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Maya Angelou From Innocence to Experience As we review the works of renowned author and poet Maya Angelou, the passion, power and extraordinary life experiences of one of the greatest writers of our time comes shining through. She is best known for a series of autobiographical novels beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings published in 1971. Angelou has been praised for confronting both the racist and sexual pressures on black women and her work combines her perspective as an individual with her involvement in larger social and political movements, including civil rights. Within this context, I will show how Angelou s prose and poetry reflect the tribulations that she has encountered in her life. Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, to Bailey and Vivian Baxter Johnson.
Her father was a brash, vain former doorman and later a Navy dietitian. Her mother was a fun loving, exceedingly beautiful woman who was trained as a nurse but made her living cutting poker games in gambling parlors (Angelou Caged Bird 174). Her parents soon divorced and she was sent, rather unceremoniously, along with her older brother, Bailey, to live with her paternal grandmother in rural Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou describes the scene in the opening lines of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed To Whom It May Concern that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr. , from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c / o Mrs. Annie Henderson (3). In 1930, Stamps was a rural town of fewer than twenty-five hundred people.
Less than forty miles from the Louisiana border, it was deep in the heart of the Cotton Belt (Meltzer 4). An invisible line divided one section of town from the other. Poor backcountry whites lived on one side and even poorer blacks lived on the other. A scattering of small shops and houses lined the main street of the white part of town. In the black section, a dirt road led to the Wm.
Johnson General Merchandise Store where slave-like field workers passed through to buy supplies each day. The owner of the Store, it was always spoken of with a capital s, (Angelou, Caged Bird 4) was Mrs. Annie Henderson, who had found herself more than twenty-five years earlier with two small babies to feed after the breakup of her first marriage. She set up a small wooden stand between the old cotton mill and the lumber mill and there she sold crisp homemade meat pies and cool lemonade for a nickel each. In time, Annie Henderson s long hours of hard work paid off, and the tiny lunch stand grew into the Store that bore the name of her crippled son, Willie. It was here that she first took in her other son Bailey s children, Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr.
Soon after their arrival in Stamps, the two children settled into Annie s routine. Time passed quickly as they went about their chores, and it was not long before a close bond of security, warmth, and love developed among Maya (her brother s name for her), Bailey, and the woman they had begun to call Momma. From early on, the montage of role models in Maya s life significantly influences her growth and emotional well being. She relies on the stiff, unyielding sanctimony and firm discipline of Momma Henderson, who insists on clean feet, respectful words, unquestioning obedience, and hard work.
Unable to voice her love and devotion to Maya and Bailey, Momma settles for wholehearted attention to their needs, including home cooking, homilies, dental care, supervised homework, and tailored hand-me-downs. Uncle Willie, after being dropped by a babysitter when he was three years old, suffered with a withered left hand and distortion of muscles that pulled down the left side of his face. Under the strict guidance of Momma and Uncle Willie, Maya and her brother became admirable students and excelled in school. Anchored to a rubber-tipped cane and shaped like a giant black Z (Angelou, Caged Bird 8), Willie would sit in the Store to hear and enforce the children s testimony of the learning they were receiving from school.
Maya later wrote that we learned the times tables without understanding their grand principle, simply because we had the capacity and no alternative (Angelou, Caged Bird 8). With the experience they gained by working at the Store, arithmetic came easily and reading was a favorite pastime for both Maya and Bailey as they devoured books by the dozens. At an unusually young age, the two children were reading Shakespeare to each other. Maya s escapism from her dutiful everyday life led her to other classic literature, particularly white writers Kipling, Poe, Thackeray, and James Weldon Butler and notable black authors Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, W. E. B.
Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson (Meltzer 272). The injustices of the world were not lost on the sleepy hollow of Stamps. One evening, Maya heard someone approaching on a horse. She and Bailey observed a former sheriff ride up to the Store and warn Momma that some of the boys ll be coming over here later and to tell Willie he better lay low tonight (Angelou, Caged Bird 14). Even at this early age, Maya knew of the Klan and felt the impact of this circumstance: The boys? Those cement faces and eyes of hate that burned the clothes off you if they happened to see you lounging on the main street downtown on Saturday.
Boys? It seemed that youth had never happened to them. Boys? No, rather men who were covered with graves dust and age without beauty or learning. The ugliness and rottenness of old abominations (Angelou, Caged Bird 14). In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn t really, absolutely know what whites looked like.
Other than that they were different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well dressed. I remember never believing that whites were really real (Angelou, Caged Bird 20). Each Christmas, separate packages would arrive from the children s mother and father. Each time, these packages would cause Maya and Bailey to relive the pain of that horrible day at the train station in Long Beach.
They hated their presents and would run from the Store, sit alone on the cold, wet ground and weep silently. Quite unexpectedly, the children s father appeared at the Store and shortly thereafter whisked the youngsters off to St. Louis to live with Grandmother Baxter, their mother s mother. Maya cried almost all of the way to St.
Louis and pleaded to go back to Momma. She felt deceived by this big, handsome stranger that was her father. For the second time in their young lives, their world was turned upside down. Maya wrote it was simply another case of the trickiness of adults where children were concerned.
