All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes [Hardcover]

Maya Angelou (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 1986

"Thoroughly enjoyable . . . an important document drawing more much-needed attention to the hidden history of a people both African and American."--Los Angeles Times Book Review.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To read Angelou's book, the latest in a series of autobiographical works begun with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, without being moved would seem impossible. Here, this American poet, actress, civil rights activist and TV producer-director recalls her pilgrimage to Ghana in the early 1960s. Ostensibly, Angelou went there so that her son could study at the University of Ghanato put him (and herself) in touch with long-imagined ancestral roots. Sadly, she was disillusioned by the subtle rejection of native Ghanaians. Fighting this painful sense of not belonging, she plunged into activities; appearing in Genet's play The Blacks with black American performers, she went briefly to Berlin, where she underwent a searing experience dining in the home of a wealthy crypto-Nazi German. Other encounters, even the more pleasurable ones, hardly mitigate the homesickness and hurt underlying Angelou's poignant recall, which includes a meeting with Malcolm X and her visit to a village where, centuries ago, black men sold other black men, women and children to white slave traders. First serial to Essence.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA Angelou continues the candid chronicle of her life in this fifth volume of her autobiography which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Random, 1970). In the early '60s, Angelou worked at the university in Ghana and became involved with the community of Africans and black Americans. Students of African history will find a wealth of information and penetrating impressions of the proud, optimistic new country. Students of American history will learn first-hand of the opinions and feelings of black Americans who, living through the racial crisis of the '60s, came to Africa in search of their historical, spiritual and psychological home. Maya's own journey is at the center of the narrative, however, and readers will appreciate the candor with which she relates her conflicts with some Ghanaians; her romance with an African Muslim; her trip to Germany, where she joins an American acting troupe and confronts her own prejudices; and her struggle to accept her son's manly independence. As in her previous memoirs, the poet's prose sings. Jackie Gropman, Fairfax County Public Library, Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (March 12, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394521439
• ISBN-13: 978-0394521435
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,168,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maya Angelou has been waitress, singer, actress, dancer, activist, filmmaker, writer and mother. As well as her autobiography she has written several volumes of poetry, including 'On the Pulse of the Morning' for the inauguration of President Clinton. She now has a life-time appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars African/African-American encounters, April 17, 2001

By 

Michael J. Mazza - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (Paperback)

"All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" is an effective continuation of Maya Angelou's monumental, multi-volume autobiographical narrative. This installment begins in the early 1960s, with Maya and her son living in Africa. As a whole, this book is a fascinating meditation on the ties and disjunctions that exist between African-Americans and black Africans.

Maya reminisces about working for the University of Ghana, seeking employment as a journalist at the "Ghanaian Times," and beginning to pick up the Fanti language of Ghana. Particularly fascinating are her memories of the death of W.E.B. DuBois, the visit of Malcolm X to Africa, and her visit to Germany to perform in a production of Jean Genet's play "The Blacks." Angelou's book is both the vibrant record of an extraordinary woman, and an important portrait of Africa at a key era in its modern history.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Through Angelou's Eyes, August 10, 2006

By 

WILLIAM H FULLER (SPEARFISH, SD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (Paperback)

From purely a literary standpoint, I find ALL GOD'S CHILDREN NEED TRAVELING SHOES perhaps the best of Angelou's series of autobiographical works that I have encountered thus far. It is the fifth "installment," having been preceded by I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, GATHER TOGETHER IN MY NAME, SINGIN' AND SWINGIN' AND GETTIN' MERRY LIKE CHRISTMAS, and THE HEART OF A WOMAN. While I suppose that any of these could be read in isolation, to do so would be analogous to reading a single chapter from a full-length novel. One may enjoy the contents of that single chapter but will miss all the background material that explains how the characters reached that point in time and space as well as everything that follows to explain and wrap-up the story. For the same reasons, one really should read each of Angelou's books and in chronological order, too. Consequently, if one is examining reader reviews before purchasing ALL GOD'S CHILDREN, and if this is the first of Angelou's books being considered, please wait. Reading the others first will enhance significantly the reader's enjoyment of this one.

