A Song Flung Up to Heaven

A Song Flung Up to Heaven.
A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in a series of autobiographies by author Maya Angelou (pictured). Set between 1965 and 1968, it begins where her previous book All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes ends, with her return to the United States from Accra, Ghana, where she had lived for four years. The assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. frame the beginning and end of the book. Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and the sweeping changes both in the country and in her personal life, and how she coped with her return home. The book ends with Angelou writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou wrote Song in 2002, sixteen years after All God's Children. By that time she had received recognition as an author, poet and spokesperson. A recorded version of the book received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2003. (This article is part of a featured topic: Maya Angelou autobiographies.)