Jeffrey M. Elliot (1947–2009)

A sometimes-repetitive collection of interviews from 1971 to 1988 with Maya Angelou, who is fascinating and thoughtful and opinionated and just an all-round excellent human trying to understand the good and bad in herself and everybody else. A Conversation between Rosa Guy and Maya Angelou (1988) was hands down the best piece in the book Conversations with Maya Angelou (and certainly the most accurate of the title). There was no need for cross-racial explanations, taking special care to not offend and cause the non-black interviewer to feel defensive for their race or gender, less repetitive pat "acceptable" answers that seems more of society's idea and construct of Angelou, and much much less exposition from an often purple-prosed journalist who is hero-worshippingly treating Angelou as a black mascot of racial progress in seventies-eighties America.… (more)