Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single mother's slide down the social ladder into poverty and crime." As Angelou's biographer, Mary Jane Lupton, states, "She was able to survive through trial and error, while at the same time defining herself in terms of being a black woman." Angelou states that she wrote the book, in spite of potentially harming the reputation she gained after writing Caged Bird, because she wanted to show how she was able to survive in a world where "every door is not only locked, but there are no doorknobs...The children need to know you can stumble and fumble and fall, see where you are and get up, forgive yourself, and go on about the business of living your life". In spite of great difficulty Angelou, as the main character of the book, experiences, she remains focused on the book's themes of "survival with style, finding her true self, and admiration of literacy".

Title

The book's title is taken from 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 has 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.

Critic Selwyn Cudjoe believes that the title of this book may have an additional significance. A prevailing theme in Gather Together is how one black female was able to survive in the wider context of post-war America, but it also signifies how all black females survived in a white-dominated society. As Cudjoe says, "It is almost as though the incidents in the text were simply 'gathered together' under the name of Maya Angelou".

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 niche," or 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" (p. 114). "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" (p. 141).

Some humorous and potentially dangerous events occur throughout the book. While living in San Diego, Rita becomes an "absentee manager" for two lesbian prostitutes. When threatened with incarceration and losing her son for her illegal activities, she escapes to her grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas. Her grandmother sends her back to San Francisco for her 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, 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" (p. 117), 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 the Episcopalian preacher, L.D. Tolbrook, who seduces Rita and introduces her to "the life" of prostitution. Her mother's hospitalization and death of her brother Bailey's wife drives Rita back to her mother's home back in San Francisco. She leaves her young son with a caretaker, Big Mary, but when she returns for "the baby", she finds that Big Mary had disappeared with Clyde. She tries to elicit help from L.D., 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" (p. 192).

The end of the book finds Rita defeated by life: "For the first time I sat down defenseless to await life's next assault" (p. 206). 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 make something of her life for her and her son.

Critical analysis

Reviews

Gather Together in My Name was not as critically acclaimed as Angelou's first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. but received mostly positive reviews and was recognized as better written. Atlantic Monthly's reviewer said that the book was "excellently written". The Library Journal called Gather Together "excellently written" and Choice Magazine called Angelou a "fine story teller".

Angelou should be commended for facing and reporting repugnant situations truthfully.

She chooses not to whitewash the real world she encountered.

But she conveys the positive message of hope by proving an exposure to the dark side need not cause a loss of faith and goodness.

Critic Lyman B.

Hagen

As feminist scholar Mary Jane Lupton stated, "the tight structure" of Caged Bird seems to "crumble" in Gather Together. Angelou's "childhood experiences were replaced by episodes that a number of critics consider disjointed or bizarre"; Lupton's explanation was that Angelou's later works consisted of episodes, or "fragments", that are "reflections of the kind of chaos found in actual living". Lupton continues, "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. Both books also start with a poetic "preface".

Cudjoe has noted, about Gather Together, that it moved from the "intense solidity and moral center" found in Caged Bird to "conditions of alienation and fragmentation". 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 "roundly condemned", the innocent Rita "emerges triumphant" and "evil does not prevail". Rita moves through a "sleezy 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 "raffish content" would prevent it from being accepted as "an exemplary literary effort".

Rita's many physical movements throughout the book caused Hagen to refer to it as a "travel story". According to Lupton, this movement also affected the book's organization and quality, making it a "less satisfactory" sequel. 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 responded to this criticism by stating that Gather Together's structure is more complex than Caged Bird. Angelou's style in Gather Together was more mature and simplified, which allowed her to better convey emotion and insight through, as McPherson described it, "sharp and vivid word images".

Themes

Motherhood

Motherhood is a "prevailing theme" in Angelou's autobiographies and this emphasis begins in Gather Together in My Name. 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. This is shown 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, and as Lupton states, "one gets a strong sense throughout Gather Together of [Rita's] dependence on her mother". Hagen remarks that Angelou's relationship with her mother becomes more important in Gather Together, and that Vivian is now more influential in the development of Angelou's attitudes. Angelou has compared the production of this book to giving birth, an apt metaphor given the birth of her son at the end of its predecessor. Like many authors, Angelou views the creative writing process and its results as her children.

Education

All of Angelou's autobiographies, especially this volume and its predecessor, is "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how she learned it". Critic Mary Lane 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". She did not feel that her education ended at high school, however. As Hagen points out, since Angelou was encouraged to appreciate literature as a young child, she continues to read, exposing herself to a wide variety of authors, ranging from Countee Cullen's poetry to Tolstoy and other Russian authors.

