Since 1969, with the publication of the first volume of Maya Angelou's autobiographical oeuvre, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, readers have gradually become more familiar with the author behind the words with the expansion of her life narrative. The extent of the public interest in Angelou's life narrative continued until the last volume, A Song Flung Up to Heaven, was published in 2002. However, this familiarity with the autobiographer's life does not extend beyond 1968 when the last volume brings the life narrative in a circle with the initiation of her autobiography project. In her interview with Valerie Webster in 1987, Angelou explained that she never intended to expand the series further than the sixth volume: “After that it would just be writing about writing which is something I don't want to do.”Footnote 1 In the absence of autobiographical work dealing with the period from 1968, there is a fascinated readership that encourages more scholarship to be done on the behind-the-scenes creation of this literary icon.
There has been a resurgence in research on Angelou's canon of works since she passed away in 2014. Linda Wagner-Martin's recent monograph, Maya Angelou: An Adventurous Spirit fits into this category. Wagner-Martin's previous experience includes writing literary biographies of authors such as Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and Barbara Kingsolver, to name a few. Her latest project brings new and old information together to create a complete narrative of the public literary figure of Angelou that is less familiar than readers think.
Angelou wrote actively right until the end of her life; however, most previous scholarly works cover her literary career only up to the fifth volume of her autobiography, which was published in 1986. The sixteen-year gap between writing the fifth and the final (2002) volumes of her autobiography brought a halt in the research done on her. Therefore, given the absence of scholarly research during the last stage of Angelou's literary production after All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes (1986), Wagner-Martin's contribution to understanding Angelou's overall literary career becomes even more significant.
Wagner-Martin is aware of the enormity of her task when she raises this question in the first few pages: “How does the author of an academic book capture the radiant and effulgent mind, attitude, and sound that was Maya Angelou?” (xii). However, she has done exactly that. She divides the book in a way to honor not only the life of Maya Angelou but also her works. While several chapters are devoted to discussing Angelou's autobiographical oeuvre and her works in other media, the remaining chapters focus on her other nonliterary accomplishments. The chronological approach of the chapter organization suits the subject matter of this research as it covers Angelou's literary career form her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) to her last, Rainbow in the Cloud: The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou (2014). Published after Angelou's death, Adventurous Spirit is one of only a few books to reflect on Angelou's entire life's work. Thus Wagner-Martin tries to dedicate her book to honoring Angelou's legacy not only for the African American literary world but also for an ever-growing community of readers:
When all the accolades are in, and all the closing tributes assembled, there will be no question as to the approachability, the constancy, the giftedness, the candor, the exuberance, the health, the spiritualism, and the vulnerability of Marguerite Johnson – known to her millions of avid readers as Maya Angelou. (208, original emphasis)
