Maya Angelou
I’m sure that you’ve of the death Wednesday of Maya Angelou, whose inspirational I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has buoyed many of those experiencing adversity (check out this Charles Blow column in The New York Times). Since she herself was supported by the books of other authors in her difficult childhood, I quote a couple of relevant passages from her famous memoir.
Here’s one recollection:
During these years in Stamps [Arkansas], I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love. Although I enjoyed Kipling Poe, Butler, Thackeray, and Henley, I saved my young and loyal passion for Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Litany at Atlanta.” But it was Shakespeare who said, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.” It was a state which I felt myself most familiar. I pacified myself about his whiteness by saying that after all he had been dead so long it couldn’t matter to anyone anymore.
Bailey [her brother] and I decided to memorize a scene from The Merchant of Venice, but we realized that Momma [her grandmother] would question us about the author and that we’d have to tell her that Shakespeare was white, and it wouldn’t matter to her whether he was dead or not. So we chose “The Creation” by James Weldon Johnson instead.
Some of these works young Maya would have turned to when she was suffering from PTSD after having been raped at seven. She retreated into silence but continued to read. I suspect the Shakespeare scene would have been Shylock’s famous speech, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” while Poe would have articulated for her the experience of being trapped in a nightmare. I can’t figure out what Kipling, Butler, and Thackeray works she has in mind and I don’t even know who Henley is. However, it’s easy to imagine how the African American poets and writers would have spoken to her pain and to the sense of hope that she would become famous for.
Literature also played a role in bringing her out of her silence, thanks to a neighbor lady, one Mrs. Bertha Flowers:
She said she was going to give me some books and that I not only must read them, I must read them aloud. She suggested that I try to make a sentence sound in as many different ways as possible.
“I’ll accept no excuse if you return a book to me that has been badly handled.” My imagination boggled at the punishment I would deserve if in fact I did abuse a book of Mrs. Flowers’. Death would be too kind and brief…
As I ate she began the first of what we later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.
When I finished the cookies she brushed off the table and brought a thick, small book from the bookcase. I had read A Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life.
“It was the best of times and the worst of times . . .” Her voice slid in and curved down through and over the words. She was nearly singing. I wanted to look at the pages. Were they the same that I had read? Or were there notes, music, lined on the pages, as in a hymn book? Her sounds began cascading gently. I knew from listening to a thousand preachers that she was nearing the end of her reading, and I hadn’t really heard, heard to understand, a single word.
“How do you like that?”
It occurred to me that she expected a response. The sweet vanilla flavor was still on my tongue and her reading was a wonder in my ears. I had to speak.
I said, “Yes, ma’am.” It was the least I could do, but it was the most also.
“There’s one more thing. Take this book of poems and memorize one for me. Next time you pay me a visit, I want you to recite.”
I have tried often to search behind the sophistication of years for the enchantment I so easily found in those gifts. The essence escapes but its aura remains. To be allowed, no, invited, into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist. When I said aloud, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done . . .” tears of love filled my eyes at my selflessness.
The title of Angelou’s first memoir, by the way, comes from a Dunbar poem.
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings–
I know why the caged bird sings!
Thank God that Angelou found her voice and sang for us.
Added note: Here’s her best known poem/song. One sees in it Angelou’s debt to Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and also, in the final two stanzas, Walt Whitman:
Still I Rise
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.