Lesson Nine: Maya Angelou & Alberto Rios Poetry Due
Bloom's Literature Angelou Maya
Maya Angelou (mah' yuh an'jeh loh) was an African-American poet, author, playwright, film and television producer, director, and stage and screen performer. In her youth, she was a nightclub singer and dancer. Because of her many talents and skills, she has often been labeled a Renaissance woman. Though she was a thin, lanky, and insecure child, she grew into a tall, graceful woman with a quick smile and a warm, friendly manner. The scholar Joanne M. Braxton has called her "America's most visible female autobiographer" (4).
Angelou created what many consider a new genre, the serial autobiography. She wrote six sequential autobiographies of her life, the most famous of which is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She wrote candidly of her adventures, providing unprecedented insight into her interiority and identity formation as an African-American woman. Gloria Cronin, a scholar of African-American culture and literature at Brigham Young University, writes that Angelou's "sympathies range across history, class, color lines, communities, and whole continents" (14). A remarkably gifted, generous, and prolific woman, Maya Angelou emerged from a difficult childhood and unstable youth, and yet her artistic contributions have positively impacted millions of lives. Her voice has been influential in turning literary attention to black women's voices. She conscientiously and constantly worked to bring people and traditions together in authentic dialogue and understanding.
The importance of music, particularly the blues and the soulful hymns and spirituals of her African-American Christian religion, should not be underestimated when considering the life, accomplishments, and contributions Angelou made. In 2005, Cherron Barnwell wrote a well-informed article called "Singin' de Blues, Writing Black Female Survival in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which illuminates the deep meaning music, particularly the blues, has for Angelou. Barnwell wrote:
Of the African American cultural elements present in the text, the blues is most influential in Caged Bird. The blues shapes its form and content, and in using the blues aesthetic, Angelou meets the challenge of writing autobiography in literature. Descending from the Negro spiritual, the blues is a music native to America, having its genesis in the African American culture, it is expressive of blackness encountering that which is commonly called American. (134–135)
Maya was raised in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, where spirituals and hymns strongly undergirded the pastor's message. Movement, rhythms, and words were expressions of spirituality, and the sounds and feelings were carried in the mind long after the church doors were closed. The blues, anchored in these familiar rhythms and melodies, were comforting and transformative for Angelou. "While the motif of movement is influenced by the slave narrative, the blues form treats movement as transforming" (Barnwell 2009, 138). In Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Angelou wrote: "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness" (391).
She always expressed her culture through words. She drew from countless influential experiences gained through reading, listening, and living as she expressed different parts of her childhood and adult life through the medium of her serial autobiographies, poetry, and other writing. Angelou has shared her experiences in the world with her readers, as well as her wit, wisdom, and determined survival. From her humble beginnings, she met the world head-on, and she gave her readership and listeners easily understood keys to survival and self-respect, again and again. Angelou lived a rich life, and her literary works blend her individual experiences with the cultural and social history of African Americans.
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann (or Annie) Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents were Bailey Johnson, Sr., a carefree and breezy navy dietitian, and Vivian Baxter, a beautiful woman and professional nurse who preferred to earn her living by gambling. The first half of Angelou's professional name was given by her older brother, Bailey Johnson, Jr., who as a toddler called her My for "my sister." He eventually transformed that into "Maya" after reading a book about the Maya. She retained the Angelou surname after divorcing her first husband, Enistasious "Tosh" Angelos, (sometimes spelled Anastasios Angelopulos), a Greek-American sailor, and she put the two names together for her stage name.
After her parents' divorce, Maya (three) and Bailey (four) were labeled with notes saying "To Whom It May Concern" and put aboard a train to travel alone from Long Beach, California, to their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, who owned a general store in a southern backwash town named Stamps in Arkansas (See Stamps, Arkansas.) The imprint of ten years of living in Stamps with her grandmother and her uncle Willie Johnson formed the basis for Angelou's first and best known autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which chronicles her first 16 years. It also established an understanding of African Americans that resonated in her mind many years later when she lived in Africa. Stamps was a small, segregated, and racist place made up of whites and blacks with a long history of distrust for one another. Most of the African-American community lived in poverty, sustaining themselves by picking cotton, but they were close-knit and supportive of each member of their black community. The many aphorisms and maxims that particularly find expression in Angelou's earliest works were learned in Stamps, as was her old-fashioned courtesy. Her humorous recollections of Momma (as she called her grandmother) and Momma's training of Bailey and Maya included memories of being taught how to wash. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, for instance, "She [Momma] used to add, with a smirk that unprofane people can't control when venturing into profanity, 'and wash as far as possible, and then wash possible'" (25).
Angelou learned life-affirming values and resiliency from her grandmother's constant strength, hard work, and positive outlook in spite of adversity, and from observing the attitudes of other members of the African-American community living in Stamps. Her first autobiography is a historical document of the vernacular of the people as well as the personal narrative of a black girl living in the segregated South. Maya Angelou not only learned life values, she learned Southern black speech; colloquial aphorisms; and the lore that has enriched and colored her prose, her poetry, and her almost countless lectures and presentations. Her writings are laced with the rhythms and black traditions of the South, though she never preferred to speak in the deep southern accents of her heritage. Because of her keen intelligence, careful ear, and voracious reading, she formed herself into a refined, powerful woman with a devoted and sustained international following.
