When Did Maya Angelou Start Talking Again

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 as a writer, for her numerous books of poetry and her six 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 recent memoir, A Song Flung Upward to Heaven. Her works have earned her more than 30 honorary degrees likewise equally nominations for a National Volume Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She wrote "On the Pulse of Morning" for the 1993 swearing-in of President Pecker Clinton, becoming only the second poet in U. S. history—Robert Frost was the get-go, for John F. Kennedy— invited to compose an countdown poem.

Less well known are Angelou's other lives: every bit a singer; as 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 Heat Wave and How to Brand an American Quilt; equally a civil rights worker with Martin Luther King, Jr.; as a journalist in Arab republic of egypt and Ghana; equally a writer for goggle box and Hollywood; equally director of the 1998 film Downward in the Delta. Angelou is the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at North Carolina's WakeForestUniversity in Winston-Salem. She is constantly on the lecture circuit and a regular invitee on talk shows; she recently created a line of greeting cards for Authentication. And there is piddling sign of her slowing down.

But when we met recently in her fine art-filled domicile in Winston- Salem, information technology was her family, not her varied career, that she most wanted to discuss. Our conversation often returned to the loved ones who helped her triumph over the tragedies of her childhood and fabricated her believe she could meet whatever challenge life threw in her path.

Her grandmother Annie Henderson was one of the most of import, a pious woman who ran a general store in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou lived most of her childhood with her grandmother, whom she called "Momma." Angelou's sometimes-absentee mother, Vivian Baxter, had a steel will and several careers of her ain. She was an inadvertent player in an early, determinative trauma in Angelou's life. When Angelou was eight and briefly living with Baxter in St. Louis, her mother'south boyfriend raped Angelou. The man was arrested, convicted and released; soon after, he was found beaten to death. Assertive she had caused the killing because she had told of the rape, Angelou refused to speak for several years; but her beloved older brother, Bailey, could coax her to talk. He remained a source of back up throughout her life until his death more than than a year ago. And there is Angelou's son, Guy Johnson, 57, author of Echoes of a Afar Summertime and one other novel. He is, she says, her "monument in the world."

Yous've said that order's view of the black woman is such a threat to her well-being that she will die daily unless she determines how she sees herself. How exercise you see yourself?

I merely received a letter of the alphabet yesterday from the Academy of Milan. Aperson is doing a doctoral dissertation on my work. Information technology's called Sapienza, which ways wisdom. I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself equally knowing. Nigh of the time, I run into myself equally wanting to know. And I encounter 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, at present that would interest me. I'd think, my God, how did that happen and what's going on? I'd be defenseless up in information technology. Are you kidding? Bored?

I realized when I was virtually xx that I would die. Information technology frightened me so. I hateful, I had heard well-nigh it, had been told and all that, merely that I . . . ? [She points at herself and raises her brows every bit if in disbelief.] It and then terrified me that I doublelocked the doors; I made sure that the windows were double- locked—trying to keep death out—and finally I admitted that there was zip I could practice about it. One time I really came to that conclusion, I started enjoying life, and I enjoy it very much.

Some other occurrence took place at about the aforementioned time— maybe about a twelvemonth afterward—and the two occurrences liberated me forever.

I had two jobs. I was raising my son. We had a tiny petty place to live. My female parent had a fourteen-room business firm and someone to look afterwards things. She endemic a hotel, lots of diamonds. I wouldn't accept anything from her. Only once a month she'd melt for me. And I would go to her house and she'd be dressed beautifully.

1 day after nosotros'd had dejeuner, she had to get somewhere. She put on silverish-pull a fast one on furs—this was when the head of 1 play a trick on would seem to bite into the head of the other—and she would wear them with the tails in forepart; she would turn it effectually with the furs arching back. We were halfway down the hill and she said, "Baby"—and she was small; she was 5- anxiety-iv one/2 and I'm six foot—"You lot know something? I retrieve you're the greatest adult female I've ever met." We stopped. I looked down at this pretty niggling 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 upward.]