Another case in point of the Grownup s Betrayal (Angelou, Caged Bird 49). Thoroughly terrified, Maya sat in Grandmother Baxter s over furnished living room waiting, impatiently, for the woman that had sent her away five years before. She was caught unprepared when through the door came the most beautiful woman Maya had ever seen. With light skin, bright red lips, and a stunning smile, Vivian Baxter came back into Maya s and Bailey s lives as quickly as she had left. Maya was now certain why she had been sent away she was too beautiful to have children (Angelou, Caged Bird 50). To Maya and Bailey, St.
Louis was a world apart from the dusty little town of Stamps, Arkansas. Big, noisy, and cluttered, the black neighborhood was like a cowboy frontier town with its pool halls, gambling houses, and bars. The children had their first jelly beans, salted peanuts, and bulging ham sandwiches. Maya and Bailey were far ahead of their classmates in all subjects at the huge, brick fortress of the local elementary school and they quickly moved on to higher grades. For several months the children lived with Grandmother Baxter, who was fully intertwined in the shadier side of local politics and had influence with the St. Louis Police Force.
Quite a few numbers runners, gamblers, lottery takers and bootleg whiskey salesmen would be in attendance waiting quietly when Maya and Bailey returned home from school. It was Grandmother Baxter who closed or opened the gambling parlors and saloons or got a friend released from jail. She and her tough sons could take on the meanest of crooks. Uncle Tommy was Maya s favorite and told her often Rate, don t worry cause you ain t pretty. Plenty pretty women I seen digging ditches or worse. You smart.
I swear to God, I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind (Angelou, Caged Bird 56). Vivian Baxter ultimately brought the children to live with her. For the first time, they each had their own room, a bed with crisp, new sheets, plenty to eat, and a closet full of new clothes. Their mother would ensure that the children s meals were served on time, homework was done, and that they went to bed early. Then she would leave for the bars and her card games. The children were not alone in the house.
Mr. Freeman, their mother s boyfriend, was always there, sitting in the corner listening to the radio, waiting for Vivian to come home. Sometimes Maya would sleep in her mother s shared bed after bouts with horrifying nightmares and Mr. Freeman would tenderly hold her close.
Several months after Maya and Bailey had come to live with their mother, Maya was getting ready to leave for the library. Her mother was out, and Bailey had gone to play baseball. As she started for the door, Mr. Freeman pulled her to him, turned up the radio too loudly, and threatened her if you scream, I m gonna kill you. And if you tell, I m gonna kill Bailey (Angelou, Caged Bird 65).
Maya explains this tragic episode as then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can t. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot (Caged Bird 65). Scared and initially hiding the attack from everyone, Maya hid her underclothes under her mattress. Vivian came home to find her daughter in bed and thought she was sick.
The next morning, after a night of horrible nightmares, Maya awakened to find herself drenched in sweat. Vivian ordered Bailey Jr. to change the sheets and as he did so, the bloody underwear dropped to the floor at Vivian s feet. She knew instantly what had happened.
Maya was taken to the hospital and had many visits from members of the Baxter family. Soon after that, Mr. Freeman was arrested. To add to Maya s pain, she was forced to testify against her attacker in open court.
Mr. Freeman was given one year and one day, but somehow was released that very afternoon. The news came later that evening as a policeman reported to Grandmother Baxter I thought you ought to know. Freeman s been found dead on the lot behind the slaughterhouse (Angelou, Caged Bird 71).
In the weeks following the murder, Maya, sure that her own words had killed Mr. Freeman, stopped talking to anyone except Bailey. Again living with Grandmother Baxter, Maya kept to herself and stayed away from her friends and their neighborhood games. In those first weeks, her family accepted Maya s behavior as post-rape affliction but after the doctor announced her healed, they soon became annoyed. Her uncles and other relatives thought Maya was just being rude and punished her severely.
Finally, not knowing how to deal with the demands of an emotionally damaged child, Vivian returned Maya and Bailey to Stamps. Maya began to feel stronger shortly after her return to Stamps. She felt safe with Momma and Uncle Willie. The weeks passed into months and Maya s days were filled with school, home work, and helping Momma in the Store. It was during one such day the Maya got to know Mrs. Bertha Flowers, the lady that threw me my first lifeline (Angelou, Caged Bird 77).
Mrs. Flowers was a well-educated black woman who was known as the aristocrat of Stamps. When Maya went to Mrs. Flowers home to deliver groceries, the woman invited her in for cookies and lemonade.
She told Maya that she had heard that Maya was a very good student but that the teachers had trouble getting her to talk in class. She praised Maya for her constant reading but warned her that words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning (Angelou, Caged Bird 82). As time passed, Maya and her new friend met frequently. In the beginning Mrs. Flowers would read aloud while Maya listened eagerly.
Ultimately Maya did more than listen. She began to speak. After more than five years of speaking to no one but Bailey, Maya had broken her silence at last. Graduating from the eighth grade second in her class, Maya looked forward to attending high school with Bailey.
