Maya Angelou: A Legacy of Love

As a child, Maya Angelou didn’t like the way she looked. When she peered into the mirror, she saw a too-big girl with a gap between her teeth and skinny legs. She disliked her appearance so much that she pretended she lived in “a black, ugly dream.”

One day, she imagined, she would wake up.

“And my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten,” she writes in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her first autobiography. Then everyone would finally realize she was someone of value.

Now 80, the statuesque Angelou exudes confidence. She is a celebrated author, poet, playwright, speaker, educator and civil rights advocate. Though she never graduated from college, she has at least 30 honorary degrees and takes pride in being called “Dr. Angelou.” Twelve of her books have been best-sellers. And in January 1993, she was the first poet since Robert Frost to recite original poetry at a presidential inauguration.

The Power of Love
“If I am comfortable inside my skin, I have the ability to make other people comfortable,” she writes in Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now.

How did Angelou become the thriving, confident woman she is now? She credits love. In its many forms, she says, love helps a person to dream and achieve—“to imagine golden roads.”

That love came most strongly from her grandmother. When Angelou was 3, her parents’ marriage imploded. They sent her and her brother, Bailey, to live with their grandmother in a small, segregated town. The children traveled alone on a train with tags on their clothing that read, “Stamps, Ark., c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.”

Henderson, who became “Momma” to Angelou, owned her own business—the only black general store in town. When she started it, she was a single mother of two and barely literate. Some would have said her options were limited, but Henderson didn’t see it that way.

“I looked up the road I was going, and since I wasn’t satisfied, I decided to step off the road and cut me a new path,” Henderson told Angelou.

Henderson inspired the young Angelou to cut her own path. Angelou began writing after a traumatic event in her childhood—her mother’s boyfriend raped her when she was 7. Her uncles murdered the man who did it, and she believed she had caused the man’s death by telling her family what had happened.

After that, Angelou stopped talking. “From the time I was 7 until I was 13, I was a volunteer mute,” she said in a radio interview.

She spoke only to her brother. Otherwise, she read voraciously, memorizing poetry and reciting it to herself. She read 60 sonnets by William Shakespeare, many works by Edgar Allan Poe and the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, which inspired the titles of her first and last autobiographies.

“And since I liked poetry, I thought, well, let me write it,” she says. And while Angelou was silent, her grandmother continued to believe in her. “My grandmother told me she knew that when the good Lord was ready, he’d turn me into a great teacher. I thought: ‘This poor, ignorant woman. I’ll never talk, never mind teach.’ And now I teach—and I speak eight languages.”

A Journey of Learning
Angelou’s six autobiographical books trace her journey from humble beginnings. At 16, she became an unwed mother. As she raised her son, Guy, she took jobs as a calypso singer, a short order cook, a dance instructor, a clerk at a record store, a dancer in a seedy bar, a streetcar conductor and, briefly, a madam and a prostitute.

In her 30s, she began working for racial and economic justice alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. She drew strength from her grandmother, who told her, “Sister, if you see something you don’t like, do everything you can do, that’s right to do, to change it.”

Angelou has worked her whole life to pass on that wisdom. By writing and speaking about her experiences, she has inspired countless women to rise above cultural circumstance. A great\ example of this is Oprah. Three years ago, the television host celebrated Angelou as one of a handful of black women who helped dissolve boundaries for today’s generation.

Angelou is delighted to be living at a time when a woman and a black man have run for president. In a 2008 interview with NPR, she told of the progress that’s been made and the work yet to do.

“We have to admit that we’ve come a long way,” she said. “Young people must be told, ‘Yes, things are better. Not nearly as good as they will be when you put your shoulder to the wheel.’ ”

Angelou now relies on a walking cane. She says her body doesn’t let her forget her age. Yet, she is vibrant. She works tirelessly—teaching at Wake Forest University, granting media interviews and traveling the country to speak. She also likes to cook and enjoys being a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

And she still dances, she says. Through her poetry.

Additional Reading

• Women of Influence
• A Peacemaker in the Making
• Save Money Enjoying an Evening with Friends