Identity

Gather Together holds onto the freshness of Caged Bird, but has a self-consciousness absent from the first volume. As author Hilton Als states, 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. Els insists that these secondary characters, often presented "with the deft superficiality of a stage description", often pay the price for Rita's self-involvement. Much of Angelou's writing in this volume, as Els states, is "reactive, not reflective". According to Lupton, 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".

McPherson agrees, insisting that 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. According to McPherson, Rita's search is expressed both outwardly, through her material needs, and inwardly, through love and family relationships. Unlike in Caged Bird, where in spite of trauma and parental rejection, Rita's world is relatively secure, the adolescent young woman in this autobiography constantly experienced the dissolution of her relationships. The loneliness that ensues for her, as McPherson says, is "a loneliness that becomes, at times, suicidal and contributes to her unanchored self". Rita was unsure of who she was or what she would become, so she tried on a variety of roles in a restless and frustrated way, as adolescents often do during this period of their lives. McPherson stated that Rita's experimentation was part of her self-education that would successfully bring her into maturity and adulthood. As the autobiographer, Angelou recognizes that the mistakes she depicts were part of "the fumblings of youth and to be forgiven as such", but the young Rita insisted that she take responsibility for herself and her child.

Interpretations

Feminist

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 in My Name, especially her demonstration of the "racist habit" of renaming African Americans. Lauret sees Angelou's themes of the individual's strength and ability to overcome throughout Angelou's autobiographies as well. 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 "tell the truth as a writer" and to "be honest about it".

Racial/multicultural

Els insisted that while Angelou's original goal, beginning with her first autobiography, was to "tell the truth about the lives of black women", her goal evolved, in her later volumes, to document the ups and downs of her own life. Els also stated that Angelou's autobiographies had the same structure: they gave 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 agreed, especially in regards to Gather Together. He stated that Angelou was still concerned with the questions of what it meant to be a black female in the US, but focuses upon herself at a certain point in history, in the years immediately following World War II. Gather Together begins with a prologue 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 did not materialize.

What Hagen calls "a key incident" occurs halfway through Gather Together, and it 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, slaps Rita and sends her back to California. Rita felt that her personhood was being violated, but the practical Momma knows that her granddaughter's behavior was dangerous. Rita's grandmother was never again an important influence on her life, and Angelou has demonstrated that she must move on in the fight against racism.

Angelou's autobiographies, including this volume, have been used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Dr. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor at George Washington University, has used Caged Bird and Gather Together in My Name to train teachers how to "talk about race" in their classrooms. Due to Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony, readers of Gather Together in My Name and the rest of Angelou's autobiographies wonder what she "left out" and are 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".

Notes

1. Lupton (1999), p. 131
2. Lauret, p. 120
3. Lupton (1998), p. 6
4. Hagen, p. 86
5. Hagen, p. 85
6. Hagen, p. 76
7. Hagen, p. 75
8. Hagen, p. 78
9. Lupton (1999), p. 130
10. Hagen, p. 74
11. McPherson, p. 59
12. McPherson, p. 60
13. Lupton (1998), p. 12
14. Lupton (1999), p. 138
15. Hagen, p. 84
16. Lupton (1998), p. 16
17. Hagen, p. 83
18. McPherson, p. 58
19. McPherson, p. 61
20. McPherson, p. 62
21. Angelou, p. 211
22. McPherson, p. 66
23. Lauret p. 120-121
24. Lupton (1998), p. 14
25. McPherson, p. 63
26. Hagen, p. 80
27. Hagen, pp. 80-82

References

• Angelou, Maya (1974). Gather together in my name. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-48692-7
• Hagen, Lyman B. (1997). Heart of a woman, mind of a writer, and soul of a poet: A critical analysis of the writings of Maya Angelou. Lanham, Maryland: University Press. ISBN 0-7618-0621-0
• Lauret, Maria (1994). Liberating literature: Feminist fiction in America. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415065151
• Lupton, Mary Jane (1998). Maya Angelou: A critical companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30325-8
• Lupton, Mary Jane (1999). "Singing the black mother". In Maya Angelou's I know why the caged bird sings: A casebook, Joanne M. Braxton, ed. New York: Oxford Press. ISBN 0-1951-1606-2
• McPherson, Dolly A. (1990). Order out of chaos: The autobiographical works of Maya Angelou. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. ISBN 0-820411-39-6