Antonia Bernardin

Letter to my daughter by Maya Angelou was book number 4, in this year’s attempt at the #100booksinayear challenge. Firstly, I love her poetry and I love the videos you can find of her reading it aloud on youtube. I’m not generally a big poetry reader but enjoy the poems of hers I have read immensely. Plus, the more I learn about her personally and her achievements, the more I admire her.

Watch the video of her reading ‘Still I Rise’ here

Letters to my daughter opens with a couple of pages explaining the premise of the book, which is a collection of anecdotes, thoughts and advice compiled from her life. The opening pages end with ‘I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters… I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”, which pretty much summarises the book better than I could because I’m not even one tenth of the writer she was. I loved how the title was addressed, ‘Letter to my daughter’ , as in singular, as though she intended to speak to you directly. It wouldn’t have made more sense to say ‘letters’ or ‘daughters’, which is why I feel like this was deliberate.

I recommend reading it because it’s incredibly empowering and uplifting, I finished it feeling like I should get off my butt and start changing the world, which would have been quite difficult considering it was 2am. There’s other books like this by her available but, frankly, they are not cheap (and rightly so!). She lived an incredible and interesting life and most of the book is spent downplaying her accomplishments and telling you that you could have done the same in her position.

Here’s theGood reads link…

Follow for more ‘What I’m Reading’ posts, my reading tastes are kind of varied, although I generally prefer YA fantasy, I’m trying to read a few classics and other books along the way.