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10 Ways To Honor Maya Angelou

10 Ways To Honor Maya Angelou

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Now is a time to celebrate the life of Maya Angelou, who died Wednesday at the age of 86. One could have approached her body of work, her activism, spirit, toughness, and respect for self and others with reverence at any moment during her life. Here’s 10 ways to honor Maya Angelou, who helped bring light to dark spaces of the world.

Sources: nytimes.com, en.wikipedia.org, thinkprogress.org, poemhunter.com, nytimes.com.

bkreader.com
bkreader.com

Knowing her history

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson, on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Bailey Johnson, was a Navy dietitian and a doorman, and her mother, Vivian, was a nurse. Maya’s name came from an older brother who called her “Mya sister.” Her childhood proved tumultuous. Sent back and forth to Arkansas to live with her grandmother after her parent’s divorce, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. After she reported him, his body turned up four days after his one-night stint in jail. Young Maya blamed herself and stopped talking for five years. “I thought, my voice killed him,” she said. Being subjected to racism of the American South had an impact on her career.

leogirl1975.wordpress.com
leogirl1975.wordpress.com

Her early struggles

Relocating to San Francisco with her mother and brother, Maya became interested in drama and dance. However, she dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first black female cable-car conductor. At age 16, she graduated from high school and gave birth two weeks later to a son, Guy. Of her own accord, she moved out of her mother’s house and into a darker world of poverty. Working as a waitress and cook, she eventually married a Greek sailor with the surname Angelopoulos, keeping part of this name as her own even after their short marriage ended.

achievment.org
achievment.org

Recognizing her love of performance

Maya danced with Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham, moved from Harlem to San Francisco with son Guy, and earned her keep as a club dancer and singer. She toured Europe in 1954 in the George Gershwin show, “Porgy and Bess.” Slowly she became interested in writing music and lyrics and joined the Harlem Writers Guild, which was directly associated with the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Marrying the South African activist Vusumzi Make in 1960, she followed him with her son to Cairo, Egypt, and then to Ghana, where she soaked up the cultures and languages. It was in Ghana where she met Malcolm X.

antiwarsongs.org
antiwarsongs.org

Her activism

Already a champion for black rights and pro-Castro movements, she met Malcolm X in Accra, Ghana, where she had been a presence in the black American expat community, writing for journals and performing on the radio. Inspired by Malcolm X, she moved back to Harlem with him, where she helped him run his Organization of African American Unity, aimed at drawing attention to black Americans’ struggles. Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965 halted that project. She quickly joined forces with Martin Luther King Jr., serving as coordinator for the his Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His 1968 assassination left her anguished. James Baldwin helped pull her out of her grief.

thebodaciousbelgradeblog.wordpress.com
thebodaciousbelgradeblog.wordpress.com

Reading “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

James Baldwin, a gay black writer who was part of the Harlem Writers Guild, pushed Maya to reach back into her childhood. He also pushed her towards an editor — Robert Loomis of Random House, who was to become her editor for life. Shutting herself in for two years, Maya wrote “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in 1969 — a seven-volume autobiography. It chronicled her coming-of-age in the Jim Crow South. Writing about rape, violence, misogyny, racism, dignity, love, and compassion, Maya became a household name and the book was instantly canonized.

openlibrary.org
openlibrary.org

Respecting all her work

“Gather Together in My Name” (1974), “Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas” (1976), “The Heart of a Woman” (1981), and “All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes” (1986) are essential autobiographical works by Maya, taking us through her extraordinary life. “A Song Flung Up To Heaven” is her final volume written in 2002, reaching back in time to chronicling what led her to write “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” She also produced volumes of poetry (“Just Give me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Diiie”), children’s books (“Life Doesn’t Frighten Me”) and collection of essays. “Wouldn’t Take Nothing for my Journey Now” (1993) is a must-read blend of her memoirs, opinions, and life lessons.

howard.edu
howard.edu

Loving her raw femininity

In her own poetry, Maya talked about the quality she thought men found attractive in her:

“Men themselves have wondered/What they see in me./They try so much/But they can’t Touch/My inner mystery./When I try to show them/They say they still can’t see./I say,/It’s in the arch of my back,/The sun of my smile,/The ride of my breasts,/The grace of my style./I’m a woman/Phenomenally/Phenomenal woman,/That’s me.”

— Maya Angelou, “Phenomenal Woman”

biographyonline.net
biographyonline.net

Reading the poem “Still I Rise”

“You may shoot me with your words/You may cut me with your eyes/You may kill me with your hatefulness/But still, like air, I rise.”

— Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”

Read the full text here at PoemHunter.

theguardian.com
theguardian.com

Then there’s this quote

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

— Maya Angelou, Goodreads.

mayaangelou.com
mayaangelou.com

And this video about love

“Love Liberates” on Youtube.

Rest in Peace, Maya Angelou.