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=                     Gather Together in My Name                     =
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                             Introduction                             
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'Gather Together in My Name' is a 1974 memoir by American writer and
poet Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of seven
autobiographies. Written three years after the publication of and
beginning immediately following the events described in 'I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings', it follows Angelou, called Rita, from the ages
of 17 to 19. The title is taken from the Bible, but also conveys how
one Black female lived in the white-dominated society of the U.S.
following World War II.

Angelou expands upon many themes that she started discussing in her
first autobiography, including motherhood and family, racism,
identity, education and literacy. Rita becomes closer to her mother in
this book, and goes through a variety of jobs and relationships as she
tries to provide for her young son and find her place in the world.
Angelou continues to discuss racism in 'Gather Together', but moves
from speaking for all Black women to describing how one young woman
dealt with it. The book exhibits the narcissism of young people, but
describes how Rita discovers her identity. Like many of Angelou's
autobiographies, 'Gather Together' is concerned with Angelou's
on-going self-education.

'Gather Together' was not as critically acclaimed as Angelou's first
autobiography, but received mostly positive reviews and was recognized
as being better written than its predecessor. The book's structure,
consisting of a series of episodes tied together by theme and content,
parallels the chaos of adolescence, which some critics feel makes it
an unsatisfactory sequel to 'Caged Bird'. Rita's many physical
movements throughout the book, which affects the book's organization
and quality, has caused at least one critic to call it a travel
narrative.


                              Background                              
======================================================================
'Gather Together in My Name', published in 1974, is Maya Angelou's
second book in her series of seven autobiographies and was written
three years after her first autobiography, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings.' In 1971, Angelou published her first volume of poetry, 'Just
Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie' (1971), which became a
bestseller and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It was Angelou's
early practice to alternate a prose volume with a poetry volume. In
1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the
inauguration of Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an
inaugural recitation since Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright" at the
inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the writing of this
autobiography and her life stories in all of her books, Angelou became
recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and
women. According to scholar Joanne Braxton, it made her "without a
doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".


 Title 
=======
The title of 'Gather Together' is inspired by Matthew 18:19-20: "Again
I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching
any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father
which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my
name, there am I in the midst of them" (King James Version). While
Angelou acknowledged the title's biblical origin, she also stated that
the title counteracted the tendency of many adults to lie to their
children about their pasts. Scholar Sondra O'Neale states that the
title is "a New Testament injunction for the traveling soul to pray
and commune while waiting patiently for deliverance". Critic Selwyn R.
Cudjoe agrees: "The incidents in the book appear merely gathered
together in the name of Maya Angelou"

Critic Hilton Als believes that the title of 'Gather Together' may
reflect its theme of how one Black woman was able to survive in the
wider context of post-war America while also speaking for all Black
women, and how they survived in a white-dominated society.


                             Plot summary                             
======================================================================
The book opens in the years following World War II. Angelou, still
known as "Marguerite", or "Rita", has just given birth to her son
Clyde, and is living with her mother and stepfather in San Francisco.
The book follows Marguerite from the ages of 17 to 19, through a
series of relationships, occupations, and cities as she attempts to
raise her son and to find her place in the world. It continues
exploring the themes of Angelou's isolation and loneliness begun in
her first volume, and the ways she overcomes racism, sexism, and her
continued victimization.

Rita goes from job to job and from relationship to relationship,
hoping that "my charming prince was going to appear out of the blue".
"My fantasies were little different than any other girl of my age",
Angelou wrote. "He would come. He would. Just walk into my life, see
me and fall everlastingly in love ... I looked forward to a husband
who would love me ethereally, spiritually, and on rare (but beautiful)
occasions, physically".

Some important events occur throughout the book while Rita tries to
care for herself and her son. In San Diego, Rita becomes an absentee
manager for two lesbian prostitutes. When threatened with
incarceration and with losing her son for her illegal activities, she
and Clyde escape to her grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas. Her
grandmother sends them to San Francisco for their safety and
protection after physically punishing Rita for confronting two white
women in a department store. This event demonstrates their different
and irreconcilable attitudes about race, paralleling events in
Angelou's first book. Back with her mother in San Francisco, Rita
attempts to enlist in the Army, only to be rejected during the height
of the Red Scare because she had attended the California Labor School
as a young teenager.

