All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes; Virago, 2008

Maya Angelou's seven volumes of autobiography, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Though she fiercely loves the world, as a black woman, she also knows its cruelty.

Angelou has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In the fifth volume, Maya Angelou emigrates to Ghana only to discover that 'you can't go home again', but she comes to a new awareness of love and friendship, civil rights and slavery - and the myth of mother Africa.