Maya Angelou: The Teacher of Life and Human Thought
Posté le 20 nov. 2015
Fluent in 6 languages, she has been recognized for her leadership by presidents and renowned public figures. Yet what stands out about her most is the way she carried out her life – she wrote every book, poem, and letter as if she were speaking to a classroom of individuals who wanted to open up their hearts to life.
Angelou’s autobiographical book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings brought in an international wave of interest when it was published in the 1970’s. It deals with her early years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was just seven years old, and how she felt responsible for this.
Too ashamed to tell any of the adults in her life, she confided in her brother. She later heard the news that her uncle had killed her attacker, but felt rather that her words had killed the man. For five years she was silent, but in time she found her voice, and that voice has since been heard around the world. It is a voice that developed into a language that evoked love, forgiveness, and respect.
Her words became more powerful than when she first began to speak again at age 13. She began to take an interest in the dramatic arts and poetry and received a scholarship for her interests in the pursuit of education. However, her struggles continued when she became a single mother at age 16. She later very openly spoke about her past, such as her involvement in prostitution in order to support herself and her son as a single mother.
In not being ashamed about her past, she took control of all the life-lessons she experienced, and speaking about them is part of what filled her life with transformation. She later embarked on a remarkable path and was awarded 30 honorary doctorates and 3 Grammys in her careers as an actress and entertainer, journalist, educator, and civil rights activist, and ultimately as one of the world's most eminent authors and poets.
In a world than can today be so easily seen as negative with all of its intolerance and judgement of a person, Angelou would always ask us to “try to be a rainbow in that person’s cloud.” In the late 1950s she joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild and met James Baldwin and other important writers. It was during this time that Angelou had the opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak. Inspired by his message for a community to have the courage to stand by themselves in unity, she decided to become a part of the struggle for civil rights.
Maya Angelou began the journalistic movement in recording the first words and emotions that America had to endure in its path toward a more diverse world. Her poetry later became known as words that would depict and define black beauty, the strength of women, and the human spirit, while also criticizing the Vietnam War, asserting that the Vietnam War took away social justice for everyone in the world and only fueled fear and removed diversity from the world’s peaceful plan. Maya Angelou was later charged with the responsibility to create a poem to recite at the Presidential Inauguration of Bill Clinton, which would inspire a nation. This was the first reading of this kind in since John F. Kennedy commissioned Robert Frost for a similar task in 1961. The poem, “On the Pulse of Morning” was a lengthy 106 lines of free verse.
Maya Angelou was essentially a lady who called on people to gain a sense of respect for diversity. Why? Because in life she claimed “We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.”
Those who met her had their lives changed by a hope that infiltrated their cause. Those who knew her were led to follow their passions, and those who’ve read her work will remember that “A bird doesn’t’ sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
Isabella Veronesi
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