This remarkable memoir portrays Angelou's as a zig zag through chunks of the country. Her characters are strong, she herself is riveting, and she captures a child/teen's mind beautifully.

Angelou's approach to pervasive racism is interesting, in that she portrays it kind of like living near savages that sometimes attack and sometimes are barely visible. Racism comes across as horrific and unjust, but also as inevitable as fire and storm. It's not that she's writing a book about racism; it's a book about her life and the racism of America is simply one of many threads that run through it.

Angelou is really good at capturing all facets of life. There are moments of horror, moments of softness, and some moments that are just hilarious, like a woman being filled with a hysterical amount of Jesus.

While I occasionally felt Angelou was straining too hard for poetic metaphors, for the most part her writing is elegant and immediate. This is the first of 7 memoirs and I absolutely need to read the rest.