The anthology included her greatest early work as well as previously unreleased poetry written between 1934 and 1938. Her most recent poem, Old Maid Walking on a City Street, is also included in the book. Manalang was born on January 11, 1893 in San Francisco, California. She was the second child of Filipino immigrants Joaquin Manalang and Maria Santos. Her father was a sugar broker who also served as an assemblyman. Her mother was a homemaker who also worked as a sales clerk when she was not raising their children. Angela graduated from Lowell High School in Boston in 1911. She then went to Radcliffe College where she studied English literature for two years before dropping out to care for her sick father. She later attended Harvard University but dropped out again to work as a secretary for a newspaper company. In 1917, Angela married Henry Gloria, a wealthy advertising executive. They had three children together: Nancy, Peter, and Margaret. But the marriage only lasted five years because Henry died in 1932 at the age of forty-nine. This left Angela a single mother with no income. At this time, she started writing poems which were published in magazines such as The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Times Literary Supplement.