Maya Angelou as a Baby Maya Angelou in 8th Grade

Maya Angelou by Ross Rossin, 2013. National Portrait Gallery, gift of Andrew J. Young Foundation

Turning 75 this month, Maya Angelou has led many lives. She is best known every bit a writer, for her numerous books of poetry and her half dozen poignant memoirs, including the masterful 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In February, she won a Grammy for the recorded reading of her most contempo memoir, A Song Flung Up to Heaven. Her works have earned her more xxx honorary degrees besides as nominations for a National Volume Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She wrote "On the Pulse of Forenoon" for the 1993 swearing-in of President Bill Clinton, becoming only the 2nd poet in U. S. history—Robert Frost was the showtime, for John F. Kennedy— invited to compose an inaugural poem.

Less well known are Angelou's other lives: equally a singer; equally a composer; every bit a dancer in Porgy and Bess; as an actor in the Obie-winning play The Blacks and in films such as Calypso Estrus Wave and How to Brand an American Quilt; as a ceremonious rights worker with Martin Luther Male monarch, Jr.; as a journalist in Egypt and Ghana; every bit a writer for television and Hollywood; as manager of the 1998 film Downwards in the Delta. Angelou is the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at North Carolina'south WakeForestUniversity in Winston-Salem. She is constantly on the lecture circuit and a regular guest on talk shows; she recently created a line of greeting cards for Hallmark. And in that location is little sign of her slowing down.

Just when we met recently in her fine art-filled dwelling in Winston- Salem, it was her family, non her varied career, that she most wanted to discuss. Our conversation ofttimes returned to the loved ones who helped her triumph over the tragedies of her childhood and made her believe she could meet whatever challenge life threw in her path.

Her grandmother Annie Henderson was one of the most important, a pious adult female who ran a general shop in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou lived almost of her childhood with her grandmother, whom she called "Momma." Angelou's sometimes-absentee mother, Vivian Baxter, had a steel volition and several careers of her own. She was an inadvertent player in an early, formative trauma in Angelou'due south life. When Angelou was 8 and briefly living with Baxter in St. Louis, her mother'southward boyfriend raped Angelou. The man was arrested, convicted and released; before long subsequently, he was found beaten to death. Believing she had caused the killing because she had told of the rape, Angelou refused to speak for several years; only her beloved older brother, Bailey, could coax her to talk. He remained a source of support throughout her life until his decease more than a year ago. And there is Angelou's son, Guy Johnson, 57, author of Echoes of a Afar Summer and one other novel. He is, she says, her "monument in the earth."

You've said that society's view of the blackness adult female is such a threat to her well-beingness that she will die daily unless she determines how she sees herself. How do you encounter yourself?

I just received a letter yesterday from the Academy of Milan. Aperson is doing a doctoral dissertation on my piece of work. Information technology'south called Sapienza, which ways wisdom. I'chiliad considered wise, and sometimes I encounter myself as knowing. Well-nigh of the time, I encounter myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life.

Yous have never been bored? How is that possible?

Oh God, if I were bored, now that would interest me. I'd think, my God, how did that happen and what's going on? I'd be caught up in it. Are you kidding? Bored?

I realized when I was about 20 that I would dice. It frightened me and so. I hateful, I had heard virtually information technology, had been told and all that, but that I . . . ? [She points at herself and raises her brows as if in disbelief.] Information technology so terrified me that I doublelocked the doors; I made certain that the windows were double- locked—trying to keep death out—and finally I admitted that at that place was nothing I could do about it. Once I really came to that conclusion, I started enjoying life, and I enjoy it very much.

Some other occurrence took place at near the aforementioned time— maybe nigh a yr later—and the ii occurrences liberated me forever.

I had 2 jobs. I was raising my son. We had a tiny little place to live. My female parent had a 14-room house and someone to look after things. She owned a hotel, lots of diamonds. I wouldn't have annihilation from her. But once a month she'd cook for me. And I would go to her house and she'd be dressed beautifully.

1 day after nosotros'd had lunch, she had to become somewhere. She put on silver-fox furs—this was when the head of 1 trick would seem to bite into the caput of the other—and she would wear them with the tails in front; she would turn it effectually with the furs arching back. Nosotros were halfway downwardly the hill and she said, "Baby"—and she was small; she was 5- feet-4 1/ii and I'm 6 foot—"You lot know something? I remember yous're the greatest woman I've ever met." We stopped. I looked down at this pretty little woman made up so perfectly, diamonds in her ears. She said, "Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, my mother and you—you are the greatest." It still brings me to te—. [Her eyes tear upwards.]