Another event of note described in the book was, in spite of "the
strangest audition", her short stint dancing and studying dance with
her partner, R. L. Poole, who became her lover until he reunited with
his previous partner, ending Rita's show business career for the time
being.

A turning point in the book occurs when Rita falls in love with a
gambler named L. D. Tolbrook, who seduces Rita and introduces her to
prostitution. Her mother's hospitalization and death of her brother
Bailey's wife drives Rita to her mother's home. She leaves her young
son with a caretaker, Big Mary, but when she returns for him, she
finds that Big Mary had disappeared with Clyde. She tries to elicit
help from Tolbrook, who puts her in her place when she finds him at
his home and requests that he help her find her son. She finally
realizes that he had been taking advantage of her, but is able to
trace Big Mary and Clyde to Bakersfield, California, and has an
emotional reunion with her son. She writes, "In the plowed farmyard
near Bakersfield, I began to understand that uniqueness of the person.
He was three and I was nineteen, and never again would I think of him
as a beautiful appendage of myself".

The end of the book finds Rita defeated by life: "For the first time I
sat down defenseless to await life's next assault". The book ends with
an encounter with a drug addict who cared enough for her to show her
the effects of his drug habit, which galvanizes her to reject drug
addiction and to make something of her life for her and her son.


 Motherhood and family 
=======================
Beginning in 'Gather Together', motherhood and family issues are
important themes throughout Angelou's autobiographies. The book
describes the change and the importance of Rita's relationship with
her own mother, the woman who had abandoned her and her brother as
children, demonstrated by Rita's return to her mother at the end of
the book, "after she realizes how close to the edge she has come, as a
woman and as a mother". Vivian Baxter cares for Rita's young son as
Rita attempts to make a living. Critic Mary Jane Lupton states that
"one gets a strong sense throughout 'Gather Together' of [Rita's]
dependence on her mother". Angelou's relationship with her mother
becomes more important in 'Gather Together' and Vivian is now more
influential in the development of Angelou's attitudes. Lupton calls
Clyde's kidnapping a "powerful sequence of mother-loss" and connects
it to the kidnapping of Clyde's son in the 1980s. Like many authors,
Angelou viewed the creative writing process and its results as her
children and compared the production of this book to giving birth, an
apt metaphor given the birth of her son at the end of 'Caged Bird.'


 Race and racism 
=================
Angelou's goal, beginning with her first autobiographical work, was to
"tell the truth about the lives of black women", but her goal evolved,
in her later volumes, to document the ups and downs of her own life.
Angelou's autobiographies have the same structure: they give a
historical overview of the places she was living in at the time, how
she coped within the context of a larger white society, and the ways
that her story played out within that context. Critic Selwyn Cudjoe
stated that in 'Gather Together', Angelou is still concerned with the
questions of what it means to be a Black female in the U.S., but
focuses upon herself at a certain point in history, in the years
immediately following World War II. The book begins with a prolog
describing the confusion and disillusionment of the African-American
community during that time, which matched the alienated and fragmented
nature of the main character's life. According to McPherson, African
Americans were promised a new racial order that never materialized.

Halfway through 'Gather Together', an incident occurs that
demonstrates the different ways in which Rita and her grandmother
handle racism. Rita, when she is insulted by white clerk during a
visit to Stamps, reacts with defiance, but when Momma hears about the
confrontation, she slaps Rita and sends her back to California. Rita
feels that her personhood was being violated, but Momma feels that her
granddaughter's behavior was dangerous. Rita's grandmother ceases
being an important influence on her life, and Angelou demonstrates
that she had to move on in the fight against racism.

