Maya Angelou: A Phenomenal Woman
Born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928, Marguerite Annie Johnson—that’s Maya Angelou to you—made her grand entrance into the world. This legend was a poet, singer, civil rights, activist and memoirist.
The second child of Bailey and Vivian Johnson, her parents’ marriage came to a conclusion when Maya was just three and her brother four. Subsequently, the children were sent to Stamps, Arkansas to live with the grandmother. Three years later, they were sent, by their father, to live with their mother once more.
A year later, when she was eight, Maya tragically suffered sexually abuse and rape at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. After telling her brother, and her brother alerting the rest of the family, the mother’s boyfriend was found guilty of rape and sentenced to jail. FOR. ONE. DAY. (Which honestly and truly just says so much about the justice system and how it has constantly and continuously failed sexual assault victims.) Buuuut four days after his release, he was murdered. It was rumored to have been done by Maya’s uncles. (And while I obviously do not condone homicide, justice comes at ya fast in one way or another.)
After the death of her assaulter, Maya became mute. For five years she didn’t speak, believing her voice had killed him because she spoke out and up for herself in naming him. And it was during this time of silence that she honed her memory, love for books and listened, and came to listen and discover the world around her.
After being introduced to authors like William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Douglas Johnson and James Weldon Johnson by family friend Bertha Flowers, Maya finally spoke once more. She also had an affinity for black female writers such as Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.
I’m six paragraphs deep and haven’t gotten into her 20s, so let me give a quick, quick, quick snapshot of Maya Angelou’s life, okay.
At 16 she became the first black female cable car conductor in San Francisco. At 17, after completing California Labor School, she gave birth to a son named Clyde. She married a Greek electrician, Tosh Angelos, in 1951, despite the fact that people weren’t receptive to interracial relationships (Some still aren’t today. Get a life.) as well as the disapproval of her mother.
She took dance classes, meeting Alvin Ailey (I wrote about his last year, you should find it if you haven’t read it) and Ruth Beckford. Together, Ailey and Maya created “Al and Rita,” a dance team that never really found success.
After her marriage ended in 1954, she danced and sang in clubs and it was here, by suggestion from her managers and supporters, that she changed her professional name to Maya Angelou. A combination of the nickname her brother gave her when they were little and her former surname.
She began recording albums, she became proficient in numerous languages, she became to meet novelists and major African American writers, she became published for the first time, and she met Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 and became involved in activism. She performed with the likes of James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Roscoe Lee Brown, and Godfrey Cambridge. She moved to Cairo, Egypt with South African civil rights activist Vusumzi Make, she moved to Accra, Ghana.
Basically, Maya was on the move.
Long story (and I do mean long) short, Maya wrote screenplays, articles, short stories, documentaries, TV scripts, autobiographies, produced plays, was a visiting professor at several colleges and universities, and, of course, wrote poetry.
This woman literally gave us so much:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
And Still I Rise
Letters to my Daughter
Phenomenal Woman
The Heart of a Woman
Gather Together in My Name
Even the Starts Look Lonely
I Shall Not Be Moved
WHEN I TELL YOU MAYA ANGELOU IS A PHENOMENAL WOMAN PHENOMENALLY, YOU’D BETTER JUST NOD YOUR HEAD AND AGREE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T DISPUTE THE FACTS, HONEY.
Our good sis Maya exited the world on the 28th of May in 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, leaving behind a legacy that, without a doubt, spanned the world.