Maya's grandmother and her semiparalyzed uncle, Willie Johnson, owned and ran the William Johnson General Merchandise Store (always capitalized as "Store" in Angelou's writing). Uncle Willie was paralyzed on his right side; though he used a cane, he walked with difficulty. The store was an informal community center as well as a source of supplies for the people. Maya and her brother watched as people came to the Store in the morning, each one hopeful that the day would be productive, and that they would earn enough to pay their bills. They worked in the cotton fields, and whole families might work together; babies and little children were sometimes taken along. The cotton plants with their sharp cotton bolls tore their hands and arms, but it was the only work available. When these same people returned in the evening, dirty, weary, aching, and discouraged, Grandmother Henderson sold them Sloan's Liniment to ease their pain. But they knew that their best work was still not enough to earn the money they needed. Bailey and Maya watched and learned about African Americans' grave oppression.
Maya and Bailey experienced the black community spirit as well as strict discipline, no-nonsense religion, and moral training from their grandmother. They learned to wait on customers, and the brother and sister even became competitive in their goals of measuring flour and sugar accurately by eye. They were both bright and read the classics voraciously. Maya escaped from day-to-day life through her imagination by reading classic authors such as William Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, William Makepeace Thackeray, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horatio Alger, William Ernest Henley, Robert Service, and Samuel Butler. She also read important black authors, including Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, W. E. B. DuBois, and James Weldon Johnson.
Their uncle Willie watched over their education, and Angelou later wrote that there was little room for them to make errors in their educational process. Uncle Willie was strict and careful about their accuracy and accountability. There was a pot-bellied stove in the store, and Uncle Willie made lots of threats about throwing the children on it when it was red- hot if they failed to do their math sums correctly. He was a taskmaster, but he loved the children and never hurt them in any way. Maya did her homework efficiently and learned her numbers quickly.
The children also had chores to perform in the evening. They threw grain to the chickens and mixed ground meal with leftover food and dishwater for the pigs. Angelou fondly remembered waiting around until the pigs grunted with contentment, and then the two children playfully imitated the grunting. She never complained about those chores but, rather, made the best of the situation time after time, and she often tried to find humor in the work. She and Bailey were close friends throughout their childhood and adult years, and she remarked in her books that to her, he was one of the best and most handsome people in the world. She called him her "kingdom come" (23). Throughout their adult years, Bailey maintained his early protective loyalty and frequently acted as a sounding board, friend, confidant, and careful adviser to his sister. They had no father figure except Uncle Willie, and for Maya, Bailey was always a deeply trusted friend.
In 1935, their father took Maya and Bailey to St. Louis for a stay with their mother. The new, somewhat sophisticated environment was quite a change from rural Arkansas, but the children soon adapted and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the city, which "had many paved streets and large brick buildings, and coal dust filled the air. Buses, cars and trucks constantly moved back and forth" (Kite 1999, 25). They had plenty of good food and clothing bought in a store, each of them had a radio, and they also were given enough money to buy paperback books. It was an entirely different way of life in contrast to Stamps, and they both enjoyed it.
Their mother was often away from home working, and tragically, Maya, at eight years old, was seduced and later brutally raped by her mother's boyfriend. She revealed her assailant reluctantly, afraid to tell anyone because she had been told that if she confessed who had hurt her, her brother would be killed. The rapist's trial and subsequent death by a brutal beating (perhaps by her uncles) was perceived by Maya to be her fault. In her young mind, she felt that her words had the power to kill; consequently, she silenced her voice for about five years and spoke only infrequently with Bailey.
After her tragic experience, Maya and Bailey were returned to her grandmother, Momma, and the safe, nurturing community of Stamps. Bailey was unhappy about being returned, but he remained supportive and helpful to Maya. Many of the black people in Stamps thought Maya was retarded because of her silence, but Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a refined and educated black woman in Stamps and friend of her grandmother's, took a personal interest in Maya. She and Maya spent many afternoons reading, and Mrs. Flowers encouraged oral recitation of prose and poetry. At last, Maya began to speak again.
She remained in Stamps until she graduated, with honors, from the eighth grade at Lafayette County Training School in 1940. Shortly after that, Momma took her to her mother in Los Angeles, California, and Bailey followed about a month later. Vivian Baxter (maiden name), Maya, and Bailey lived first in Los Angeles; then Oakland, California; and then, finally, in San Francisco, California, after their mother married "Daddy" Clidell Jackson. Their large home was on Post Street in the Fillmore District of San Francisco.
Maya attended the George Washington High School by day, and in the evening, from 1941 to 1945, she studied dance and performance at the California Labor School. She spent a few days at her father's trailer in southern California, hoping to become better acquainted with him, but she was poorly treated by Dolores, his live-in girlfriend. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou describes a trip to Ensenada, Mexico, that she made with her father. The girlfriend did not want to go, and Maya's father, too drunk to drive after partying in Ensenada, passed out in the backseat of the car. Maya, who had never before driven a car, drove the harrowing roads to the border, where she had a minor accident. When that was sorted out, she and her father returned to San Diego, but it was brutally clear that the girlfriend was jealous and Maya was not welcome there.
After a quarrel, Dolores stabbed Maya. Her father took her for care and then left her at a friend's trailer for the night. The next morning, Maya found the trailer empty, made herself some sandwiches, and left for 30 days, falling in with a group of teenagers who were mostly homeless but kind and loyal to one another. When she reflected on this experience later, she realized that she first learned interracial democracy from those youngsters. They were loyal to one another, they had established a system, and they were at peace.
