The poetry of Angelou's writing leaps off every page, she takes you through every emotion twice, and she constantly leaves you pondering and thinking about what each little morsel is intended to mean. For that reason, this is one of those books that you don't have to argue for. It's just magic. 
 Though I'll be upfront: This took me a very long time to read. After she returns from Chicago I found it incredibly difficult to handle, so I struggled to pick it up for several months. I ended up coming back to it after realising that I was 3/4 through and still remembered it all, so I drifted in and out over the past few days. I fared much better with the later chapters, which I read slower, and I think this would be best approached as a series of short stories or vignettes than a novel. Even the characters that remain throughout the story change so much in Maya's eyes from one story to the next, and while this gave her life a very realistic, unstable and nebulous feeling, it felt a bit odd as a reader if you read them all in a big gulp. 
 I think this is one of those books I will have to sit with and revisit later on to begin to truly appreciate it. Except next time I'll savour it.