Maya Angelou: lessons in living - author - Interview

Some folks you meet leave no impression; Maya Angelou fills up the room. She doesn't speak loudly, doesn't seek to overpower or play the diva to draw attention. She simply is herself. She looks exactly the way I've always imagined many an African queen would: tall, stately, head high, carriage erect, eyes wide, a quiet sense of confidence exuding from her pores. A woman large of frame, she is as at ease with and in her body as she is with the accolades and acclaim that pour in from around the world.

Maya Angelou, the writer, stirred the hearts of millions of readers with her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which chronicle her childhood years. In that memoir she shared the trauma of being raped, of her horror at he violence done to her as well as to her assailant, and of becoming mute for several years as a result. But in this, as in all the subsequent memoirs covering her adult years and in her poetry and essays, Maya Angelou has always sought to illume the human experience, to celebrate the human spirit while avoiding mawkish sentimentality - even as she unflinchingly describes her life and ours with clear-eyed detail.

A woman of may parts is Maya Angelou: actress, dancer and director of works for the stage and screen, singer and professor. Her accomplishments are many. For example, she has authored ten books and received 30 honorary doctorates and been nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance in Roots. She holds a lifetime appointment as a Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and wrote and hosted the PBS television series Maya Angelou's America: A Journey of the Heart. She is one man's mother, one young man's grandmother and mother of the heart to three women. She has been married several times, to men from three continents. She has lived in Cairo, Accra and London and New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles but currently calls Winston Salem, North Carolina, her home.

She is a voracious reader, with nearly photographic recall, and a brilliant raconteur who rarely forgets what she hears. She is a great cook who loves to bring people together around her table. She is a wise woman, her wisdom bred in the bone, honed by experience, built on common sense. Fluent in several languages, she is an intellectual and a scholar, but one who holds sway as easily in a rough-and-tumble bar as in a church, or a college classroom. She is a woman who listens as thoughtfully as she speaks.

I was a young editor, with the big mission of making Essence magazine a success, when Maya Angelou first reached out her hand in friendship. I remember she told me how proud she was of me, of what I was doing. I remember too how in awe I was of her, how difficult it was for me to believe that this famous, awesomely talented woman really wanted to be my friend. So I held back, until finally, several years later, Maya invited me to lunch and, in that honest way she has of getting to the heart of the matter, told me that if I wished to be her friend I'd better straighten up and act like a woman, not a little girl. Perhaps it sounds harsh, but it wasn't. We both cried some in that Cuban restaurant that day, and I will always be grateful that she cared enough to reach out again.

I treasure the times I've spent with Maya Angelou. Laughter, yes, there's always plenty of that, and ofttimes tears as well, the kind that come from fullness of spirit and reflect a gamut of emotions. Stories are shared, ideas exchanged in conversations that often range from the bone-personal to the metaphysical to the political. With Maya I am always learning. She teaches by example: how to be more graceful, gracious and giving; how to lovingly call someone to account when necessary and correct without blame or hurt feelings; the importance of giving praise, honor and respect, and of living wholly, fully in the world.

Although I have shared friendship and laughter with this great woman, anyone who reads her memoirs and her poetry, who hears her speak in an auditorium or on a television show, knows who she is as well. What you see or hear or read is no different from what you get from the woman in person, her public face no different than her private one.

This summer I interviewed Maya Angelou in her home. Essence editor-in-chief Susan Taylor and her daughter Nequai came down as well. Nequai served as our technical assistant, checking on tapes and adjusting mikes, while my sister-friend Susan made sure we all stayed on track. In Maya Angelou's warm, rambling house, we four women spent many hours together gathered round her table in the big flowing kitchen dining area, savoring Maya's wonderful cooking, sharing life stories, life lessons, life struggles. Afterward, Maya Angelou and I settled into an easy couch in her bedroom and there we talked. She shared her thoughts about spirit and spirituality - and how it moves and shapes her life; about service and grace and giving. She celebrated the spirit of our people and the earthy sensuality of the sisterhood; she talked about family, and discussed how some of us have gone astray and how we can move to regain our way. These are some of her lessons in living.

Spirit

When I think of spirit, I think of the energy of life. African religions encourage the supplicant to respect the spirit in the tree, in the water, in the flower, in the air, in a child. I, too, am aware of the presence of spirit in everything. And because I am a religious woman, I cannot - don't know how to and don't wish to - separate spirit from the spirit of God. So spirit to me is God.

