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Mom & Me & Mom  By  cover art

Mom & Me & Mom

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
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Publisher's summary

The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple best-selling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother.

For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence - a presence absent during much of Angelou’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 Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou 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.

Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.

©2013 Maya Angelou (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Angelou is one of the geniuses of Afro-American serial autobiography." ( The New York Times)
"To say that Angelou is a living legend is in no way an exaggeration. [She is] one of the great voices of contemporary literature." ( The Voice)
"Maya Angelou regards the world and herself with intelligence and wit; she records the events of her life with style and grace." ( The Washington Post Book World)

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What listeners say about Mom & Me & Mom

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Never Enough Mom Books

The world will never have enough excellent books about Mom. This is one of them and it needs to be made into a movie! Who knew? I won't tell you the surprises, just leave it to you to read this short little gem. This is for all those imperfect moms out there and their children who will get it right, eventually, because of the bigness of their love. This was food for the soul for me because I have teens right now, and somehow feel I will never get it right again,which is a weird place to be. Now I have renewed hope.

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21 people found this helpful

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WONERFUL READ

If you could sum up Mom & Me & Mom in three words, what would they be?

HEART WARMING , FUNNY EMOTIONAL

What did you like best about this story?

THE TRUTH OF IT ALL

What does Maya Angelou bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

REALISM

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Her connection with her Mother at the end.

Any additional comments?

This truly is an awesome books for the ladies that may or may not have close realationships with their mothers. it opens the listners eyes to a world inside Maya Angelous world that you would have never known extisted.

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14 people found this helpful

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Mother "Lady's" influence on Angelou's development

Maya Angelou has written another in a series of autobiographical books about her life. In this one, she describes the complicated and unpredictable relationship with her mother, whom she referred to for many years as “Lady.”

In her hallmark terse style of writing, she describes how she and her brother were sent to her paternal grandmother’s in Arkansas for several years, where she found a sense of security, even though recovering from the trauma of childhood rape.

There came a time when she and her brother were unexpectedly sent back to live with their mother—something that young Maya was not prepared for. But, Lady, their mother, seemed determined to find a way for herself and Maya to achieve a close mother-daughter relationship (often in spite of themselves) as they had to get to know, and get used to each other. Lady was determined to show Maya that even though she had not been present in her early life, she would never let her down after that. However, she tended to use unconventional--but often wise--ways of offering that support.

This book explores the journey—often filled with dangerous, unexpected circumstances—through which Maya and her mother learned to find a kind of trust and caring for each other. Lady had had a very involved--even exciting--existence apart from having children, and seemed to have to make room in her life for Maya and her brother. But over time, mother and daughter come to care deeply about each other and form a bond that eventually leads Maya finally to call her “Mother.”

Clearly many of the incidents in this book—often involving danger of various kinds—were influential in shaping Maya Angelou’s subsequent life. Her mother taught her to protect herself, but also to live her life proudly, to the fullest and never doubt herself. This is a very interesting story—one courageously told by one of America’s most beloved and respected writers. Recommend!

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10 people found this helpful

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Unforgettable person

Maya Angelou’s mother is remarkable for her love, her tenacity, her ability to command respect, and for being willing to go where no woman, and certainly no African American woman, has gone before. The story of her relationship with Maya is deeply moving and contains one powerful story after another, each told honestly and without sentimentality. It held my attention and I found myself retelling and discussing stories with my husband as I read. It isn’t as crafted a work as the famous “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” - perhaps, unfolding over a lifetime, it is by nature harder to shape. But worth reading? Powerful? Oh yes.

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Inspiring Triumph

a beautiful memoir of an incredible woman's struggle with life, and her relationship with the mother who once abandoned her. I enjoyed listening to every minute.

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5 people found this helpful

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This book has liberated me to life!!!!

The relationship between Ms Angelou and Ms Baxter, have showed me what true love is. It doesn't bind, or hold, it liberates.

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Re-told but Beautiful Nonetheless

If you’ve read Angelous’ other autobiographies then you’ve likely heard this stories. Beautifully written, and I cried like I had heard them for the first time, but to be fair, I wouldn’t have picked this book had I known that there would be no new stories told. Regardless, her life is worth re-telling in every way possible.

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Too choppy

What disappointed you about Mom & Me & Mom?

This was like bits and pieces of lectures that someone told her to put into book format. I moderate a Biography/Memoir book club and found I had to do a fair amount of research in order to piece together the stories offered in this book. Also, after listening to several videos where Maya performed several of her poems, I thought the audio version of the book would be better than the text version. Not true. She read in quite a monotone. I left the audio version and finished the book on my Kindle. I would not recommend this book unless you have already read all of her other books and read the Wikipedia version of her biography. It's worth the effort. I'm glad I finished it. But she could have done a much better job of pulling the stories together.

How could the performance have been better?

It was read in a monotone. Put some feeling into it.

What character would you cut from Mom & Me & Mom?

I would cut the brother. She left out too much about him. When she mentioned that he had a drug problem, it was a total surprise. I had to do separate research to figure out how he got from a wonderful brother to a druggie.

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Amazed!

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing how Maya Angelou lived, she really l LIVED. I am inspired.

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What An Interesting Life❣️

I’ve always admired Maya Angelou from afar; TV Appearances, brushes with her poetry, accolades from others.
What a WONDERFULLY Interesting, Inspiring, Encouraging and, at times, Joyfully Humorous narration❣️
Hearing the narration in the Author’s Own Voice added so much more to the story, which I found very Inspirational and Touching. ❤️
Value added and both money and time well spent!

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