Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.

This is Angelou’s first book I read, and to me her words were all magically powerful. At first I thought this book would consist of Angelou’s letters to her “daughters” around the world. However, I was surprised because after few pages it turned out to be her autobiography as well as her collection of poems. Finding out these things didn’t mean I was disappointed, but I just was surprised in a delightful way. No wonder why she could become one of the greatest female authors of all time. There was something in her words, something that made me as a reader think thoroughly through life; thinking about things that I have and haven’t done and things that I forget and always remember.

Angelou’s past life itself had been a winding road, with ups and downs of struggling to fight racism, and to live among those who believed that black people were less than the Whites. Angelou became a proof that one single action could make a change.

The book itself is 192 pages and consists of 28 chapters. Each chapter only consists of short paragraphs, so the readers won’t be tired reading it. Perhaps it is one of the reasons why it is a page-turner, and I read it in a very short time.

Well, it’s quite late reading Angelou’s book after she passed away, but, quoting from her, “People will never forget how you made them feel” and yes, I will never forget how she made me feel. Days after reading it, I still could feel her words lingered in my mind. And I’m looking forward reading her other books.

One of the sentences I quoted from Letter to My Daughter was: