Maya Angelou, the author of six autobiographies, sat down with NPR recently to discuss her new memoir Mom & Me & Mom that explores her relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter.
Angelou’s mother sent her and her brother away to be raised by their grandmother soon after she was born, but when they were older, Angelou’s mother brought them back to live with her, which began a rocky relationship between mother and daughter that they learned to reconcile over the years.
“I’m Maya Angelou – whatever that means to whomever it means – because my mother loved me, and my grandmother loved me, and my brother loved me,” she says. “And they all told me I could do whatever I wanted to do.”
Read the entire interview at NPR