We walked downwards to the bottom of the hill. She crossed the street to the right to go into her car. I continued across the street and waited for the streetcar. And I got onto the streetcar and I walked to the back. I shall never forget information technology. I think the wooden planks of the streetcar. The style the light came through the window. And I thought, suppose she's right? She's very intelligent, and she'due south too hateful to lie. Suppose I actually am somebody?

Those ii incidents liberated me to remember large thoughts, whether I could comprehend them or not [she laughs], just to call back. . . .

I of your large thoughts must have been about planning to accept a diverse life and career. How do y'all move so easily from one matter to another?

I have a theory that nobody understands talent any more nosotros understand electricity. And then I think we've done a real disservice to young people by telling them, "Oh, you exist careful. Y'all'll exist a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none." It'south the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I think yous can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you lot report it, and you put reasonable intelligence and reasonable energy, reasonable electricity to information technology, you can do that. You lot may not become Max Roach on the drums. Just you tin learn the drums. I've long felt that way about things. If I'thousand asked, "Can you practise this?" I call back, if I don't do it, it'll be ten years before another black woman is asked to do it. And I say, yes, yep, when exercise you want it?

My mom, you know, was a seaman. At one signal, I was in Los Angeles. I called her in San Francisco and said, I desire to encounter yous, I'yard going to New York and I don't know when I'll exist dorsum, and so allow's come across mid-state. She said, "Oh, baby, I wanted to see you, too, because I'grand going to sea." I said, going to see what? She said, "I'g going to become a seaman." I said, Female parent, really, come on. She said, "No, they told me they wouldn't allow women in their marriage. I told them, 'You wanna bet?' I put my pes in that door upwardly to my hip so women of every color will go far that union, get aboard a send and become to sea." She retired in 1980, and Asian, white and black women gave a political party for her. They called her the mother of the body of water.

So, yep, we cripple our children, we cripple each other with those designations that if you're a brick mason y'all shouldn't beloved the ballet. Who made that dominion? You e'er run across a person lay bricks? [She moves her hands in a precise bricklaying manner.] Because of the eye and the hands, of course he or she would like to see ballet. It is that precise, that established, that organized, that sort of development from the bottom to the top.

Do you resent the fact that your mother wasn't there for much of your childhood?

Oh, yes. Yep. I was an abandoned child equally far as I was concerned, and Bailey also. We didn't hear from her— we heard perhaps twice in seven years or something. And then I realized that she was funny and loving and that there are certainly two different kinds of parents. There is the person who tin can be a nifty parent of small children. They wearing apparel the children in these sweetness little things with bows in their hair and beads on their shoestrings and nice, lovely little socks. Merely when those same children get to be 14 or xv, the parents don't know what to say to them every bit they grow breasts and testosterone hits the male child.

Well, my mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God—I thank God every time I think of information technology—I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my female parent was a not bad parent of a immature adult. When she constitute out I was pregnant, she said, "All correct. Run me a bathroom, please." Well, in my family, that's really a very nice matter for somebody to ask you to practise. Maybe two or three times in my life she had asked me to run her a bath. So I ran her a bath then she invited me in the bathroom. My mother sat down in the bathtub. She asked me, "Do you love the boy?" I said no. "Does he love y'all?" I said no. "Well, at that place's no point in ruining three lives. We're going to take us a infant."

And she delivered Guy—because she was a nurse as well. She took me to the hospital. It was during one of the Jewish holidays, and my doctor wasn't there. My mother went in, told the nurses who she was, she done up, they took me into the delivery room. She got up on the table on her knees with me and put her shoulder against my knee and took my hand, and every time a pain would come she'd tell a joke. I would laugh and express mirth [she laughs uproariously] and bear downward. And she said, "Here he comes, here he comes." And she put her hand on him first, my son.

So throughout her life she liberated me. Liberated me constantly. Respected me, respected what I tried to do, believed in me. I'd go out in San Francisco—I'd be visiting her, I was living in Los Angeles—and stay really late at some afterhours joint. Female parent knew all of them and knew all the bartenders. And I'd exist having a potable and laughing, and the bartender would say on the telephone, "Yep, Mama, yeah she'due south hither." She'd say to me: "Baby, it'south your mother. Come home. Let the streets know you have somewhere to go."

It seems your mother and Bailey ever came to your rescue. Were they more vigilant, do yous think, because you didn't speak for so long?