Bedraggled and hungry, Maya finally contacted her mother in San Francisco and returned home. She hoped to find a job, and her mother was supportive of whatever she chose to do. She saw an ad for a streetcar conductor and determinedly decided that was the job she would have. She pestered the San Francisco city offices and their resistant secretary until they finally tested her and then hired her as the first black streetcar conductor in the city. Angelou's persistence and success with that job was a foreshadowing of the drive and determination that manifested itself throughout her life. She finished her required course of study at Mission High School and graduated in the summer. Just a few weeks after graduation, the birth of her son, her only child, began a new dimension of her life.
Maya had had doubts about her sexual inclinations and plunged into a quick affair with a handsome white neighborhood boy to determine if she was or was not a lesbian. She offered her body to him one day, and he took her to a room where they had a quick and unsatisfactory sexual encounter. She realized about three weeks later that she had conceived, but she told no one until it was almost time for the baby to be born. Her mother gracefully accepted the information, and Clyde Bailey Johnson was born shortly after her high school graduation in 1944 when she was 16 years old.
Themes throughout her other five autobiographies emphasize the bonds between Angelou and her son. The texts reveal the nature of her devoted motherhood and also her relationships with her mother, grandmother, and both familial and African-American culture. Parts of her story are familiar to many young women who bear a child without a husband. The
new mother's cultural or biological heritage does not matter; it is a difficult and challenging situation. Angelou became a mother as a young teen with no marketable skills and an infant whom she wanted to support independently. She floated from one short-term job to another in California to try to support her child and herself.
Her mother's financial safety net was always available, but Angelou wanted to provide appropriate support and care for her infant son and herself without outside dependency or strings. One of her first jobs was as a cook in a café that specialized in Creole cooking. Though she was not familiar with the flavors of Creole food, someone told her just to add peppers, onions, and tomatoes, and it would be Creole. Typical of Angelou, she learned as she cooked, and her creations were well-received. Her skill and interest in cooking led to developing self-taught gourmet skills in the culinary arts, and she used these skills on a daily basis. Her first cookbook, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes (2004), reflects her tribute to many great friends and cooks she had admired, eaten with, and listened to.
Angelou worked as a dancer in nightclubs; as a body shop employee, removing paint from cars with her hands; and, for a short time, as a madam of her own prostitution business. Afraid of being arrested because of her illegal brothel, she returned to Stamps, but she was no longer comfortable with the intensely racist conditions there and returned to California. There, she tried to enlist in the army; however, her application was turned down because she had studied at the California Labor School, and that school was suspected of having communist links.
For a while, Angelou was part of a dance team called "Poole and Rita." When she auditioned in her home for Mr. Poole, she performed various positions, including an arabesque, but she accidentally became fixed between a gas jet and a table leg when she did the splits. He forgave her for that, and with his guidance she mastered the dancing routine and particularly enjoyed performing in the spotlight. When Poole's former dance partner returned, Angelou's professional life as a costumed club performer came temporarily to a halt. There were other jobs, including a short episode of prostitution, and in this early and frustrating period of her life, she acquired the habit of using marijuana for escape.
When her brother Bailey's young wife died of tuberculosis and complications from pneumonia, Maya turned her attention to him in his grief. Bailey, sensing that the lifestyle Maya was living was dead-end, spoke firmly to her and persuaded her to find a more legitimate job. Before long, Maya had an opportunity to become financially independent by selling clothes for a male junkie. Though it was still not a legitimate career, the junkie's concern for Maya, in spite of his own dependency on drugs, led him to take her to a filthy gathering place of junkies and dope users. He administered heroin to himself in front of her, and she watched him lose consciousness. That was enough of a lesson, and she never used drugs again.
Angelou worked two legitimate jobs in order to afford a dependable babysitter, pay her rent, and cover expenses for herself and baby Clyde (later called "Guy" by his request). When the boy was around five, Maya began working full-time at the Melrose Record Shop in San Francisco's Fillmore District. During the 1940s and 1950s, the well-known district was also called the "Harlem of the West." It was a black music haven, and Tosh Angelos, a regular customer at the record store, became romantically interested in Maya. He was a white, Greek-American sailor who had finished his service in the U.S. Navy and had a steady civilian job in an appliance store. Tosh began to court both Maya and Guy, and before long, much to her mother's disapproval, Maya accepted his marriage proposal. Thereafter, she became a full-time homemaker styled after images in the pages of Good Housekeeping of that time (1949). She took pride in her cooking and squeaky clean home and dedicated herself almost completely to her husband's and son's needs. For a while, that seemed to work, but Tosh's atheism clashed with Maya's fundamental Christian faith. Soon undeniable racial issues began to emerge, and after three years of both racial and religious tension, the marriage ended in divorce in 1952.
Guy was heartbroken by the separation from Tosh, who was the only father he had known, loved, and trusted. As a consequence, he blamed and distrusted his mother. It took a concentrated effort of time and patience to reestablish Guy's confidence in her. By spending as much time as possible with him, preparing his favorite foods often and generously, and letting him choose board games to play with her in the evening, Angelou was able to mend their relationship. There were many moments during Guy's growing-up years when she reached out to him to accommodate hurts for which she felt responsible. They moved often, but in spite of that, she tried to provide a consistently safe home for him.