Pure autobiographies tend, in my experience, to be rather dull reading for the most part. Where is the excitement in a list of events and dates? That sort of dry recitation of historical facts is the reason that most of us were likely bored to somnambulance by our high school history textbooks. Happily, this is not at all that sort of autobiography. What one finds in Angelou's books is the world seen through her eyes and interpreted by her mind, and she carries with her the filters built strand by strand by her life experiences.

What "life experiences"? Being born Black into a legally, socially, culturally and thoroughly segregated country. Being abandoned by one's father. Being shipped across country by one's mother to be raised by an aging grandparent. Feeling the constant scorn and belittlement fostered by racial segregation. Bearing a child when one is still herself a child. Being duped by another into prostitution. Failing at an attempt at marriage. On the other hand, conversing with such figures as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Touring Europe as member of a musical cast. Living in Africa. Angelou's experiences, both negative and positive, were emotionally extreme, or at least significant, events, and they created interpretative filters that are quite different from those of essentially all of her readers. This difference is what makes her books captivating to read and worthy of her readers' consideration.

I suggest that the epitome of Angelou's skill as a prose author of the first five books I have mentioned above comes in the closing chapter of ALL GOD'S CHILDREN. Her encounter with the Ewe tribal women in the marketplace in Ghana's village of Keta is expressed in nearly supernatural terms. In the actual event, she is merely mistaken for another person, but, to Angelou, the encounter firmly establishes Africa as her spiritual homeland, the origin of her own ancestors who, generations earlier, were sold into slavery in a strange land across the ocean. The skill with which she describes her feelings at this encounter is one to which any writer might aspire.

I must admit to another aspect of Angelou's writing that I find almost annoying, however, and that is her repeated and continuous reference to the effects of slavery. If any evil exists in the universe, if sin seeks an embodiment, if a cause for all the misery in the contemporary world must be identified, Angelou finds it in slavery. Judging solely by the attitude revealed in these five books, one could conclude only that all Caucasians are blue-eyed devils, that they alone made possible the eternal and unforgivable sin of enslavement, that no redemption is possible and that racial integration is never achievable or even desirable. If there is such a concept as "original sin," it has nothing to do with a mythological Adam or Eve in a "garden of Eden" but rather with the insufferable conceit of Whites and the horror of slavery, most particularly slavery in the United States. To judge by the attitude that pervades these five books, one would think that Angelou was herself born into slavery, exploited economically and sexually by her White masters, and denigrated to the very edge of sanity. Not to excuse or to minimize in any way the physical and emotional pain of slavery, its immorality or absence of any ethical justification whatsoever, but "methinks the lady doth protest too much." She claims for herself an understanding of the debasement of slavery that her own history does not support. She assumes a mantle as spokesperson for long dead generations that she is not qualified to wear. To what extent historical slavery and racial prejudice may bear the blame for what were her own poor choices in life I am hardly qualified to say, yet I would caution the reader to bear in mind the fact that we are seeing events through the author's intellectual filters and that no one's filters are totally objective.

Having said that, I hurriedly add that my critical observation should in no way deter anyone from reading Angelou's books. On the contrary, while I may feel that she is at times presumptuous in assuming spokesperson status on the topics of slavery and contemporary racial bigotry, her perceptions provide many revelations for her readers and are worth noting. On now to the next book of this series, A SONG FLUNG UP TO HEAVEN.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating insights about Maya Angelou and Afro-Americans, August 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (Paperback)

In 1962, Maya Angelou went to Ghana with her 17-year son. "All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes" tells the story of her personal journey to understand herself as a black American. This book provides fascinating insights about Maya Angelou in her early years and about Afro-American culture in general. In rich language, she provides both historical snapshots and compelling stories about Ghana's gentle people, herself, and the diaspora that brought black people to America.