以我之名相聚 (1974)

以我之名相聚（Gather Together in My Name）是美国作家、诗人马娅·安杰卢于1974年出版的回忆录。它是马娅·安杰卢七本自传中的第二本著作。该书内容由马娅·安杰卢另一本著作《我知道笼中鸟为什么唱歌》中提到的事件而展开。

Gather Together in My Name is a 1974 memoir by American writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. Written three years after the publication of and beginning immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, it follows Angelou, called Rita, from the ages of 17 to 19. The title is taken from the Bible, but also conveys how one Black female lived in the white-dominated society of the U.S. following World War II.

Angelou expands upon many themes that she started discussing in her first autobiography, including motherhood and family, racism, identity, education and literacy. Rita becomes closer to her mother in this book, and goes through a variety of jobs and relationships as she tries to provide for her young son and find her place in the world. Angelou continues to discuss racism in Gather Together, but moves from speaking for all Black women to describing how one young woman dealt with it. The book exhibits the narcissism of young people, but describes how Rita discovers her identity. Like many of Angelou's autobiographies, Gather Together is concerned with Angelou's on-going self-education.

Gather Together was not as critically acclaimed as Angelou's first autobiography, but received mostly positive reviews and was recognized as being better written than its predecessor. The book's structure, consisting of a series of episodes tied together by theme and content, parallels the chaos of adolescence, which some critics feel makes it an unsatisfactory sequel to Caged Bird. Rita's many physical movements throughout the book, which affects the book's organization and quality, has caused at least one critic to call it a travel narrative.

Background

Gather Together in My Name, published in 1974, is Maya Angelou's second book in her series of seven autobiographies and was written three years after her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In 1971, Angelou published her first volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), which became a bestseller and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It was Angelou's early practice to alternate a prose volume with a poetry volume. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright" at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the writing of this autobiography and her life stories in all of her books, Angelou became recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. According to scholar Joanne Braxton, it made her "without a doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".

Title

The title of Gather Together is inspired by Matthew 18:19–20: "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (King James Version). While Angelou acknowledged the title's biblical origin, she also stated that the title counteracted the tendency of many adults to lie to their children about their pasts. Scholar Sondra O'Neale states that the title is "a New Testament injunction for the traveling soul to pray and commune while waiting patiently for deliverance". Critic Selwyn R. Cudjoe agrees: "The incidents in the book appear merely gathered together in the name of Maya Angelou"

Critic Hilton Als believes that the title of Gather Together may reflect its theme of how one Black woman was able to survive in the wider context of post-war America while also speaking for all Black women, and how they survived in a white-dominated society.