Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

by Maya Angelou

1986

Nonfiction

Autobiography

Charting the experience of a well-known Afro-American performer in Ghana during the early years of independence, the fifth volume of Angelous autobiographical chronicle centers on the sometimes tense, but ultimately rewarding, relationship between members of the black expatriate community and their African hosts.

The fifth volume of the autobiographical chronicle begun in I Knew Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) begins with the arrival of Maya Angelou in the West African nation of Ghana during the euphoria of the early years of independence. Already an established dancer and actress, Angelou journeyed to the capital of Accra in part to enroll her seventeen-year-old son, Guy, in the University of Ghana and in part to recover a sense of self-worth following the break up of the marriage described in The Heart of a Woman (1981).

One important, and familiar, motif concerns the development of her relationship with Guy, who suffers a near-fatal automobile accident shortly after their arrival. The story of Guy's successful recovery and his gradual assertion of individual selfhood—which Angelou experiences in part as a rejection of her maternal role—anchors the book in the frequently sentimental family-saga genre.

The real strength of the new installment—one of the most satisfying in the sequence—lies in its treatment of specifically Afro-American concerns. The exuberant self-confidence of the Ghanaian people under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah contrasts, sometimes sharply, with the uncertainty of the Afro-American expatriates as they contemplate their own relationship with the struggle for civil rights in their native land. Of particular interest are Angelou's guarded comments concerning Martin Luther King and the March on Washington and her report on the visit of Malcolm X to Ghana.

Neither a celebration of African/ Afro-American kinship like Alex Haley's Roots, nor an ironic treatment like Richard Wright's Black Power, Angelous narrative of her search for a homeland is written in a familiar, colloquial style that should help maintain and broaden her readership.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Angelou, Maya. "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0015.
APA 7th
Angelou, M. (2015). All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Angelou, Maya. "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.