How can you rate and review a memoir? It's someones life. Their memories in a book.

Maya Angelou has released seven books in her memoirs series, and this is the first. It starts when she is a small child and finishes when she's about to become a mother herself at 17. Through her eyes you see what its like growing up poor, Black and in the American South in the 1930's.
I love the way Maya writes her truth, showing her anger as well as her compassion. Her life is full of turmoil and drama. Some aspects of her story are hard to stomach, such as the abuse she received from one of her mothers boyfriends. While other parts of the book show there can be joy in between the dark, such as the relationship between Maya and her brother Bailey, which Maya writes so eloquently and poetically. You can feel the love she has for him oozing from the pages.
There are an array of difficult topics covered in this volume, aside from the abuse, there is the racism that was very much rampant in 1930's Arkansas. Angelou discusses each of these themes in such a direct and honest way. She doesn't hide away behind mystery, she shows them as they are in her memory. 
The book does end rather abruptly, as Mayas life is about to change, and I am keen to read the next volume of her story (I've already bought a copy).