We walked down to the bottom of the hill. She crossed the street to the right to get into her car. I continued across the street and waited for the streetcar. And I got onto the streetcar and I walked to the dorsum. I shall never forget it. I think the wooden planks of the streetcar. The manner the light came through the window. And I idea, suppose she'south right? She's very intelligent, and she's too hateful to lie. Suppose I really am somebody?

Those two incidents liberated me to think large thoughts, whether I could comprehend them or non [she laughs], just to think. . . .

Ane of your large thoughts must have been about planning to accept a diverse life and career. How do yous movement so hands from one thing to another?

I have a theory that nobody understands talent any more than than we empathize electricity. And so I retrieve we've done a existent disservice to young people past telling them, "Oh, you be careful. Y'all'll be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none." It's the stupidest affair I've ever heard. I think yous tin be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If y'all written report information technology, and you put reasonable intelligence and reasonable energy, reasonable electricity to information technology, you tin exercise that. Y'all may not become Max Roach on the drums. Simply you can learn the drums. I've long felt that manner most things. If I'm asked, "Can yous do this?" I think, if I don't do it, it'll be 10 years before another black woman is asked to do information technology. And I say, yes, yes, when do yous desire information technology?

My mom, you know, was a seaman. At one point, I was in Los Angeles. I called her in San Francisco and said, I want to see you, I'm going to New York and I don't know when I'll exist back, so permit's encounter mid-state. She said, "Oh, baby, I wanted to see you, likewise, considering I'm going to body of water." I said, going to meet what? She said, "I'k going to become a seaman." I said, Mother, really, come up on. She said, "No, they told me they wouldn't let women in their union. I told them, 'Yous wanna bet?' I put my human foot in that door up to my hip and then women of every color will make it that union, get aboard a ship and get 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, yes, nosotros cripple our children, we cripple each other with those designations that if you're a brick mason you shouldn't dear the ballet. Who made that rule? Yous ever see a person lay bricks? [She moves her hands in a precise bricklaying manner.] Because of the eye and the easily, of course he or she would like to see ballet. Information technology is that precise, that established, that organized, that sort of development from the lesser to the height.

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

Oh, yes. Yeah. I was an abandoned kid as far as I was concerned, and Bailey likewise. We didn't hear from her— we heard perhaps twice in vii years or something. Then I realized that she was funny and loving and that there are certainly ii different kinds of parents. There is the person who can be a great parent of small-scale children. They clothes the children in these sugariness little things with bows in their pilus and beads on their shoestrings and nice, lovely piffling socks. Only when those same children become to exist fourteen or fifteen, the parents don't know what to say to them as they grow breasts and testosterone hits the boy.

Well, my mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God—I thank God every time I call back of it—I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult. When she plant out I was significant, she said, "All correct. Run me a bath, please." Well, in my family, that's really a very overnice matter for somebody to enquire you to do. Peradventure ii or iii times in my life she had asked me to run her a bath. And then I ran her a bath and and so she invited me in the bathroom. My mother sat down in the bathtub. She asked me, "Practice you lot dearest the boy?" I said no. "Does he love you?" I said no. "Well, at that place's no betoken in ruining three lives. We're going to have us a babe."

And she delivered Guy—because she was a nurse also. She took me to the infirmary. It was during i of the Jewish holidays, and my medico wasn't in that location. My mother went in, told the nurses who she was, she done up, they took me into the commitment room. She got upward on the tabular array on her knees with me and put her shoulder against my knee and took my hand, and every time a pain would come up she'd tell a joke. I would express joy and laugh [she laughs uproariously] and acquit downwards. And she said, "Here he comes, here he comes." And she put her manus on him get-go, my son.

And then 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 articulation. Female parent knew all of them and knew all the bartenders. And I'd be having a drink and laughing, and the bartender would say on the phone, "Aye, Mama, yeah she's here." She'd say to me: "Infant, it's your mother. Come abode. Let the streets know y'all have somewhere to go."

