Books with title Maya Angelou

In rich first-person narrative, Dogtown tells the strange, dark story of a wilderness ghost town that has enthralled artists, writers, and eccentrics—and of a brutal murder committed there. Documenting its history and lore, East explores the possibility that certain landscapes wield their own unique power. The area known as Dogtown—an isolated colonial ruin and the surrounding 3,600-acre woodland in historic seaside Gloucester, Massachusetts—has always exerted a powerful influence over artists, writers, eccentrics, and nature lovers. But its history is woven through with tales of hallucinations, pirates, ghost sightings, witches, drifters, and violence. A 1984 murder there continues to loom large in Gloucester’s collective psyche: a mentally disturbed local man crushed the skull of a schoolteacher as she walked the woods. In alternating chapters, East interlaces the story of this murder with Dogtown’s bizarre history. The colonial settlement was a haven for former slaves, prostitutes, and witches until it was abandoned 180 years ago. Since then, Dogtown has inspired various people, including a millionaire who carved Protestant precepts into its boulders; the Modernist painter Marsden Hartley, whom Dogtown saved from a crippling depression; the drug-addled poet Charles Olson; a coven of witches that still holds ceremonies there today; and the murderer, who spent much of his life in Dogtown’s woods. The murder tapped a vein of thinking that has quietly endured in Gloucester for centuries: some people rallied around Dogtown protectively, but others blamed it for the tragedy. In luminous, insightful prose, Dogtown tells an evocative tale of a community both haunted and bound together by its love of this strange, forgotten place and its denizens.

From School Library Journal Grade 6 Up-This well-written, detailed look at Angelou's life is not a sugar-coated biography. Using the writer's own words taken from interviews and her autobiographical works, Shapiro shows the pain and disillusionment that helped to shape this courageous and talented woman. Angelou overcame poverty, racism, a dysfunctional family, rape, unwed motherhood, and even prostitution to become the successful and respected poet, writer, actress, and university professor that she is today. Black-and-white photographs liberally placed throughout the book show life in the segregated south in the '30s and '40s, including the scene of a lynching. Other photos show the subject at different stages of her life. For younger readers, try the gentler Maya Angelou (Millbrook, 1994) by Sarah E. King. Eunice Weech, M.L. King Elementary School, Urbana, IL Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.