A song flung up to heaven

About “A song flung up to heaven”

A Song Flung Up to Heaven follows Maya Angelou as she returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. Upon arriving in California, she learns of his assassination. She attempts to rebuild her life by working in local theaters and conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts, where a riot later erupts. She then travels to New York, where Martin Luther King, Jr. asks her to coordinate efforts in the North and she visits black churches to support his Poor People's March. After King is also assassinated, Angelou withdraws from the world. James Baldwin encourages her to re-engage, and at a dinner party, the idea for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is formed. The book ends as Angelou begins writing the first sentences of that work.