Maya Angelou--this woman was a rockstar!
This book has colorful and swirling art.
Maya and her brother going south to live with their grandma.
Isn't this art amazing?
Life was mostly good in Stamps, Arkansas. They were cared for and loved by their extended family. They also witnessed the cruelty of racial prejudice endemic in the south in the 1930s.
When their mother settled into a new relationship in Chicago, she sent for the children to visit.
Of course, that relationship was fraught for Maya. I love how a children's book deals with such a heavy topic (childhood sexual abuse) in such a... well delicate but effective way. There are a lot of kids who feel this sort of fear in their own home and I can only imagine their relief at seeing that same experience reflected in a picture book.
Still, I hesitate to read this to very young kids. I guess I feel like I need a little more training on how to handle student's comments and questions in a careful way.
After she was assaulted, one of her uncles allegedly killed her attacker. As a young girl of seven, she felt her words had killed him, so stopped talking to anyone but her brother. But she still loved words--the rhythm and cadence of words, the beauty and depth of words.
Outside, Maya is quiet. Inside, words make music. Maya memorizes the rhythm, sways to the exquisite dance, the twisting, turning, conga line of language.
Poetic.
Maya earned a scholarship to a San Francisco Labor College and studied dance and drama.
As a young single mother, Maya struggled, but never gave up on her stage talents. Marrying a Greek sailor and aspiring musician at 24, she used a form of his last name for her stage name, Maya Angelou. She toured Europe with Porgy and Bess during the early 1950's. Eventually she went on to release an album of her own compositions and win Tony awards for her acting in multiple works.
She was passionate about civil rights, working with Martin Luther King Jr, South African activist Vusumzi Make (who she fell in love with and moved to Cairo with), and then meeting and working with Malcolm X in Ghana.
After MLK Jr.'s murder on her birthday, Maya was devastated, but her friend James Baldwin encouraged her to put that devastation to work and free herself by writing an autobiography.
In 1970 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published and became an immediate success.
She went on to win Grammy's for her spoken word albums of poetry, had great commercial success as an author, became the first black women to write a produced screenplay, and became a professor at Wake-Salem University.
Maya Angelou was an incredible, incredible woman. Massive intellect, charm, From a somewhat troubled beginning (broken family, sexual abuse, young single motherhood, a failed marriage) she went onward and upward, teaching at universities in Ghana and the USA, mastering six languages, and being a life long advocate for civil rights.
In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor for a life of achievement.
She was a dynamo!