Last night a friend asked me how I dealt with depression. My answer was that when I find myself depressed, I ask the spirits to fill me. I say I am willing, I need you. And so I become - and this is where spirit and religion intersect - enthused. Now, if you look up the word enthusiasm or enthused, the root meaning is in fill - God in you. So what seems to be a kind of vibrancy in me is from having called on spirit, having called on God to fill me, and then: I'm enthusiastic! I'm up! I'm doing! I'm believing! I'm trying! I'm failing! I'm losing! I'm finding! It's all all right, you see.

I have tried many things, failed at many, and succeeded at many. I will try anything that I think is good, because I find myself surrounded by spirits in front of me, behind me, under me and over me. Spirit fills me. And it never leaves me. Now mind you, I may be silly enough to leave it for a while, but it never truly leaves me. All I or any of us need ever do is call.

My grandmother, who was one of the greatest human beings I've ever known, used to say, "I am a child of God and I'm nobody's creature." That to me defined the Black woman, through the centuries.

But something has happened that's been really disastrous for our people. We became enchanted with the attitudes, the postures, the material things and the faithlessness of the larger society. And we gave up our birthright for a mess of pottage. We thought that in order to be sophisticated we had to become nonbelievers; that to show we were on par with the whites, we had to become atheists as demonstration of how really sophisticated we were.

Now, it is said by some of the great thinkers that the epitome of sophistication is to strive for simplicity, to run the gamut through all the affectations and return to utter simplicity. That is where our people were coming out of slavery - they had run the gamut and they were back at a place of sturdy, solid, reliable sophistication.

Our ability to have and to live on faith brought us through conditions more horrific than we can even imagine. Whenever I get out of touch with my power, I think of our people, in their chains, having no names, not being able to move one inch without the license of someone who purportedly owned them. And I think of the song these same people wrote - "I'm going to run on, see what the end is going to be." My God, what a people! I think of the people who wrote and sang, "If the Lord wants somebody, here am I. Send me;" And I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.

Grace

Grace has to do with one's deliberate, chosen way of being in this world. The old cliche about seeing a glass of water with a certain amount of water in it and deciding whether it's half-empty or half-full is evidence of how one wants to see the world. And how one wants to see oneself in the world.

For a Black woman, the choice is imperative because the larger society, and quite often Black men and women, see her in a negative light. This so threatens her being that unless she determines who she is and how she sees herself, she will die. She will die daily. She will die hourly unless she chooses how she will see herself and her way of being in this world. This is the kind of liberation that is a harbinger of grace. When you are liberated, you are free to accept grace, to ask for it, to host it.

So when she decides I am first a gift - I am the creation of the Creator, and the Creator makes no mistakes, I belong to myself, I live inside this place, it is all of me that lives inside this place, and everything about me belongs to me first-the moment that decision is made, grace enters.

And being a host to grace provides one with gentility, a generosity, a spirit of forgiveness and humor. The minute you host grace, you speak slower, because you want to be understood. You speak more softly because you don't want to jar, offend or run anybody away (except those who mean you no good). Your gestures are larger, more open, more generous. You're less afraid because the external threat does not reach you quite so directly. Other people's ideas of you become much, much less important. And you literally do become more beautiful.

Sensuality

A part of Black women's spirituality has to do with their sensuality. We love the aromas of things. We really love pretty colors and they love us. We really love food. Love to prepare it. Love to serve it, and love to eat it. We really love music. Love to hear it, love to make it, and make some of the prettiest music ever heard by the human ear. We really love sex. Love to enjoy it, love to give it. We do. We are sensual people and do not or deny it unless we are sick.

Our spirituality is fed by our sensuality - meaning that we are present in the world. That's what sensuality really means. It means I am present. I'm not over there somewhere. I am present in my own world. I admit to aroma. I admit to feeling. I admit to hunger. I admit to thirst. I admit to my need for sex. I admit I am present in my world.

Ofttimes when you remember being sent out of the room when Mama and her sisters were talking, you'd hear them almost burst with laughter. Quite often, what they have said is something very bawdy. Now, a lot of people don't realize how nice Black ladies talk, but that kind of humor is part of our sensuality. And I include everybody I know. People with whom I spoke yesterday. Ladies of an age and a stature who, when we talk, having spoken about the children, discussed what can I possibly do about this raging violence, what can I do about raging racism, what can I do? What can I do? After having encouraged each other, say, "You've gotten any? Girl, look here. Well, what's happening? Honey, listen. Let me tell you what happened to me last month." That's right. It's very important. And after one of those conversations, you feel like you've had a Jacuzzi' and a massage and everything.

