 | |
| Author | Maya Angelou |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Autobiography |
| Published | 1974 (Random House), 1st edition |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 214 pp (Hardcover 1st edition) |
| ISBN | 0-394-48692-7 (hardcover 1st edition) |
| OCLC | 797780 |
| 917.3/06/96073 B | |
| LC Class | PS3551.N464 Z464 1974 |
| Preceded by | I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings |
| Followed by | Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas |
Gather Together in My Name is a 1974 memoir by American writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. Written three years after the publication of and beginning immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, it follows Angelou, called Rita, from the ages of 17 to 19. The title is taken from the Bible, but also conveys how one Black female lived in the white-dominated society of the U.S. following World War II.
Angelou expands upon many themes that she started discussing in her first autobiography, including motherhood and family, racism, identity, education and literacy. Rita becomes closer to her mother in this book, and goes through a variety of jobs and relationships as she tries to provide for her young son and find her place in the world. Angelou continues to discuss racism in Gather Together, but moves from speaking for all Black women to describing how one young woman dealt with it. The book exhibits the narcissism of young people, but describes how Rita discovers her identity. Like many of Angelou's autobiographies, Gather Together is concerned with Angelou's on-going self-education.
Gather Together was not as critically acclaimed as Angelou's first autobiography, but received mostly positive reviews and was recognized as being better written than its predecessor. The book's structure, consisting of a series of episodes tied together by theme and content, parallels the chaos of adolescence, which some critics feel makes it an unsatisfactory sequel to Caged Bird. Rita's many physical movements throughout the book, which affects the book's organization and quality, has caused at least one critic to call it a travel narrative.