Angelou resorted to exotic dancing in nightclubs for a period of time to provide enough income for she and Guy to live comfortably. She worked as a dancer, not a stripper, and as a "B-girl" at the Garden of Allah nightclub in 1955. She then had an opportunity to work as a calypso dancer and singer at the famous Purple Onion club. The Purple Onion, located in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, was well known as a showcase for rising performers. Phyllis Diller was another entertainer and eventual star who got her start there (Gillespie, Butler, and Long 2008, 43). At that time, Maya
changed her name from Marguerite Johnson Angelos to Maya Angelou. In order to enhance her exotic calypso act, she also assumed a fictional Cuban/African/Spanish identity.
At 25, Angelou had officially stepped back into the spotlight and established herself as an up-and-coming professional dancer and singer. She became a popular performer, and soon other offers for professional performances came her way. She was invited to audition as a replacement for Eartha Kitt in the revue New Faces for 1953 and was offered the spot, but because she was under contract to the Purple Onion, there was no legal way to accept it. She honored her contract and, a short time later, accepted an opportunity to tour Europe and Africa with the Department of State production of Porgy and Bess. Her mother was happy to take care of Guy, so Angelou toured with the musical company from 1954 to 1955. While on that tour, she met James Baldwin in Paris, and they established a lasting friendship.
Another telling aspect of Angelou's quest for learning is the way she handled her time on the European tour of Porgy and Bess. In Maya Angelou: Journey of the Heart (1996), Jayne Pettit wrote:
While other members of the cast relaxed at a sidewalk café, Maya strolled through the narrow streets, past rows of old stone houses and balconies crammed with pots of bright red geraniums. Could she really be in Italy? As lines from Romeo and Juliet raced through her head, she thought of the times that she and Bailey had read the play to each other back in Stamps.
In Venice, Maya spent her free hours exploring the wonders of the great medieval city: the churches and palaces, the marketplaces, and the canals where gondolas moved gracefully through mirrored waters. Eager to learn a new language, she bought a small pocket Italian dictionary and taught herself simple phrases. (33)
Angelou recognized that she was giving her son much of the same kind of childhood she had experienced herself. He was being left with babysitters, friends, and her mother as the need arose, but he was her first priority. She determined that when she got home, any performances she undertook after Porgy and Bess would be arranged so that he could travel with her, or she would not accept the opportunity. She returned to San Francisco before the tour ended because her mother let her know that Guy needed her. It was 1955, and Guy was 10. His name from birth had been Clyde, but shortly after they were reunited, he requested that he be called Guy. Maya had changed her own name, so she accepted his announcement without an argument (Gillespie, Butler, and Long 2008, 47)
Angelou began writing short sketches and song lyrics after returning from the European tour, and she was able to record six of them for Liberty Records on an album called Miss Calypso. She met John Killens, a writer temporarily in Hollywood working on a screenplay of his novel Youngblood, and he suggested that she move to New York in order to be a member of the Harlem Writers Guild. He explained that she would receive helpful critiques from that group, which would improve her writing skill. Angelou decided to take his advice, and she and Guy—with assistance from Killen's family, who lived in Brooklyn—relocated to New York City. Guy, interested in public welfare like his mother, became active in the National Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE).
It was 1959, and the members of the Harlem Writers Guild were not only serious about writing, they were also informed about contemporary issues and discussed them frequently. Both African independence and African-American civil rights in the United States were in the forefront of the news at that time, and Angelou, 31, was being guided in her writing as well as becoming informed politically. Her first reading to the group was received with sharp criticism, but she began to understand that good writing meant hard work. She began to write in earnest and also became politically active in the Civil Rights movement. The unrest was a demand for social reform to address and change the issues of American institutionalized racism and create a more just society.
After attending a consciousness-raising rally in a Harlem church where Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others challenged the audience to support the southern movement to end segregation, she and comedian/actor Godfrey Cambridge organized a fund-raiser ("Cabaret for Freedom") for Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). It ran for five successful weeks at the Village Gate in New York City. Shortly after the benefit cabaret finished its run, she was invited to become the northeastern regional coordinator of the SCLC in the New York office. Angelou was an avid supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr., who visited her office one morning, unannounced, and affirmed his support of her work. She found him comfortable to talk to, and he asked her questions about her family. She served in that administrative position for about a year until her life took a surprising and interesting turn.
In 1961, John Killens invited her to meet a South African freedom fighter, Vusumzi Make, who, with Oliver Tambo, another African activist, was in New York to speak in behalf of his people at the United Nations. He and Angelou were immediately attracted to one another, and within a few short weeks, he proposed to her. She was engaged to a man named
Thomas Allen at the time and had visions of settling down as a quiet homemaker, but she accepted Make's proposal. Soon she, Guy, and Vusumzi were sharing a luxurious apartment in New York City.
Recognized as an accomplished stage performer after the European tour, Angelou was offered the role of the White Queen in Jean Genet's The Blacks, an Off-Broadway production about the corruption of power regardless of race. Both Make and Angelou were resistant to the offer at first, but after reading the play, Make changed his mind and encouraged her to take the part if it was still available. The play was received well in New York and was eventually performed in Europe.