Things didn t work out quite that way. Bailey had gone into town to run some errands for Willie and returned visibly shaken and frightened. Crossing a bridge, Bailey had seen several men pulling the body of a dead black man from the water. Momma knew that another black man had been lynched by a white mob and made up her mind that the children would be safer in California, where their mother had remarried and was living once again.
Vivian Baxter was now married to a successful San Francisco businessman and she happily welcomed her children into her new home. Her husband, whom the children can to know as Daddy Clidell, was a generous and loving man who quickly became the first real father that Maya and her brother had ever known. Maya took to the big city immediately. She loved all of its wonderful old neighborhoods and open-air markets bursting with colorful fruits and vegetables.
Looking out across the bay with its magnificent Golden Gate Bridge, she would watch the fog roll in. Clanging cable cars chugged about, up and down Nob Hill, in the rhythms of the city of wonderment. Maya soon became an outstanding student. Once more ahead of her grade, she worked hard at all of her studies. Her reading continued and she lost no time in getting to know the neighborhood library. In quiet moments, she worked on her poetry and the journals she had begun to keep while in Stamps.
When Maya was fourteen, she was awarded a scholarship to attend evening classes in drama and dance. She practiced relentlessly and did so well that she received a second scholarship the following year. Evidence of Maya s determination came when she decided to leave school for a semester and get a job. When she told her mother that she was going to apply for a job as a cable car conductor, Vivian reminded her of something she hadn t thought about. The city of San Francisco had never hired a black conductor. For weeks, Maya struggled to overcome this obstacle.
She hounded the city s Negro support organizations, asking for help in getting a cable car job. She made repeated visits to the cable car office waiting to be interviewed. Finally, the receptionist called me to her desk and shuffled a bundle of papers to me. They were job application forms (Angelou, Caged Bird 228). Lying about her age and job history, Maya became San Francisco s first black street car conductor, and for a brief period shimmied up and scooted down the sheer hills (Angelou, Caged Bird 228) of the city. Returning to school, Maya threw herself into her studies and quickly made up for the lost semester.
Maya s world was looking brighter, except that she had never had a date with a boy. She felt that a boyfriend would clarify my position to the world and, even more important, to myself (Angelou, Caged Bird 238). Convinced that most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise (Angelou, Caged Bird 239), she decided to do something about it. One evening after she had completed her homework, she took a walk through the neighborhood, and ran into a boy in her class.
The result of which was the birth of her son, Clyde Bailey Guy Johnson, shortly after graduating from high school. To support her child and herself, she took a variety of jobs dancing in night clubs, cooking at a Creole caf, removing paint at a dent and body shop, and serving as a madam and sometimes prostitute at a San Diego brothel. (Meltzer 275). While appearing as a dancer in a cabaret, she changed her name to Maya Angelou. Her experience there led to an acting and singing career and she joined a U. S. State Department production of Porgy and Bess throughout Europe.
When she was thirty, Angelou moved to New York and joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she became involved in the civil rights movement, serving as the northern coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr. s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She later moved to Egypt, where she edited an English-language newspaper, and then to Ghana, working as a writer and editor. In 1969, Angelou published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. An account of her childhood up to the birth of her son, it is her most critically acclaimed work and was nominated for a National Book Award. Gather Together in My Name (1974) describes her search for identity and her struggle for survival as a young, unwed mother.
In The Heart of a Woman (1981) she describes her emergence as a writer and a political activist. Based on her experience in Ghana, All Gods Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) examines the relationship between Africa and black culture in America. Angelou has written several plays for screen, stage and television, as well as several volumes of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize nominated Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water Fore I Drive (1971), And Still I Rise (1976), and Shaker, Why Dont You Sing? (1983). In January, 1993, Angelou became the first woman and the first African-American to read her work at a presidential inauguration; her inaugural poem On the Pulse of Morning celebrates the diversity of the American and world communities and calls on them to work together to create a better future. Tenderly, joyously, sometimes in sadness, sometimes in pain, Maya Angelou writes from the heart and celebrates life as only she has discovered it. With the vivid use of figurative and symbolic language, she teaches many lessons in telling the stories of her life and shares her opinions on everything from race relations to religion.
Through anecdotes, humor, and her own brand of philosophy, Angelou uses the positive tone of her work to uplift the reader with renewed strength to survive. Throughout her work you can find the elements of her life s struggles woven into the words as if she were sitting across the coffee table in the living room having a nice chat with her friends. Her reflective admiration is apparent in the opening stanza of Willie as Angelou describes her uncle: Willie was a man without fame Hardly anybody knew his name. Crippled and limping, always walking lame, He said, I keep on movin Movin just the same.
Maya Angelou s journey through life represents the heart and the spirit of a remarkable woman who has survived the pain of abandonment, the anguish of child abuse, and the hatred of racial intolerance. In her writings, she invites her readers to share her experiences and through them to learn the value of survival, the beauty of creativity, and the importance of hard work. Works Cited Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1969.
Referred to in the text as Caged Bird. Angelou, Maya. Even the Stars Look Lonesome. New York: Random House, 1997. Angelou, Maya. Poems.
New York: Random House, 1986. Meltzer, Milton. The Black Americans. New York: Harper Collins, 1984. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Autobiography: Maya Angelou.
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