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Article: Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community.
- Article from:
- The Women's Review of Books
- Article date:
- April 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Old City Publishing, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In San Francisco, for the first time, I perceived myself as part of something, ' wrote Maya Angelou in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bind Sings. Leaving her hometown of Stampps, Arkansas, Angelou settled in San Francisco during the boom years of World War Two and immediately fell in love with the city. "To me, a thirteen-year-old Black girl, stalled by the South and Southern black life style, the city was a state of beauty and a state of freedom." Before long, however, Angelou's optimism was tempered by the realization that "Pride and Prejudice stalked in tandem the beautiful hills."
For more than twenty years Angelou's autobiography has been one of the few ...