In 1979 Dr. Maya Angelou became my mother. No, she never suckled me at her breast and no, she never cradled me in her arms, but how did she become my lifeline? A literary umbilical cord formed between she and I, and until her recent death, it has never been severed. To be honest, I’m not even sure if death alone could cut the cord that exists between the two of us. Yes, her earthly body has been abandoned for an ancestral form somewhere in the sky, yet, I still feel her warmth, her gentleness and her mothering spirit.
Don’t get me wrong; I had a mother. Two mothers, to be exact, but for what I experienced the summer of ’79, the mothers I had were not prepared to support me in the way I needed. Their words were empty and their capacity to understand my suffering had not matured to a level that made them capable of feeding my starving soul. So, in stepped Dr. Angelou with her memoir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
When I tell people Dr. Angelou’s book saved my life, I am not exaggerating. That summer, my innocence was stripped away from me, and no one but Dr. Angelou had the words to express all that I was feeling: “Could I tell her now? The terrible pain assured me that I couldn’t. What he did to me, and what I allowed, must have been very bad if already God let me hurt so much” (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, 1970). ‘How did she know?’ the eleven-year-old me wondered. How did she know that I, too, felt like a caged bird? How did she know that I couldn’t tell anyone either? And how did she know I, too, felt abandoned by the heavenly God that was supposed to protect sweet little innocent girls like her and me?
Along with reading, writing became my savior too. Seeing the beautiful brown image of Dr. Angelou on the back of her book cover was enough to validate the writer who was bubbling up inside of me. Through writing, I could rewrite the past, the present—even the future. I could create giants with Old Testament fury who annihilated those monsters that stalked the earth for helpless young princesses who bore a striking resemblance to me. I could reverse all of the past atrocities done to the meek long before they had the opportunity to inherit the earth. Reading and absorbing Dr. Angelou’s poetry allowed me to be brave and wise enough to revisit how I viewed myself. One poem in particular that reorganized my image of the self was “Phenomenal Woman” (1978):
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
There isn’t a woman alive who has ever read those words out loud and didn’t strut around knowing Dr. Angelou wrote those words especially for her. As a result of Dr. Angelou’s bodacity and unapologetic usurping of the mainstream’s idea of what is beautiful, I started writing poetry that showed my appreciation for those parts about me that society deemed unappealing. I wrote poems celebrating my broad nose, my nappy hair and my ample butt. I wrote myself out of bad relationships and unfulfilling jobs. I rewrote society’s reflection of me so that when I looked in the mirror I saw the woman Dr. Angelou wrote about.
Dr. Angelou’s death has left me breathless, but I am finally starting the process of resuscitating myself again through her wonderful and magical words as well as the knowledge that as long as I have a memory of her and her empowering prose and poetry, she will forever remain the rainbow in my clouds.
Maya Angelou speaks on the difference between Black American Womanhood vs. White American Womanhood (1973)
Do you see how she breaks it down and yet acknowledges that both of our oppression are based on our sex. This is when Feminism was at its height.
Maya Angelou: Beah Richards, a great poet, a great actress. Wrote a poem, “The Black Woman Speaks to White Womanhood” in which she says that white women, who were brought here many times almost as much slaves as black women–you know, to marry–she says, “If they did appraise my teeth / they checked out your thigh / and sold you to the highest bidder / the same as I,” and yet, she goes on in her poem to say, “yet you settled down / and when you saw my children say- sold / you gave no reproach / but for an added broach / settled down in your pink slavery / and thought that enduring my slavery, or allowing it to happen, would make yours less.” She says, “You never noticed that the bracelet you took was really a chain, and the necklace you accepted throttled your speech.” Now there’s a great difference in the white American woman and the Black American woman.
white man, interrupting: Well do you think that women’s liberation is a white woman’s fantasy?
Maya Angelou: No! Certainly not a fantasy; a necessity!
white man, interrupting: not a fantasy? a necessity?
Maya Angelou: Definitely needed.
white man: Does it [women’s liberation] say anything to Black women?