All those years ago I'd been a mute, and my mother and my blood brother knew that in times of strife and extreme stress, I was probable to retreat to mutism. Mutism is then addictive. And I don't think its powers ever get away. Information technology's as if it's just behind my view, just behind my right shoulder or my left shoulder. If I motility quickly, it moves, so I tin't meet it. But it's ever there saying, "You lot tin always come back to me. You accept nothing to do—just terminate talking." So, when I've been in stress, my female parent or my brother, or both sometimes, would come wherever I was, New York, California, anywhere, and say, "Hullo, hello, talk to me. Come on, let's go. We'll accept a game of Scrabble or pinochle and let's talk. Tell me a story." Because they were acute enough to recognize the power of mutism, I finally was astute enough to recognize the power of their dear.

What went through your mind during the years you were mute?

Oh, yes, I memorized poesy. I would exam myself, memorizing a conversation that went by when I wasn't in it. I memorized 60 Shakespearean sonnets. And some of the things I memorized, I'd never heard them spoken, and so I memorized them according to the cadence that I heard in my head. I loved Edgar Allan Poe and I memorized everything I could observe. And I loved Paul Laurence Dunbar—even so do—so I would memorize 75 poems. It was like putting a CD on. If I wanted to, I'd just run through my memory and think, that's ane I desire to hear.

So I believe that my brain reconstructed itself during those years. I believe that the areas in the brain which provide and promote concrete spoken language had nothing to exercise. I believe that the synapses of the brain, instead of simply going from A to B, since B wasn't receptive, the synapses went from Ato R. You see what I mean? And then, I've been able to develop a retention quite unusual, which has allowed me to acquire languages, actually quite a few. I seem to be able to straight the brain; I tin can say, do that. I say, remember this, remember that. And information technology's caught! [She snaps her fingers equally if to emphasize "caught."]

You lot lived with your grandmother during your silent years. How did she reply?

She said, "Sister, Momma don't care what these people say, that you must be an idiot, a moron, 'cause you lot can't talk. Momma don't care. Momma know that when you and the good Lord become ready, you gon' be a teacher."

If your mother liberated you to think large, what gifts did your grandmother requite yous?

She gave me so many gifts. Confidence that I was loved. She taught me not to lie to myself or anyone else and not to boast. She taught me to acknowledge that, to me, the emperor has no clothes. He may be dressed in the finery of the ages to everybody else, but if I don't see it, to acknowledge that I don't see information technology. Because of her, I recollect, I have remained a very elementary adult female. What you see is all there is. I have no subterfuge. And she taught me not to complain.

My grandmother had 1 matter that she would do for me about twice a yr. Shall I tell you? [She laughs loudly.] Momma would meet a whiner, a complainer come up downwardly the hill. And she would call me in. She'd say, "Sister, Sister, come out here." I'd go and wait upwardly the hill and a complainer was trudging. And the human being or woman would come into the shop, and my grandmother would inquire, "How y'all experience today?"

"Ah, Sister Henderson, I tell you I only hate the winter. It makes my confront scissure and my shins burn."

And Momma'd just say, "Uh-huh," and so look at me. And as soon as the person would leave, my grandmother would say, "Sister, come here." I'd stand right in forepart of her. She'd say, "There are people all over the world who went to sleep final night who did non wake again. Their beds take become their cooling boards, their blankets have become their winding sheets. They would give anything for simply five minutes of what she was complaining about."

Did y'all write during your babyhood?

Well, I've always written. There'south a periodical which I kept from about 9 years old. The homo who gave it to me lived across the street from the shop and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, even so do. But I really, really loved it then. I would write some—of grade it was terrible—but I'd always written something down.

I read that yous wrote the countdown verse form, "On the Pulse of Morning," in a hotel room. Were yous on the road when y'all composed it?

I go along a hotel room here in Winston when I'thou writing. I take a room for about a month. And I try to be in the room by six a.m., so I get upwardly, make coffee and keep a thermos and I go out to the hotel. I would have had everything removed from the room, wall hangings and all that stuff. It's just a bed, a table and a chair, Roget's Thesaurus, a lexicon, a bottle of sherry, a yellow pad and pens, and I go to work. And I work 'til nearly twelve or ane; one if information technology'due south going well, twelve if it isn't. Then I come up home and pretend to operate in the familiar, you know?

Where does writing rank in your accomplishments?

I'm happy to exist a writer, of prose, verse, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other fine art form that nosotros ever use. So the writer has to have the virtually used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—brawl them together and brand them bounce, turn them a certain way and brand people become into a romantic mood; and another mode, into a disagreeable mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.

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Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/growing-up-maya-angelou-79582387/

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