Description

Easton Press leather edition of Maya Angelou's "Singin' and Swingin and gettin' Merry Like Christmas," a COLLECTOR'S edition, published in 2006. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has camel tan moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, a satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges----in FINE condition---opened from SHRINK WRAP for photos. Maya Angelou, who lived from 1928--2014, was an American poet, novelist, and civil rights activist. Her first novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," tells of her life up to age of 17. When Maya was four and her brother five years old and living in California, their father put them on a train and sent them to their grandmother, Anna Henderson, in STAMPS, ARKANSAS. They arrived on a train---without adults- and their grandmother raised the two children who were contented and happy in the highly segregated small town---because the grandmother was a fine lady and successful business woman. "Singin' and Swingin" is the third book of her memoirs, set between 1949 and 1955. In this volume, Angelou describes her struggles to support her young son, form meaningful relationships, and forge a successful career. Angelous's stereotypes about race and race relations are challenged. She changed her name from Marguerite Johnson to Maya Angelou for professional reasons. Her young son changed his name from Clyde to Guy. Angelou wrote that her salary from the little real estate office and the dress shop downtown barely paid the rent and my son's baby sitter. "Courtesy cost nothing as long as one had dignity. My Arkansas grandmother, Annie Henderson, had taught me that." "I read Thorne Smith to Clyde and recited Paul Dunbar's poems to him in a thick Black Southern accent. My life was an assemblage of strivings and my energies were directed toward acquiring more than the basic needs. In the record store, I lived fantasy lives through the maudlin melodies of the forties and fifties. Louise Cox and her mother were practicing Christian Scientists. I accepted an invitation to visit their church. No stamping of feet or clapping of hands accompanied the worship. For the whole service, time seemed suspended and reality was just beyond the simple and expensive heavy doors." Angelous wrote: "Because I was tall, I should be very grand, possibly from a long line of African kings. And I had studied African dance with Pearl Primus. I did not know African, but I did speak Spanish. Later as a singer and entertainer, Maya visited Yugoslavia, Greece, Tel Aviv and the 'dark continent'---Africa! In Egypt, "A Pharaonic tomb rose above my head and I shivered. Israelites and Nubians and slaves from Carthage and Mesopotamia has built it, sweating and bleeding, and finally dying for the mass of stones which would become in the twentieth century no more than the focus for tourists' cameras. After a few weeks in Rome, Maya and Clyde returned to the U.S. when her mother became sick. Then Maya received a telegram from Hawaii that read: "OPENING FOR YOU THE COULDS. $350 DOLLAR WEEKLY, FOUR WEEKS. TWO WEEK OPTION. TRANSPORTATION AND ACCOMMODATION YOU AND SON. REPLY AT ONCE. In 1991, Angelou recited her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of fellow Arkansan, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since ROBERT FROST at JOHN F. KENNEDY'S in 1961. 212 pages. I offer combined shipping.