt, Angelou falls in love with Africa but finds herself to be a stranger in a strange land. Her ignorance of the language and Islamic traditions puts her at the mercy of a male-dominated society. Not surprisingly, the problems she and Vus experienced in New York follow them to Cairo, and Angelou decides that she must somehow find work and pay her own way. This determination leads her to accept an associate editorship on the staff of the Arab Observer, becoming the only woman editor in an office of men.

Ultimately, Angelou’s upbringing as an African American woman is revealed to have made her too strong to bow down to an African man’s ego. While Make continues chasing other women, Angelou begins to plan an exit strategy. She leaves Vus and is vindicated by the community, recognized as a woman wronged. She and her son move to Ghana in order to enroll Guy at the university there. While in Ghana, Guy is seriously injured in an automobile accident. The Heart of a Woman concludes with Guy leaving his mother’s home in Ghana to attend college.

Critical Context

As a writer and poet, Angelou has justly earned a place in the pantheon of American authors. Her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, caused a sensation in the late 1960’s and was nominated for a National Book Award. At the time, it was not recognized as the first of what would ultimately be a series of memoirs. Over the intervening years, no book in the series has garnered the acclaim of the original. However, as time has passed, The Heart of a Woman has grown in reputation as perhaps the second-best of the series.

Angelou is at times less than forthcoming as an autobiographer. Her books seem to be composed of vignettes woven together to form an attractive pattern, rather than seamless tapestries. Her story is thus a quilt, and pieces of the quilt are selected for their colors, their textures, and their harmony in complementing the other pieces. Angelou makes her life’s story mysterious by omitting motivations and disguising connections. One minute, she is a singer and dancer; the next, she is producing a major fund-raising event in New York City. The transition is unexplained. Similarly, as a woman with no college education whose background is in singing, dancing, and acting, she nevertheless becomes the administrator for the northern office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The details remain hidden and perhaps are better left unknown.

Bibliography

Blundell, Janet Boyarin. Review of The Heart of a Woman, by Maya Angelou. Library Journal, October 1, 1981, p. 1919. Finds the text insightful and skillfully narrated, focusing on her familial relationships as providing the “emotional center of the book.”

Lupton, Mary Jane. “Singing the Black Mother: Maya Angelou and Autobiographical Continuity.” Black American Literature Forum 24, no. 2 (Summer, 1990): 257-277. Examines the consistent exploration of motherhood—both literal and metaphoical—throughout Angelou’s autobiographical series.

McWhorter, John. “Saint Maya.” Review of A Song Flung Up to Heaven, by Maya Angelou. The New Republic, May 20, 2002. Dismisses Angelou’s autobiographical writings as conveying “a contrived arrogance” to her readership.

Neubauer, Carol E. “Displacement and Autobiographical Style in Maya Angelou’s The Heart of a Woman.” Black American Literature Forum 17, no. 3 (Autumn, 1983): 123-129. Examines the interplay of fantasy, truth, and self-knowledge in Angelou’s representation of her life and experience.

O’Neale, Sondra. “Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou’s Continuing Autobiography.” In Black Women Writers, 1950-1980: A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Contrasts Angelou’s prose memoirs with her poetic style; emphasizes the literary lineage of the prose and Angelou’s mastery of plot structure.