Letter to my daughter - Maya Angelou

Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: it's part guidebook, part memoir, part poetry - and pure delight.

Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons about compassion and fortitude. Whether she is recalling lost friends such as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice, Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.

Like the rest of her remarkable work, LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER entertains and teaches. It is a book to cherish, savour, reread and share.

Dr Maya Angelou was one of the world's most important writers and activists. Born 4 April 1928, she lived and chronicled an extraordinary life: rising from poverty, violence and racism, she became a renowned author, poet, playwright, civil rights' activist - working with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King - and memoirist. She wrote and performed a poem, 'On the Pulse of Morning', for President Clinton on his inauguration; she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and was honoured by more than seventy universities throughout the world.

She first thrilled the world with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). This was followed by six volumes of autobiography, the seventh and final volume, Mom & Me & Mom , published in 2013. She wrote three collections of essays; many volumes of poetry, including His Day is Done , a tribute to Nelson Mandela; and two cookbooks. She had a lifetime appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University of North Carolina. Dr Angelou died on 28 May 2014.

A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman
President Barack Obama

The poems and stories she wrote . . . were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and grace
President Bill Clinton

She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds
Oprah Winfrey

She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate
Toni Morrison