42 pages • 1 hour read

Mom & Me & Mom

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2013

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 8

Part 1, Chapters 9-13

Part 2, Chapters 14-19

Part 2, Chapters 20-25

Part 2, Chapters 26-30

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Abandonment

Abandonment as a motif is key to Maya Angelou and her brother, Bailey’s, childhood trauma. Bailey was slightly older than Angelou at the time of Vivian Baxter’s abandonment—thus, as much as he loves and longs for his mother, he never forgives her. The trauma forever impacts his mental health, as he develops a drug addiction and later attraction to a woman who resembles Vivian. By contrast, Angelou manages to forgive her mother and form an unbreakable bond with her. However, this isn’t to say her own trauma doesn’t affect her. When Angelou and Vivian clash over her marriage to Tosh Angelos, Vivian moves away, and Angelou reexperiences abandonment. At crucial times in her life, Angelou longs for her mother’s presence. Furthermore, her trauma recurs as guilt. When she leaves her son, Guy, to tour Europe, she worries he might feel abandoned. Angelou’s anxiety over reuniting with Guy makes her take a boat because “guilt ma[kes] [her] afraid to fly back” (132).

Art and Liberation

Art in its various forms is key to Angelou’s identity. For her, dance is liberatory; it provides meaning. During her marriage to Tosh, she strives to attend dance classes and feels oppressed when he tries to stop her. When Angelou sees paintings in the house of one of her mother’s patients, she has a “physical response to art” (159). She realizes art is a vital part of life as it provides humans with the feeling that “existence [is] important” in itself (161). She feels enriched as she expands her skills, becoming a professional dancer, singer, composer, actress, producer, film director, and writer. With art comes identity and independence. As for motherhood, Vivian’s defiance of societal norms passes on to her daughter, allowing Angelou to try new things without shame: “She liberated me from a society that would have had me think of myself as the lower of the low. She liberated me to life” (75).

Love and Mothering

Love is Mom & Me & Mom’s main motif. Through her relationship with her mother, Vivian, Angelou explores how love sustained her during various struggles. To her, love is not simply an emotion, but a state of being: “[Love] may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins” (1). As a child, Angelou is sustained by her loving relationship with her brother, Bailey. Despite her difficult childhood, her mother and grandmother’s unconditional love help her heal from the trauma of abandonment and assault. Mothering in particular is a process. A younger Vivian recognized she was not ready to be a mother—however, when her children return to her as teenagers, she becomes one. Though she does not embody a traditional mother in many ways, she constantly affirms herself as Angelou and Bailey’s mother and grants them a great deal of agency and respect. Even as an adult, Angelou asks for her mother whenever she struggles. Overall, mothering is framed as a continual process characterized by unconditional love.