 She postpones meeting with Malcolm X for a month and visits her mother and brother in San Francisco . Malcolm X is assassinated two days later . Devastated and grief @-@ stricken , she moves to Hawaii to be near her brother and to resume her singing and performing career , which she had given up before leaving for Africa several years earlier . She realizes , after seeing Della Reese perform , that she lacks the desire , commitment , and talent to be a singer . She instead returns to her writing career , but this time in Los Angeles instead of in New York City as she had earlier in her life . To earn extra money , Angelou becomes a market researcher in Watts and gets to know the neighborhood and its people . She witnesses the 1965 Watts Riots , knowing that doing so could lead to her arrest , and she is genuinely disappointed that it does not . 
