The first volume of her frank autobiography is a testament to resilience, chronicling a grim childhood and the brazen path to stardom, with and without Sonny.
A poet, scholar and literary critic, she turned a feminist lens on 19th-century writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, creating a feminist classic.
In the first volume of her memoir (which she hasn’t read), she explores her difficult childhood, her fraught marriage to Sonny Bono and how she found her voice.
In “Prospero’s Daughter” and other novels, she explored the legacy of colonialism in her native Trinidad and the struggle for belonging in an adopted country.
Sometimes, the right book shows up just at the right time. Our book critic encountered two such books this week: Water, Water, by Billy Collins, and The Dog Who Followed the Moon, by James Norbury.