At this time, Angelou began to receive threatening phone calls from agents of South Africa's apartheid regime. She began to take this cruel intrusion personally, and she was determined to make the relationship with Make work, though there were warning signals in the relationship. She loved him, but their bills were not being paid, and he also had strong ideas about the place of women. After Angelou left the cast of The Blacks, Make moved her and Guy to Cairo, Egypt. It was exotic and fascinating to both Guy and his mother, and they competed while learning Arabic to see who could learn the words the fastest and with the least accent. Over time, Angelou learned to speak Arabic fluently as well as West African Fanti, French, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, and Italian.
Guy completed high school in Egypt, and because of Make's lack of responsible financial management, Angelou worked as an associate editor of the Arab Observer from 1961 to 1962. She had learned from her housekeeper that their luxurious apartment, chosen and furnished by Vusumzi, was not being paid for; further, there were tuition and clothing expenses for Guy. Make had felt that Maya would not be able to get a job in Cairo, and also that it was not appropriate for a wife to work. Angelou had convinced him that if she were employed, he would be able to use all of his money for the South African United Front. He accepted that, and she went to work.
The relationship with Make continued to deteriorate, and in addition to the financial instability, he was not true to his relationship with Maya. (Though they had never formally married, they lived as man and wife.) Meanwhile, Guy had finished school and was ready for university studies. In 1963, Angelou traveled to Accra, Ghana, with Guy to enroll him in the University of Ghana. They liked the country from the moment they arrived in the Ghanian Airport. It was a black world, and the people were well-dressed and impressive. Maya had expected only being there long enough to enroll Guy because she had been promised a job in Liberia by dignitaries in Cairo. Those plans were changed just a few days later because of a serious automobile accident that left Guy in a body cast for months. Consequently, Angelou unexpectedly settled in Accra.
Guy mended completely, and after some wrangling about rules and regulations on Angelou's part, he was able to take his entrance exams and be admitted to the University of Ghana. Friends assisted Angelou, and soon she was hired as the assistant administrator of the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana. She also worked for the Ghanian Broadcast Corporation and wrote for the Ghanian Times newspaper. During this time, she was introduced to several important African women who valued her friendship, and there was time for her to enjoy the beauty of Accra and establish many warm friendships. Angelou recognized commonalities in the behaviors of African people and her own heritage in Stamps, Arkansas. There were factors that "influenced sensibilities and behavior, the grave formality of elders in Ghana so like her Grandmother Henderson's demeanor. It was alive in the spoken and body language of Black America, in the music and the kitchen" (Gillespie, Butler, and Long 2008, 69). The children played similar games to those she had played in her childhood, and the older people shared some of the same folktales.
During the time she worked in Ghana, she also met the wife and adopted son of W. E. B. DuBois and Malcolm X, all luminaries in the fight for African-American civil rights. She was well known and organized a Ghanian demonstration in support of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington in 1963. In 1964, she arranged Malcolm X's Ghanian itinerary. Meanwhile, Guy was growing up and had met a woman in Africa with whom he wanted to live. Declaring himself a man, he informed his mother that she was finished with raising him, which Angelou accepted graciously. She had been offered a position as coordinator of Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in New York and felt it was time to let Guy be on his own. A little later, in 1965, she returned to the United States alone. She wrote:
There was much to cry for, much to mourn, but in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was much to celebrate. Although separated from our languages, our families and customs, we had dared to continue to live. We had crossed the unknowable oceans in chains and had written its mystery into "Deep River, my home is over Jordan." Through the centuries of despair and dislocation, we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope. (1986, 1,050–1,051)
Angelou was looking forward to working in Malcolm X's organization, and so upon her arrival in New York, among other calls, she contacted him. He invited her to spend a few days at his home with his family, but she declined because she was exhausted and anxious to return to San Francisco. She regretted that decision because Malcolm X was assassinated just a few days later (on February 21, 1965), and the tragedy left her unsure of her future once more. She was at a close friend's home when she heard the shocking news. She fell into an emotional tailspin there, and soon Bailey came after her. They both stayed at their mother's place for a short time, and then Bailey suggested that she move to Hawaii, where he was working as a chef, and resume her performing career there. Following his advice, she stayed in Hawaii about six months, but she realized that her heart was really in writing. She had no desire to move back to New York, so she decided to try Los Angeles. She had friends and connections there and was soon settled in an apartment. She decided to work just enough to support herself so she could write. She found a job as a part-time market researcher interviewing homemakers about the products they used. Her assignment was in Watts, which, because of unemployment, poor schools, price gouging, and family disintegration, literally exploded into riots on August 11, 1965. Angelou saw it, and she understood it.
Soon after the horror of Watts, Angelou's friend Rosa Guy visited Los Angeles to promote her new book, Bird at My Window. Rosa persuaded Maya to make a change, and Angelou decided to return to New York and begin serious writing again when the news came that Guy had returned from Africa and had been in another serious accident. He had finished school in Ghana and had only been in the United States a few days when he was hit by a truck in San Francisco. Maya went to him there; his neck was broken again, but his prognosis was good. When his recovery was assured, she returned to Los Angeles, saved as much money as she could, and then moved to New York, where she resumed her friendship with James Baldwin, who introduced her to his family. His mother immediately added her to her large brood of children, and Angelou was once again surrounded by friends and chosen family. Baldwin and Angelou ran into some tension in their friendship when he decided to relocate to California from New York to lend a hand to Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party. Angelou passionately believed in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s passive resistance style, and the potential violence of Cleaver's organization unsettled her. However, time moved on, issues changed, and Baldwin and Angelou's close, supportive friendship resumed and continued.
