Motherhood and family Beginning in
Gather Together, motherhood and family issues are important themes throughout Angelou's autobiographies. Like many authors, Angelou viewed the creative writing process and its results as her children and compared the production of this book to giving birth, an apt metaphor given the birth of her son at the end of
Caged Bird. Race and racism Angelou's goal, beginning with her first autobiographical work, was to "tell the truth about the lives of black women",
Identity Gather Together retains the freshness of
Caged Bird, but has a self-consciousness absent from the first volume. Author
Hilton Als states that 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, and they are often presented "with the deft superficiality of a stage description" who pay the price for Rita's self-involvement. Much of Angelou's writing in this volume, as Als states, is "reactive, not reflective". 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".
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. Rita's search is expressed both outwardly, through her material needs, and inwardly, through love and family relationships. In
Caged Bird, despite trauma and parental rejection, Rita's world is relatively secure, but the adolescent young woman in
Gather Together experiences the dissolution of her relationships many times. The loneliness that ensues for her is "a loneliness that becomes, at times, suicidal and contributes to her unanchored self". Rita is unsure of who she is or what she would become, so she tries several roles in a restless and frustrated way, as adolescents often do during this period of their lives. Her experimentation was part of her self-education that would successfully bring her into maturity and adulthood. Lupton agrees, stating that Rita survived through trial and error while defining herself as a Black woman. Angelou recognizes that the mistakes she depicts are part of "the fumblings of youth and to be forgiven as such", but young Rita insists that she take responsibility for herself and her child.
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, especially her demonstration of the "racist habit" of renaming African Americans. Lauret also sees Angelou's themes of the individual's strength and ability to overcome throughout Angelou's autobiographies. Cudjoe states that Angelou is still concerned with what it means to be Black and female in America, but she now describes "a particular type of Black woman at a specific moment in history and subjected to certain social forces which assault the Black woman with unusual intensity". 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 be honest and "tell the truth as a writer". Cudjoe recognizes Angelou's reluctance to disclose these events in the text, stating that although they are important in her social development, Angelou does not seem "particularly proud of her activity during those 'few tense years'".
Education and literacy All of Angelou's autobiographies, especially this volume and its predecessor, is "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how she learned it". 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". As Hagen points out, since Angelou was encouraged to appreciate literature as a young child, she continued to read into her adulthood, exposing herself to a wide variety of authors, ranging from
Countee Cullen's poetry to
Leo Tolstoy and other
Russian authors. Angelou stated, during her stint as a madame, "when my life hinged melodramatically on intrigue and deceit, I discovered the Russian writers". ==Critical reception==