Jocelyn A. Glazier, who specializes in teacher education.at George
Washington University, used 'Caged Bird' and 'Gather Together' in
narrative and multicultural approaches to pedagogy and to train
teachers how to discuss race in their classrooms. According to
Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and
irony, readers of 'Gather Together' and the rest of Angelou's
autobiographies cause readers to wonder what she left out and unsure
about how to respond to the events Angelou describes. Angelou's
depictions of her experiences of racism force white readers to explore
their feelings about race and their privileged status. Glazier found
that although critics have focused on where Angelou fits within the
genre of African American autobiography and on her literary
techniques, readers react to her storytelling with "surprise,
particularly when [they] enter the text with certain expectations
about the genre of autobiography".


 Identity 
==========
'Gather Together' retains the freshness of 'Caged Bird,' but has a
self-consciousness absent from the first volume. Author Hilton Als
states that Angelou "replaces the language of social history with the
language of therapy". The book exhibits the narcissism and
self-involvement of young adults. It is Rita who is the focus, and all
other characters are secondary, and they are often presented "with the
deft superficiality of a stage description" who pay the price for
Rita's self-involvement. Much of Angelou's writing in this volume, as
Als states, is "reactive, not reflective".  Angelou chooses to
demonstrate Rita's narcissism in 'Gather Together' by dropping the
conventional forms of autobiography, which has a beginning, middle,
and end. For example, there is no central experience in her second
volume, as there is in 'Caged Bird' with Angelou's account of her rape
at the age of eight. Lupton believes that this central experience is
relocated "to some luminous place in a volume yet to be".

'Gather Together', like much of African-American literature, depicts
Rita's search for self-discovery, identity, and dignity in the
difficult environment of racism, and how she, like other African
Americans, were able to rise above it. Rita's search is expressed both
outwardly, through her material needs, and inwardly, through love and
family relationships. In 'Caged Bird', despite trauma and parental
rejection, Rita's world is relatively secure, but the adolescent young
woman in 'Gather Together' experiences the dissolution of her
relationships many times. The loneliness that ensues for her is "a
loneliness that becomes, at times, suicidal and contributes to her
unanchored self". Rita is unsure of who she is or what she would
become, so she tries several roles in a restless and frustrated way,
as adolescents often do during this period of their lives. Her
experimentation was part of her self-education that would successfully
bring her into maturity and adulthood. Lupton agrees, stating that
Rita survived through trial and error while defining herself as a
Black woman. Angelou recognizes that the mistakes she depicts are part
of "the fumblings of youth and to be forgiven as such", but young Rita
insists that she take responsibility for herself and her child.

Feminist scholar Maria Lauret states that the formation of female
cultural identity is woven into Angelou's narrative, setting her up as
"a role model for Black women". Lauret agrees with other scholars that
Angelou reconstructs the Black woman's image throughout her
autobiographies, and that Angelou uses her many roles, incarnations,
and identities in her books to "signify multiple layers of oppression
and personal history". Angelou begins this technique in her first
book, and continues it in 'Gather Together', especially her
demonstration of the "racist habit" of renaming African Americans.
Lauret also sees Angelou's themes of the individual's strength and
ability to overcome throughout Angelou's autobiographies. Cudjoe
states that Angelou is still concerned with what it means to be Black
and female in America, but she now describes "a particular type of
Black woman at a specific moment in history and subjected to certain
social forces which assault the Black woman with unusual intensity".
When Angelou was concerned about what her readers would think when she
disclosed that she had been a prostitute, her husband Paul Du Feu
encouraged her to be honest and "tell the truth as a writer". Cudjoe
recognizes Angelou's reluctance to disclose these events in the text,
stating that although they are important in her social development,
Angelou does not seem "particularly proud of her activity during those
'few tense years'".


 Education and literacy 
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All of Angelou's autobiographies, especially this volume and its
predecessor, is "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how
she learned it".  Lupton compares Angelou's informal education
described in this book with the education of other Black writers of
the 20th century. Like writers such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes,
and James Baldwin, Angelou did not earn a college degree and depended
upon the "direct instruction of African American cultural forms". As
Hagen points out, since Angelou was encouraged to appreciate
literature as a young child, she continued to read into her adulthood,
exposing herself to a wide variety of authors, ranging from Countee
Cullen's poetry to Leo Tolstoy and other Russian authors. Angelou
stated, during her stint as a madame, "when my life hinged
melodramatically on intrigue and deceit, I discovered the Russian
writers".