Three years later, just after a memorial tribute for W. E. B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., asked Angelou to help in an effort to raise funds for another march on Washington. He hoped she would appeal to black ministers across the country and persuade them to donate one Sunday's church collection a year. She was pleased to be asked, but on April 4, 1968, her birthday, she received a phone call from a close friend who then went to her home to inform her that King had been assassinated. Devastated, she turned to Baldwin, who helped her work through her deep grief and disappointment. Baldwin set her path, at last, toward serious writing. He took her to the home of Jules and Judy Feiffer, where their funny stories and Angelou's tales from her childhood in segregated Stamps lifted all of their spirits at this sad time. Soon after that dinner, Angelou began working on a 10-part African-American culture series for television called Black, Blues, Black. It was broadcast on San Francisco's National Education Television affiliate, KQED. She was both the writer and the program's host, and the essence of the series was, as Angelou stated: "We were blacks in Africa before we were brought to America as slaves, where we created the blues, and now we were painfully and proudly returning to being upstanding free blacks again" (2002, 1,163).
The Feiffers had contacted an editor at Random House named Robert Loomis and told him about Angelou's stories. He contacted Angelou and invited her to write an autobiography for their company, she responded that she sincerely doubted her ability to write such a book. Nevertheless, even after several refusals, Loomis continued to encourage her, and finally, following a tip about her personality he received from James Baldwin, he challenged her by saying that autobiography was nearly the hardest genre in which to write. At that, she said she would do it. The eventual result was her first book, the prize-winning I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), an autobiographical account of the first 16 years of her life.
The first reader of Angelou's manuscript was her good friend Jessica Mitford, who found the book fascinating and encouraged her to continue writing. It is both poignant and humorous, as is much of her other writing, and in Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet (1997), the critic Lyman B. Hagen wrote:
To contrast the psychological and physically devastating forces encountered there [Stamps, Arkansas], she lavishly imbued her prose and poetry with humor. Her philosophy was that every chance one gets, one should laugh. It is interesting to note, however, that in spite of sister support in her writings, Angelou did not align herself with modern feminists because she thought they do not have a sense of humor. While Angelou's comedy was often born out of pain and anger, she was, nevertheless, secure enough to laugh at herself and with her people. (27)
Loomis, who continued to be her editor, stated: "Maya is her books" (quoted in Russell 1985, 8–9). Angelou was also quoted as saying: "I am a writer. Every writer is his or her books. Just as every singer is the song, while you're doing it. The dancer is the dance …" (8–9). A little later in the interview with Russell, Angelou remarked: "I use the first person singular and I'm talking about the third person plural all the time; what it's like to be a human being. So the person who reads my work and suspects that he or she knows me, hasn't gotten the half of the book, because he or she should know himself or herself better after reading my work. That's my prayer" (8–9).
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became the Book of the Month selection in 1970, was nominated for a National Book Award, and was later produced as a television movie. The first book was followed with five more autobiographies: Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). She also wrote several volumes of personal essays, poetry, dramas, two television plays, children's books, and two screenplays: Georgia, Georgia (1972) and All Day Long (1972).
In 1973, Angelou married Paul Du Feu, a British builder and architect. They lived in Los Angeles, Sonoma County, and then in the Pacific Palisades. Du Feu was also a writer, and their relationship was promising in the beginning. He encouraged her to "tell the truth as a writer and not to let her writings be determined by what her readers would think" (Lupton 1998, 14). In her collection Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997), Angelou wrote an essay called "A House Can Hurt, a Home Can Heal," the first sentence of which states: "My last marriage was made in heaven" (3). It began well, but as they moved from place to place and home to home, they found that not only did their furniture sometimes seem misplaced, but somehow their relationship began to feel misplaced as well.
The last home Angelou and Du Feu owned together, one that seemed to accommodate their possessions appropriately, ultimately proved to be the catalyst for the breaking point of their relationship. Nothing seemed to stay in place as they had planned: Professionally hung curtains fell off their rods, doors ceased to fit their frames, the bed collapsed in the middle of the night with no apparent cause, and the last nerve-breaking straw was that even her cooking would not turn out correctly. Finally, Angelou moved to North Carolina, while Du Feu remained in California.
The same year as their divorce, 1981, Angelou was given a lifetime appointment as the Reynolds Professor and Chair of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She had a rambling home there, which had 10 rooms when she purchased it and grew to 18. She wrote, "My builder asked me if I was thinking of reaching the next street down from my house. This is no longer my house, it is my home" (1998, 9).
The same year as the divorce from Du Feu, Angelou published her fourth autobiography, The Heart of a Woman. The next 12 years of her life were extraordinarily productive. She taught at Wake Forest and prepared carefully for her classes there but continued to write, perform, and make public appearances. In 1982, she appeared on television as an actor on the Richard Pryor Special. She published Shaker, Why Don't You Sing, a collection of poetry, in 1983. Her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, was published in 1986, along with a collection of previously published poetry. She also served as a Fulbright Anniversary Distinguished Lecturer in Liberia that year. In 1988, she appeared on the PBS program The Face of Evil and directed Errol John's film Moon on a Rainbow Shawl in London. In 1989, she was listed in USA Today as one of 50 most important black role models. In 1989, she also appeared in a TV special with James Baldwin, The Price of a Ticket.
