"I saw this film with my mother when I was very young. It’s the only movie aside from It’s a Wonderful Life during which I’ve cried because I was happy."

"Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me, but I do, I think I do. And you’re an all-American boy, I guess I couldn’t help trying to be your best American girl.” I love that she opened up a conversation in this song about trying to navigate the coveted life of the “American Dream” while coming from a different culture and how difficult it can be for those ideals to intersect."

"Maya Angelou’s final work, published a year before her death, in 2013, when she was 85 years old. It was the first book to focus on her mother, Vivian Baxter, who abandoned Angelou when she was a child and it portrays their complicated relationship. The story is about the special connection between mother and child; both women found a way to move on and form a profound and enduring bond of love and support."