 A Song Flung Up to Heaven is the sixth book in author Maya Angelou 's series of autobiographies . Set between 1965 and 1968 , it begins where Angelou 's previous book All God 's Children Need Traveling Shoes ends , with Angelou 's trip from Accra , Ghana , where she had lived for the past four years , back to the United States . Two " calamitous events " frame the beginning and end of the book — the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King , Jr . Angelou describes how she dealt with these events and the sweeping changes in both the country and in her personal life , and how she coped with her return home . The book ends with Angelou at " the threshold of her literary career " , writing the opening lines to her first autobiography , I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . 