The year 1990 saw the publication of another important collection of Angelou's poetry, I Shall Not Be Moved (1990). It was dedicated to her mother, Vivian Baxter, and friend, Mildred Garris Tuttle. That same year, she lectured in Washington, D.C., appeared in the television special R.A.C.E., and also appeared in the televised 22nd Annual NAACP Image Awards. She also received the Langston Hughes Medal in 1991. In 1991 and 1992, she appeared on television as an actor in several specials (a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis show, Who Cares About the Kids? and Kindred Spirits: Contemporary African American Artists). Perhaps the great honor of her life came in January 1993.
In preparation for his presidential inauguration, Bill Clinton invited Angelou to write and read a poem. The dignity and sensitivity of her delivery of "On the Pulse of Morning" garnered Angelou both national and international acclaim. Angelou was the first poet to read at a presidential inaugural since Robert Frost at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Knowledge of her work immediately became widespread, and Angelou's poems were featured in the film Poetic Justice: On the Road to Redemption in 1993; she also made a brief appearance in that film.
Angelou maintained a rigorous lecture circuit, often appearing on college campuses throughout the United States. In the last 10 years or so, however, she gave up flying for a tour bus, explaining that she
gave up flying, unless it was really vital … not because she was afraid, but because she was fed up with the hassle of celebrity. One of the last times she flew, her feet had not made it to the curbside of the airport before an excitable woman started shouting her name. (Younge 2002, 1)
Because she has written so much about her personal life in both her autobiographies and her poetry, many people treated Angelou as public property. Her style of speaking to a group was a mixture of aphorisms and parables. The journalist Gary Younge has written that when she was on stage, it "is like watching stand-up comedy, a university lecture and a poetry recital all in one. With stories, quips and poems, both her own and those of African-American poets both dead and living, she has them laughing, gasping and listening for over an hour" (4). Younge also tells us about her manner of speaking and Southern courtesies:
Her voice is slow and rich—so deliberate she seems to be tasting words before she lets them leave her mouth. Her speech is peppered with Southern courtesies. You may introduce yourself with your first name, but she will address you with your second. Everybody, in her presence, becomes Mr, Mrs or Miss—legacy from a time when African Americans were denied those basic signifiers of civility by whites, and so demanded it within their own community.
"I insist upon that," says Angelou. "I did it and do it still. I do it still to Dr. Dorothy Hyde, who is 90. I'm still the young kid and very respectful." (4)
The year after she read "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Clinton's inauguration, Random House published The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, and Angelou also came out with a children's book (My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me) and appeared in several television specials. In 1995, she was recognized by Bantam Books as being the first African American to have the current longest-running title (two years for Caged Bird) on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list. That year, she also read her poem, "A Brave and Startling Truth" at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco, and she read her poem "A Black Woman Speaks to Black Manhood" (also called the "Million Man March Poem") at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.
In 1996, she published another children's book (Koji and His Magic), served as an ambassador for UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund), and received the Martin Luther King, Jr., Legacy Association National Award, as well as appearing on the television show Touched By an Angel.
She published a collection of essays, Even the Stars Look Lonesome, in 1997 and again appeared on television several times, including being a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 1998, she directed Down in the Delta, produced by Miramax, and in 1999, she was recognized by Writer's Digest as one of the 100 best writers of the 20th century. In 2000, Angelou signed a contract with Hallmark Cards to help create "The Maya Angelou Collection from Hallmark." Though some critics have decried the collection as inspirational kitsch, Angelou considered the series a strong medium for spreading her message of love and perseverance. The next year, she participated in a television special for the healing of AIDS and also played the role of a conjure woman in the television movie Runaway.
Angelou published the last of her autobiographies, A Song Flung Up to Heaven, in 2002. She also recorded it and won a Grammy Award for her performance. Over the next few years, from 2003 to 2005, Angelou continued to act on television, teach, and travel between Wake Forest and New York City; she considered both places her home. In 2005, she published Amazing Peace: A Celebration, which included "Amazing Peace," the poem she read at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C., on December 5, 2005. The next year, she became a radio talk show host for XM Satellite Radio on the Oprah & Friends station. She also published two more books of poetry, won additional awards for her writing, and appeared on television several times. In 2007, she narrated the film As Seen through These Eyes and was given the Martha Parker Legacy Award. Her book Letter to My Daughter was published in 2008.
In September 2008, Angelou introduced Michelle Obama at a Women for Obama event in Greensboro, North Carolina. Angelou wrote a short reflection on that experience for the Washington Post and said that sometime before the introduction, she had consulted Oprah Winfrey, her close friend who knows the Obamas. Angelou wrote that "Oprah answered promptly and with conviction, 'She is the real deal'" (2009, B05). So, after sharing some of Michelle Obama's accomplishments with the audience, Angelou ended the introduction by saying, "Now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 'real deal'" (B05). In this short article, Angelou also reflected on North Carolinian history. She noted how much has changed there in the last five decades, which was reflected in the spirit of optimism she felt from the audience that day. Nearly a century and a half had passed since Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation stating that people held as slaves would be free, and African Americans were finally bidding for significant leadership.
In November 2008, Angelou was interviewed by Diane Rehm on National Public Radio regarding her latest book, Letter to My Daughter. In that interview, she read the letter that serves as the opening of the book. The last paragraph of the letter is:
I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native American and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you. (2008, xii)
On Friday, November 29, 2010, officials from the New York Public Library announced that they had acquired a great portion of Angelou's papers. They are to be housed at Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Included are letters from James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and other correspondence with well-known figures, as well as drafts of such important works as "On the Pulse of Morning." According to the New York Times, "Ms. Angelou, 82, said it dawned on her that 'I'd better make sure my papers and books are taken care of, they are somewhere people can see and read them.'"
