The Heart of a Woman is the fourth in a series of five autobiographical texts that relate the events of Angelou's life from her infancy to her experiences in Africa. The first volume of this collection, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), has become a classic text, often read in college classrooms.

This book chronicles Angelou's life from her arrival in Stamp, Arkansas, at age three to the birth of her only child in San Francisco. Before the birth of her son at the young age of sixteen, Angelou endured many other trials. She endured rape and witnessed murder while living in some of the nation's more blighted neighborhoods.

While it recounts such moments of pain, however, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is also a joyous document that vividly relates the sounds of Blues and the smells of city life sensed by a...