Phenomenal Woman is a phenomenal poem that speaks to us of where we are as women at the dawn of a new century. In a clear voice, Maya Angelou vividly reminds us of our towering strength and beauty. Here is a poem that radiates wisdom and conviction, renewing our belief in the glory and tender mercies of our gender. Married to the extraordinary paintings Paul Gauguin, this book becomes a visionary commemoration of all that is wondrous in women. Gauguin painted women with exuberance and joy, reveling in their strength and beauty. His portraits are of women of color, women of power, women who gaze out at the viewer with the same quiet resolve and inner mystery that Angelou celebrates in her poem. Though Gauguin died twenty-five years before Angelou was born and these two artists lived very different lives in very different cultures, their work coalesces perfectly in this one glorious volume. Here is the ultimate gift for the phenomenal woman in your life-wife, lover, relative, teacher, friend. There’s hardly a woman alive today who will not relate to the words of the poet Maya Angelou and the images of painter Paul Gauguin.