                          Critical reception                          
======================================================================
'Gather Together in My Name' was not as critically acclaimed as
Angelou's first autobiography, but received mostly positive reviews
and was recognized as better written. 'Atlantic Monthly' said that the
book was "excellently written" and Cudjoe calls the book "neither
politically nor linguistically innocent". Although Cudjoe finds
'Gather Together' a weaker autobiography compared to 'Caged Bird', he
states that Angelou's use of language is "the work's saving grace",
and that it contains "a much more consistent and sustained flow of
eloquent and honey-dipped writing", although he feels that the tight
structure of 'Caged Bird' seems to crumble in 'Gather Together'.
According to Lupton, Angelou's "childhood experiences were replaced by
episodes that a number of critics consider disjointed or bizarre"
because Angelou's later works consist of episodes, or fragments, that
are "reflections of the kind of chaos found in actual living". Cudjoe
thought this convention weakened the book's structure, stating that
the events described prevented it from achieving a "complex level of
significance". Lupton states, "In altering the narrative structure,
Angelou shifts the emphasis from herself as an isolated consciousness
to herself as a Black woman participating in diverse experiences among
a diverse class of peoples". There are similarities in the structure
of both books, however. Like 'Caged Bird', 'Gather Together' consists
of a series of interrelated episodes, and both books start with a
poetic preface.

Cudjoe notes that 'Gather Together' lacks the "intense solidity and
moral center" found in 'Caged Bird', and that the strong ethics of the
Black community in the rural South is replaced by the alienation and
fragmentation of urban life in the first half of the twentieth
century. The world that Angelou introduces her readers to in 'Gather
Together' leaves her protagonist without a sense of purpose, and as
Cudjoe states, "to the brink of destruction in order to realize
herself". Critic Lyman B. Hagen disagrees with Cudjoe's judgment that
Angelou's second autobiography lacked a moral center, saying that even
though there are many unsavory characters in the book and that their
lifestyles are not condemned, the innocent Rita emerges triumphant and
"evil does not prevail". Rita moves through a sleazy world with good
intentions and grows stronger as a result of her exposure to it. Hagen
states that if were not for 'Gather Together's' complex literary
style, its content would prevent it from being accepted as "an
exemplary literary effort".

Although 'Caged Bird' was refreshing in its honesty, something its
readers and reviewers value, Angelou's honesty in 'Gather Together'
had become, as reviewer John McWhorter perceives it, "more and more
formulaic". McWhorter asserts that the events that Angelou describes
in 'Gather Together' and in her subsequent autobiographies require
more explanation, which she does not provide, although she expects her
readers to accept them on face value. In 'Gather Together', for
example, Angelou insists that she is not religious, but she refuses
welfare, and even though she was afraid of becoming a lesbian in
'Caged Bird' and presents herself as shy, awkward, and bookish, she
pimps for a lesbian couple and becomes a prostitute herself. McWhorter
criticizes Angelou for her decisions in 'Gather Together', and for not
explaining them fully, and states, "The people in these flamboyant
tales—the narrator included—have a pulp-novel incoherence".

Rita's many physical movements throughout the book causes Hagen to
call it a travel narrative. According to Lupton, this movement also
affects the book's organization and quality, making it a less
satisfactory sequel to 'Caged Bird'. Angelou has responded to this
criticism by stating that she attempted to capture "the episodic,
erratic nature of adolescence" as she experienced this period in her
life. McPherson agrees, stating that 'Gather Together's' structure is
more complex than 'Caged Bird'. Angelou's style in 'Gather Together'
is more mature and simplified, which allows her to better convey
emotion and insight through, as McPherson described it, "sharp and
vivid word images".


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