Information technology seems your mother and Bailey always came to your rescue. Were they more vigilant, practise yous think, because you didn't speak for and so long?

All those years ago I'd been a mute, and my mother and my brother knew that in times of strife and extreme stress, I was likely to retreat to mutism. Mutism is so addictive. And I don't think its powers ever go away. Information technology's as if it'due south merely behind my view, merely behind my right shoulder or my left shoulder. If I movement quickly, it moves, and then I can't see it. But it's e'er there saying, "You tin ever come back to me. You have nix to practice—just stop talking." So, when I've been in stress, my mother or my brother, or both sometimes, would come wherever I was, New York, California, anywhere, and say, "Howdy, hullo, talk to me. Come on, allow'south go. Nosotros'll have 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 ability of their love.

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

Oh, yes, I memorized poesy. I would examination myself, memorizing a chat that went past when I wasn't in information technology. I memorized 60 Shakespearean sonnets. And some of the things I memorized, I'd never heard them spoken, and then I memorized them according to the cadence that I heard in my head. I loved Edgar Allan Poe and I memorized everything I could discover. And I loved Paul Laurence Dunbar—still exercise—so I would memorize 75 poems. It was similar putting a CD on. If I wanted to, I'd just run through my retentivity and remember, that's one I want 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 physical oral communication had nada to do. I believe that the synapses of the brain, instead of but 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 retentivity quite unusual, which has allowed me to larn languages, actually quite a few. I seem to exist able to straight the brain; I can say, do that. I say, remember this, remember that. And it's defenseless! [She snaps her fingers every bit if to emphasize "caught."]

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

She said, "Sis, Momma don't intendance what these people say, that you must exist an idiot, a moron, 'crusade y'all can't talk. Momma don't care. Momma know that when you lot and the skilful Lord get ready, you lot gon' be a teacher."

If your mother liberated you to think big, what gifts did your grandmother give you?

She gave me and then 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 admit that, to me, the emperor has no clothes. He may be dressed in the finery of the ages to everybody else, only if I don't see it, to admit that I don't run across information technology. Because of her, I think, I have remained a very unproblematic woman. What you lot see is all in that location is. I have no subterfuge. And she taught me non to complain.

My grandmother had 1 thing that she would do for me about twice a year. Shall I tell you lot? [She laughs loudly.] Momma would see a whiner, a complainer come up down the hill. And she would call me in. She'd say, "Sister, Sister, come up out here." I'd go and wait up the colina and a complainer was trudging. And the man or woman would come into the store, and my grandmother would ask, "How you feel today?"

"Ah, Sister Henderson, I tell you I just hate the winter. It makes my face fissure and my shins fire."

And Momma'd just say, "Uh-huh," and then look at me. And every bit soon as the person would exit, my grandmother would say, "Sister, come up hither." I'd stand right in front of her. She'd say, "There are people all over the earth who went to slumber last dark who did non wake again. Their beds have become their cooling boards, their blankets have become their winding sheets. They would give anything for just five minutes of what she was lament about."

Did you write during your childhood?

Well, I've ever written. At that place's a journal which I kept from about 9 years quondam. The man who gave it to me lived beyond the street from the shop and kept information technology when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poesy, all the same practise. But I really, really loved it and so. I would write some—of course it was terrible—merely I'd always written something down.

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

I keep a hotel room here in Winston when I'm writing. I take a room for well-nigh a month. And I endeavor to be in the room by 6 a.grand., so I get upward, brand 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 tabular array and a chair, Roget'south Thesaurus, a dictionary, a bottle of sherry, a yellow pad and pens, and I go to work. And I work 'til most twelve or i; one if information technology'south going well, twelve if it isn't. So I come home and pretend to operate in the familiar, you know?

Where does writing rank in your accomplishments?

I'thou happy to be a writer, of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the earth who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always apply. And then the writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—brawl them together and make them bounce, plough them a sure way and brand people get into a romantic mood; and another way, 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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