For years, I knew of Maya Angelou as "America's Poet Laureate." The official poet of the United States, that's how I thought of her. I knew she had written a book called I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, and that was about it. Actually, it's a book, as well as this poem. In 2009 or so, when I wound up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, staying in a homeless shelter and looking for work, I ended up going the library every day. Somewhere along the way, I learned Maya Angelou actually lived in Winston-Salem. I think the library had a display of her works. She had lived in Winston-Salem for decades, and taught at Wake Forest University, and also had a library or wing named after her at the HBC, Winston-Salem State. When it came to celebrities from Winston, it was Maya and pro basketball player and Wake Forest alum, Chris Paul.
So I picked up "Caged Bird" at the library to read it, thinking it was a book of her poetry. It turned out to be an autobiography of Maya, from birth to age 17. It's a damn good read. She lived this incredibly varied and weird life (Hmmm, sounds familiar, maybe it's writer thing). She was a little girl in L.A., then lived for years with her Grandma in the tiny town of Stamps, Arkansas, living the life of a black girl in the hyper racist and segregated old South. Then she lived with her mom for a while in St.Louis, where her family comes across as... basically almost thugs. At age seven, Maya was raped by her mother's boyfriend, and a few days later, told one person who did it. A couple days later, the police found the rapist dead, apparently kicked and beaten to death. Maya, as a severely traumatized 7-year-old girl in the 1930's, believed that her saying the man's name caused his death. And she stopped talking. She was a voluntary mute for over five years, and was sent back to Grandma's house in Stamps, Arkansas, where people thought she was dumb because she was a mute.
Yet this girl, who once was afraid to speak for years, went on to work as San Francisco's first female trolley car operator, to sing and dance professionally, to become a world acclaimed poet and author, she worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X, and even once brought Tupac Shakur to tears. Really. Tupac. She was incredibly intelligent, but also street smart and wise, which is not true of most highly intelligent people. She had a great sense of humor that comes through in many of her interviews available online. She was a single mom at 17, and started self-educating around that time in order to prepare her son for life in this world as a young black man.
What I didn't realize until this past week, was that her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, was followed by six other autobiographies of other periods of her life. She wrote something like 40 books all together. She's definitely a person I would have liked to meet.
Here's the funny thing, in 2009-2010, I used to walk from Samaritan homeless shelter on Patterson, to the McDonald's on the corner of M.L.K. and Cleveland streets, caddy corner to the Cleveland projects. It was a newly rebuilt McDonald's, but in the hood, the East Side, in Winston-speak. I would scrape up money to get a sausage biscuit and a Diet Coke, and I'd listen to the Black gospel music they'd play on Sunday mornings, and I'd hide in this high back booth off to the side and either read or draw. That was my "church" during that period. What I didn't know until a few years later was that the church across the street was Maya Angelou's church. I spent dozens of Sundays 30 yards away, but didn't know to go in there and visit, and maybe meet this amazing woman. So I never met Maya Angelou.
Personally, I think this interview of Dr. Maya Angelou should be required viewing for every high school and college student in our country. But that's just me. Turn this on while you're doing something else (I know you're busy), and see what she says that catches your attention. I guarantee you'll hear something in this video that will be just the thing you needed to hear right now.
I drew my first picture of Maya Angelou in January of last year (2018), which seems like a million years ago now, since so much has happened in my life since. Rachel White of Designs, Vines and Wines, in the Trade Street art scene of Winston-Salem, took a liking to my work last January. She asked if I could draw something for February, Black History Month, although we were both white. She wanted a drawing to help show that we're all one big human family, and we shouldn't be so prejudiced about skin tones or other things. Maya Angelou was the first person who came to mind.
My drawing of Maya sat in the front window of Studios at 625, on Trade Street, for a month then hung inside for many more months. Rachel later managed to get it on stage at the public garden party in Winston-Salem, to celebrate Maya's 90th birthday. She had passed (nobody dies in North Carolina, they all "pass") four years earlier, but over 100 people showed up for the celebration. For a couple of hours, poets from Winston-Salem, and around the region, stood on stage and read their own poems, and Maya's poems, all standing next to my drawing of Maya Angelou.
The funny thing about that Garden Party was that it was held at Bailey Park, a brand new park, and a place where homeless people in Winston-Salem know they are not welcome. Simply put, if you're homeless, you know to avoid that park. It's part of the new, redeveloped, Innovation Quarter area, and homeless people are not welcome. But I got a free pass that day, although police eyed me up a few times. I also knew that the young Maya Angelou, the six foot tall black girl and young woman, wouldn't have been welcome there either. Yet, the distinguished, older, late Dr. Maya Angelou had a party honoring her there. That juxtaposition meandered around my head as I listened to poets for a couple hours. I ended up writing a poem on the spot, literally grabbing my notebook out of my backpack, and wandering away from everyone, until I could finish it. In my experience, poems come once, if you miss one, it's gone. In that poem, I asked, at what age would Maya Angelou, herself, have been welcome in that particular park. I let L.B. the Poet, Winston-Salem's current poetic force of nature, read the poem first. He said I needed to perform it. I never did. Maybe... someday.
The other thing that happened that day, was that I was introduced to Ms. Rosa Johnson, who is Maya Angelou's only niece, and her archivist. This is Ms. Johnson on the right, below, at the party.
When Rachel White and I talked to Ms. Johnson, she said people always felt like they knew her aunt, and would just come up as strangers and say, "Oh Maya!" She said that was why Maya Angelou always asked to be called "Dr. Angelou," by those she didn't know. So now, in conversation, I often refer to her as Dr. Angelou. But not always.
Months later, Ms. Johnson happened to wander into Rachel's studio on Trade Street, and saw my drawing of Dr. Angelou. Rachel said Ms. Johnson stopped and looked at it for a long minute, and started crying. She'd seen it before, and had been given a tiny copy of it at the 90th Birthday Garden Party. But she'd forgotten about the drawing. Seeing it brought back memories of her aunt. Rachel and Ms. Johnson sat and talked for over an hour, and Rachel gave her one of the full size prints of the drawing. Since she's Dr. Angelou's archivist, that means a print of my drawing is now a part of the Maya Angelou collection of... whatever the collection is now. So that's cool.
From my point of view, I really enjoyed diving back into the life and work of Dr. Maya Angelou for the last ten days or so. Her life was amazing, and her way of putting words together, to transport the reader to another level of thinking, is even more amazing. For those of you who have read this far, here are some clips of Maya's work, as well as a couple of my favorite clips of Kerry Getz, who asked for this new drawing to be done, and will be it's owner. Enjoy.
Oprah's big life lesson with Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou reads "Human Family"
Maya Angelou reads "Still I Rise"
Maya Angelou reads "Phenomenal Woman"
Maya Angelou Live and Unplugged
Maya Angelou "Rainbow in the Clouds" Speech
Maya Angelou singing calypso, "Run Joe" in 1957
And Still I Rise - Maya Angelou documentary trailer
Kerry Getz "Landslide" cover
Kerry Getz "Walk Away Renee" cover
Kerry Getz "Beautiful to You" (her song)
Kerry Getz "This Thorny Rose" (my favorite of her songs)
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