Angelou, passed the age of 80, remained an active member of the world political and literary communities. She was a constant advocate for the continuing civil rights movements and many other outreach groups. Her home remained in Winston-Salem, where she enjoyed family (including two great-grandchildren) and frequent guests in her 18-room residence; she also had two town houses in Harlem, New York, renting one out and using the other for convenience in the city when she was there. Her Harlem town house was elegantly appointed with African-American art, and she often hosted dinner parties there.
At the July 7, 2009, public memorial for Michael Jackson, Queen Latifah recited a warm, affirming poem Angelou had written for the occasion entitled "We Had Him." Again, Angelou spoke to everyone in language clearly understood and from her heart. In February 2011, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. At the age of 85 she wrote Mom & Me & Mom (2013), an account of her relationship with her mother.
For decades, Maya Angelou had been a role model for Americans of all ages. She was a living example of a woman who, through faith, determination, and perseverance, overcame what some might consider impossible obstacles. In a 1973 interview, she revealed that she was often asked, "How did you escape it all: the poverty, the rape at an early age, a broken home, growing up black in the South?" She replied: "My natural response is to say, 'How the hell do you know I did escape? You don't know what demons I wrestle with'" (quoted in Weller 1973, 14). Whether she escaped all of her demons or not, she refused to be defeated. She continued to teach the world with dignity and common sense through inspirational stories, wisdom, and engaging charisma.
In another of her early interviews, Angelou stated part of her philosophy of life. She told her interviewer, Claudia Tate:
I try to live what I consider a "poetic existence." That means I take responsibility for the air I breathe and the space I take up. I try to be immediate, to be totally present for all my work. I try. This interview with you is a prime example of this. I am withdrawing from the grief that awaits me over the death of someone dear so that I can be present for you, for myself, for your work and for the people who read it, so I can tell you exactly how I feel and what I think and try to answer your questions cheerfully—if I feel cheerful—as I can. That to me is poetic. I try for concentrated consciousness which I miss by more than half, but I'm trying. (quoted in Tate 1983, 4)
Once upon a time, Maya Angelou was a traumatized, silent little girl mistaken by neighbors in Stamps, Arkansas, as a backward or even retarded child. But her grandmother "Momma" Henderson told her, "Sister, Momma don't care what other people say about you. Momma knows when you and the Lord are ready, you goin' to be a teacher" (quoted in Minzesheimer 2008). And she was a teacher; she was a university professor. She did not plan to retire and taught "one course each semester at Wake Forest.… I work all the time. I don't know how not to work. I'm not complaining. I play hard, too" (quoted in Minzesheimer).
Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home in Winston-Salem. Angelou succeeded in her objectives and set a positive example for the present generation and probably for many generations to come. She prefered to teach her readers deliberately and simply lived what she taught. In her essay on aging, she closes with lines of homey wisdom: "Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and the cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: do it. By all means, do it" (1998, 24).
Further Information
Page citations for all of Angelou's autobiographies are from The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (New York: Modern Library Edition by Random House, 2004).
Angelou, Maya. All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. New York: Random House, 1986.
———. "At Long Last, Ready for the Real Deal." Washington Post, 18 January 2009, B05.
———. The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House, 2004.
———. Even the Stars Look Lonesome. New York: Bantam Books/Random House, 1998.
———. Letter to My Daughter. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2008.
———. A Song Flung Up to Heaven. New York: Random House, 2002.
Barnwell, Cherron A. "Singin' de Blues, Writing Black Female Survival in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." In Maya Angelou, Bloom's Modern Critical Views, edited by Harold Bloom, 133–155. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009.
Braxton, Joanne M. "Symbolic Geography and Psychic Landscapes: A Conversation with Maya Angelou." In Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook, edited by Joanne M. Braxton, 3–20. New York: Oxford Press, 1999.
Cronin, Gloria. "Angelou, Maya." In Encyclopedia of African-American Literature, edited by Wilfred D. Samuels, 12–15. New York: Facts On File, 2007.
Gillespie, Marcia Ann, Rosa Johnson Butler, and Richard A. Long. Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration. New York: Doubleday, 2008.
Hagen, Lyman B. Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997.
Kite, L. Patricia. Maya Angelou. Minneapolis: Lerner, 1999.
Lee, Felicia R. "Shomburg Center in Harlem Acquires Maya Angelou Archive." New York Times, 26 October. 2010, n.p.
Lupton, Mary Jane. Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Minzesheimer, Bob. "Maya Angelou Celebrates Her 80 Years of Pain and Joy." USAtoday.com, 26 March 2008. Available online. URL: http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-03-26-maya-angelou_N.htm. Accessed March 29, 2010.
Pettit, Jayne. Maya Angelou: Journey of the Heart. New York: Puffin Books, 1996.
Russell, Sandi. "Maya Angelou." Women's Review, December 1985, 8–9.
Tate, Claudia, ed. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1983.
Weller, Sheila. "Work in Progress: Maya Angelou." In Conversations with Maya Angelou, edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot, 10– 17. Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1973.
Younge, Gary. "No Surrender." Guardian, 25 May 2000, 16.
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