All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou

First published: 1986

The Work

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes belongs to a series of autobiographical narratives tracing Maya Angelou’s personal search for identity as an African American woman. In this powerful tale, Angelou describes her emotional journey to find identity and ancestral roots in West Africa. Angelou reveals her excitement as she emigrates to Ghana in 1962 and attempts to redefine herself as African, not American. Her loyalty to Ghana’s founding president, Kwame Nkrumah, reflects hope in Africa’s and her own independence. She learns the Fanti language, toys with thoughts of marrying a prosperous Malian Muslim, communes with Ghanaians in small towns and rural areas, and identifies with her enslaved forebears. Monuments such as Cape Coast Castle, where captured slaves were imprisoned before sailing to America, stand on African soil as vivid reminders of an African American slave past.

In Ghana Angelou hopes to escape the lingering pains of American slavery and racism. Gradually, however, she feels displaced and uncomfortable in her African environment. Cultural differences and competition for employment result in unpleasant encounters between Ghanians and African Americans. Despite such frustrations, Angelou’s network of fellow African American emigrants offers mutual support and continuing hope in the African experience. A visit by Malcolm X provides much needed encouragement, but his presence is also a reminder of ties with the United States. Angelou and her African American friends express their solidarity with the American Civil Rights movement by demonstrating at the United States embassy in Ghana.

As she sorts through her ambivalent feelings about Africa, Angelou also rethinks her role as mother. At the beginning of All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, Angelou’s son Guy almost dies in an automobile accident. Later in the narrative he develops a relationship with an older woman and struggles to gain admittance to the University of Ghana. In dealing with all these events, Angelou learns to balance her maternal feelings with her son’s need for independence and self-expression. Finally recognizing the powerful ties binding her to American soil, Angelou concludes her narrative with a joyful journey home from Ghana and a renewed sense of identity as an African American.

Bibliography

Baker, Houston A., Jr. “Part Five: Into Africa.” The New York Times Book Review, May 11, 1986, 14. Situates Angelou’s autobiography within the American tradition of multiple-volume self-portraits. Notes that such writers as Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Chester Himes have contributed to this kind of serial autobiography by writing about the ways in which spirit and courage can overcome oppression. In her memoirs, Angelou does likewise, and Baker notes that the very titles of her books suggest Angelou’s concern with the dreams of freedom and home.

Blundell, Janet Boyarin. Review of All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, by Maya Angelou. Library Journal 111 (March 15, 1986): 64. Examines Angelou’s memoir as a chronicle of her experience in Ghana and also as an exploration of Angelou’s maternal emotions as she watches her son Guy grow to manhood. Notes that Angelou’s self-portrait sheds light on both emerging Africa and the African American community.

Coleman, Wanda. Review of All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, by Maya Angelou. The Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 13, 1986, 4. Argues that Angelou’s work is different from celebrity autobiographies, which are typically self-aggrandizing. Instead, Angelou writes carefully and sensitively about herself and the African American community, weaving adages and bits of folk and street wisdom into her self-portrait.

Neville, Jill. “Bubbling Over.” The Times Literary Supplement, August 28, 1987, 922. Criticizes Angelou’s memoir for its “airy prose” and tendency toward “sentimental black agit-prop.” Neville acknowledges the readability of Angelou’s self-portrait but praises her first two memoirs as her best and views her recent books as less compelling.

Sankara, Edgard. “Race, Hybridity, and Multiculturalism in Maryse Condé’s Heremakhonon and Maya Angelou’s All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes.” In Multiculturalism and Hybridity in African Literatures, edited by Hal Wylie and Bernth Lindfors. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2000. Examines the representation of hybrid identity in Angelou’s work, emphasizing the intersection of Africanness and Americanness.

Stuttaford, Genevieve. Review of All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, by Maya Angelou. Publishers Weekly 229 (February 21, 1988): 159. Points to the moving quality of Angelou’s writing insofar as it probes the disillusionment, homesickness, and hurt that Angelou experiences in Ghana.