| Maya Angelou entranced a crowded hall Sunday at Regis College. This is my
feeble attempt to share my notes with those of us who couldn't attend. Please
go see her if you can--she has a marvelous, purring voice and a great laugh,
and there's no way I can give that to you. (Unfortunately, I didn't see any
videotaping of the lecture either.) Bear in mind, this is me paraphrasing
from notes and memory.
"Am I Worth It"
Am I worth asking for dignity and respect? Am I worth asking to be treated
by other people the best way they treat each other? I'm just little old me,
I'm just black, I'm just a woman, I'm just chicano, I'm just Native American,
I'm just poor white.
An evocative introduction, this made us all think of how much we worry about
all the fuss we might kick up, and is it really worth troubling other people
about. For real change, for real commited work to creating a change that will
allow us the same privileges that others get who were born to a different
race or gender or class. Not just a bit of boisterousness, you can pick up
a little energy on any small anger; but for committed work, you have to look
within yourself and decide you are worth it, and know that it's worth all the
work you can give to it, and since it is worth having, it will cost the earth.
To find inspiration, Angelou directed us to American Black poets. She read
several examples, and repeated their names so we could write them down, even
spelled the names, and pushed us to go right away to our librarians, who, after
all, studied long and hard and not just to be custodians of dusty books.
Here's a list; I've either noted the title or the first line of the poem
(no, I haven't bugged my librarian yet, but soon!). She directed us to these
poets as an example of how to live and grow and work and learn that one is
worth it, even though one is born to a unprivileged life.
Lucille Clifton "Miss Rosie"
Ann Spencer "Letter to My Sister"
Georgia Douglas-Johnson "I want to die while you love me"
Francis Ellen Watkins Harper "The Sale Began" (1850)
Speaking to a largely white audience, Angelou told an anecdote about a
sister-friend of hers. They'd both been raising a child alone, borrowed money
for medical expenses for the kids from each other, been best friends...both
searched for Mr. Right at the same time too, and when one found Mr. Right, the
other would buy cheap red wine, and they'd toast "To You And Yours", and when
one lost Mr. Right, the other would buy cheaper red wine and toast "He Was
Beneath You". And yet this best friend for years, she discovered, couldn't
describe her any better than "black". So she read us Langston Hughes'
"Harlem Sweeties", so we could have inspiration for how to describe our friends'
skin color better. And she said, if we didn't have any black friends, to go
right out and get some. :-)
She read us Edna St. Vincent Millay's "I Shall die, but that is all I will do for
death...", her own "A Georgia Song", and Paul Elias Dunbar's "Sympathy" (1892)
from which is drawn the title to her novel _I_Know_Why_The_Caged_Bird_Sings_.
"All virtues and vices begin at home." Angelou told us, she doesn't believe in
altruism. She argued that this altruism will result in backlashes--too many
white people marched in civil rights marches for black people: they should have
been marching for themselves. But if you march for somebody else, you expect
them to be grateful. You have to march for yourself, you have to be committed
to wanting to see change, not because you're helping an unfortunate, but you
recognize their experience as human and as touching you. "I am a human being.
Nothing human can be alien to me," Terence wrote (okay, so he wrote in Latin,
he was born a Roman slave 2000 years ago). Angelou read Bea Richards'
"A Black Woman Speaks to White Womanhood", which aligns the inspection of
a black woman's teeth on the slave block with the appraisal of white women's
thighs in traditional roles, and criticizes white women for not speaking out
against black slavery, thinking they were safe in their own world, which was
actually just "pink" slavery.
We've seen backlashes right in this notesfile, we've probably each tried to
ignore someone else's plight as not being any problem we would ever have.
But if you realize anything a human can do, you can share in, and anything
that a human can fail, you are only by grace and hard work, saved from, then you
can share in the great achievements of any member of any race, and also you
can learn from and help others in any tragedy.
An audience member asked what contemporary American poets Angelou would
recommend, since most of those above are 19th century. She listed for us
Amelia Baraka, Janis Mirikitani, Carolyn Rogers, Sonya Sanchez, and Marge
Percy.
Angelou had mentioned that from 7 until 12 1/2, she had had a severe
psychological problem which caused her not to speak at all. She would write
things on an ever-present tablet, but not speak. Someone asked her to explain
why she didn't speak. With some emotion, she said she had described it in
one of her autobiographical novels, but that she would tell us again. When
she was 7, she was raped, and the person who did it was killed, and somehow,
she became convinced that her voice could kill a person, and so she stopped
speaking. But she read all the time, and loved poetry. It was a teacher who
told her, you can't love poetry unless you say it, unless you're going to let it
flow out of your mouth, along your tongue and palate, you can't love it; and
this teacher, pestering her for months, finally convinced the child to try,
and she crept under the house to try and finally say the poetry she loved.
Another asked where do we find civil rights heroes today, and Angelou
responded not by endorsing any contemporary figures, but
by telling us it is to the advantage of the struggle, if each of us would go into
our family and find our heroes/sheroes, if not in this generation then in the
generation before, if not in that generation then in the generation before, in
our church, in our synagogue, in our neighborhood--because each of us here has
already been paid for, by someone who waited on Ellis Island for a chance, by
someone who sweated and suffered building the railroad, by someone who came
over packed spoon-fashion in the hold of a slave ship. By daring to stay alive
they made sure we were paid for, that we had a place here. And that we should
find this heroe or sheroe and confront them, let them see what they worked so
hard for, and see just how we measure up. How can you be worthy of someone
who gave the earth, who gave all they could, except by having the courage
ourselves to go out and pay for somebody else.
"I know that men are as phenomenal as women", she said, but the men here will
just have to go out and write themselves a poem--this one she wrote for women.
And so, by request, but with pleasure, Angelou read us her poem "Phenomenal".
|