Maya Angelou, who was born on this day in 1928, was a theatrical writer, using language to describe and glorify a self that was fulfilled only when it was being observed.
By the time the poet and playwright Maya Angelou published the first volume of her memoirs, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” at the age of forty-one, she had already survived a number of personal misfortunes that might have crushed a lesser will and stilled a less hardy pen.
As a young girl, Angelou saw her grandmother, a religious and thrifty matriarch who owned the only general store in Stamps that catered to blacks, bend but not break when confronted with white girls who refused to address her as “Miss.” And she saw Momma protect her son, the partly paralyzed Uncle Willie, with whom she ran the store, from the Ku Klux Klan by hiding him in her deep, rooty-smelling vegetable bin.
There is no question that “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was an important contribution to the wave of black feminist writing in the seventies.
In her fourth volume, “The Heart of a Woman,” Angelou recounts a 1957 encounter with the crusty and vulnerable Billie Holiday, who had been introduced to her by a mutual friend: Holiday is one of the best-drawn characters in Angelou’s books. But, by showing what an extraordinary woman can do, Angelou unwittingly reveals her own shortcomings. By the time she met Holiday, Angelou had followed the fashion of the time: she was a calypso singer, soon to cut an album entitled “Miss Calypso.” But it was clear that the album itself was not the point. Developing her artistry was not the point. Fame, not art, was her spur—a fact that Holiday recognized instantly.
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