Maya Angelou might be best known as a poet, but her newest work, Letter to My Daughter, combines styles and voices. Part autobiography, part how-to, Letter to My Daughter is dedicated to the many daughters in her world.

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”

An excerpt:

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.

“We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”

For more excerpts, CLICK HERE.

For more about the book, CLICK HERE.

David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest won him accolades as “the voice of Generation X,” kind of like  Seattle-based rock star Kurt Cobain. Both were known to be tortured souls whose lives ended in suicide.
His father (Wallace’s) said the writer had been suffering from depression at the time of his death.
To learn more, CLICK HERE.