Maya Angelou: Very little, I’m afraid. You see, white women have been made to feel in this society that they are superfluous. A white man can run his society-
white man, interrupting: Not superfluous in bed, not superfluous in the home, not superfluous in the-
Maya Angelou, retaking control of the conversation: No, no, excuse me Bill, I didn’t mean that. I mean to run his world. He can send his rockets to the moon, and the little woman can stay at home. He can keep that camera rolling–and I love seeing you bring in some women in the crew, it just made me love you more [Bill laughing] than I already did– but generally, he, the white American man, makes the white American woman, maybe not superfluous but maybe, a little, a kind of decoration. Not really important to the turning around of the wheels of state. But the Black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No Black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that Black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder. In that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto. Wherever, that Black woman has been an integral, if not a most important part of a family unit.
To celebrate National Poetry Month and Maya Angelou’s birthday, you can hear Angelou’s sublime poem “A Brave and Startling Truth,” which flew to space aboard NASA’s Orion — “a timeless cosmic clarion call to humanity, inspired by Carl Sagan.”
A Brave and Startling Truth
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
Aslınabakarsan.. Üzerine çok da bir şey söylemeye gerek duymuyorum bazı tümcelerin Tetektifim.. .. “İnsanlar söylediklerinizi ya da yaptıklarınızı unutur ama onlara neler hissettirdiginizi asla unutmaz..”
“U.S Mint announced it has begun shipping out the first quarters featuring trailblazing American women, beginning with poet, writer and activist Maya Angelou, the first Black woman to appear on the quarter. “
“Angelou is depicted on the coin with her arms uplifted. Behind her are a bird and the rising sun, which are “inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived.”
I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same as making a “life”. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.
Maya Angelou passed away today at 86, so I thought why not celebrate the life and talent one of my personal all-time favorite writers with today’s Wednesday Wisdom. I think this particular quote sums up Angelou’s life perfectly. If her mission in life was to “thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style,” well then I’d say mission accomplished,…
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.
Maya Angelou’s classic 1978 poem “Still I Rise” provides a snapshot into her personal contemplations on injustice. We thus join her in reflection in the midst of protests sweeping the globe, primarily letting her speak for herself in her own voice.
But the two times, past and future, how can they be, since the past is no more and the future is not yet? On the other hand, if the present were always present and never flowed away into the past, it would not be time at all but eternity. But if the present is only time, because it flows away into the past, how can we say that it is? For it is, only because it will cease to be. Thus we can affirm that time is only in that it tends towards not-being.
Amiri Baraka eMaya Angelou; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 1991.
Foto:Chester Higgins, Jr.
«As I watched, Amiri Baraka asked Maya Angelou to dance and walked her to the “I’ve Known Rivers” Cosmogram — the focal point of the celebration, newly set into the floor over the ashes of Langston Hughes. As the two poets danced, the energy of the crowd focused on them. The room came alive as everyone applauded. In this impromptu tribute to Langston Hughes,I believe these two African-American icons created a moment that reflected our collective love for poets of African descent and the continuity of African creative genius.»(A Dance of Rivers, Chester Higgins, Jr.)
When I think about myself, I almost laugh myself to death, My life has been one great big joke, A dance that’s walked A song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke When I think about myself.
Sixty years in these folks’ world The child I works for calls me girl I say “Yes ma’am” for working’s sake. Too proud to bend Too poor to break, I laugh until my stomach ache, When I think about myself
My folks can make me split my side, I laughed so hard I nearly died, The tales they tell sound just like lying, They grow the fruit, But eat the rind, I laugh until I start to crying, When I think about my folks.
The Oprah Winfrey Network Airs Dr. Maya Angelou’s Funeral!
The Oprah Winfrey Network will simulcast the private memorial service for Dr. Maya Angelou on Saturday. Maya Angelou’s funeral will air at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT on OWN. It will also be available via Oprah.com. Thank GOD for Oprah! Oprah Winfrey released the following statement about her…