Friendship

I could never make it, I would never have made it without my sister-friends. I kind of gauge a sister-ftiend this way: If I had to be in a ioom with a lion, would this person come in there with me? Now, I probably wouldn't send for them because after they helped me vanquish the lion, I would have to deal with them asldng, "What the hell were you doing there in the room with the lion in the first place?" .

Oh yes, that bond is part of our strength, it helped us endure. It was forged in Africa, and strengthened during slavery. If we lose this love and self-respect and respect for each other, this is how we will finally die.

I have a new poem which is too hot on that - "When will I stop and see that war is being waged on me?"

We see our men in prison, on drugs. The war is being waged against us. The final blow will be when we women are separated from each other.

Healing

It's s scary to speak of the presence of evil in the world, but it's here. It may be that these two powers-god and the devil, the power of good and the power of evil-have been at each other beyond any concept of time. And I believe this evil is real in this world today because I see the proliferation of abuse: the rape; the abuse of children; the serial murderer, and then the horrific types of serial murderers. All of this speaks to something that somebody had better admit to, and very soon, and claim because as Bob Dylan wrote in one of his songs, "You got to serve somebody. "

I think the first step is for those of us who have positions of power, which means of course the leaders, the teachers, the business people, the writers, the artists, the parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, all of us have got to take time out and look at where we are. That's the most important thing - to see and admit where we are. We don't have to admit it to anybody else, but to our individual selves.

Everybody ought to take a day off, not just from the job, but from family, friends, from everything, and sit down and think. Now that takes courage, because the world is moving so fast and our plates are overflowing with the things we got to do. But what we really have to do is take a day and sit down and think.

The world is not going to end or fall apart. jobs won't be lost. Kids will not run crazy in one day. Lovers won't stop speaking to you. Husbands or wives are not just going to disappear. just take that one day and think; don't read, don't write. No television, no radio, no distractions. Sit down and think. If you can't get everybody out of the house, go sit in a church, or the park, or take a long walk and think.

Call it a healing day. just take a day to heal from all the lies you've told yourself and that have been told to you. And sometime during that day, admit where we are. Black women need to take that day of healing. But Black men must do the same if we are to survive. If women heal, but men do not, we will not survive intact. But if Black men also take that day of healing and admit who they are, and where we are, and try to figure out what to do, we might reverse this trend. Unless Black men do it, and we must expect them to, we will not survive, so we cannot afford to excuse them, or allow them to excuse themselves. We all need to take a day.

Giving

Giving is so fabulous, that is why the Christian Bible says it's more blessed to give than to receive, and why it's so true. just give, not indiscriminately, but give. You'd be surprised how much unexpected laughter and glee and humor and wit enter one's life.

You know, a nurturing group of people like Black women, we don't volunteer enough. We ought to find some way at least twice a month to go to an old folks' home and read to somebody. Go into the children's ward. Go in there and read a children's story. Go, do something. Go to church and say, "I'm going to have about four hours every other Saturday, can you use me?"

Everybody needs to be needed. And it's not make-work, the truth is everybody is needed. And in giving you're healing at the same time, and being healed. Anybody who can't be used is useless. This does not mean the person should be abused or misused or overused or ill-used. But to be of use, to serve people in your state - what on earth are you here for if not for that? I feel for people who are not needed; it's terrible.

We make a terrible mistake if we think we are doing service for others. That is a mistake. We do service for ourselves. When you volunteer to do something for the community, it is important that you understand you're doing it for yourself Yes, the people will benefit, and you will benefit more if you know I'm doing this for me. I am healing myself.

When you open a door, you hold it open because someone is going through it, because it's right to do. You want a "thank you." I do. But if the person doesn't say anything, I still say, "You're welcome." And if the same person came back through, I would hold the door again, because I'm doing it for myself, and it's the right thing to do for me.

Family

We have got to offer the spirit back to the children. If we don't we'll be dead. There's no question. We're well on our way to being out of here.

I was on this movie set in California and there was a young man cussing in front of everybody. He got into a big row with another young man, and they were going for each other's throat. One man came up and got between them. And the one who had started the trouble, he's still just cussing. I went over and I said, "Baby, may I speak to you for a minute?" He dropped his head, and I said, "Come on, let's walk."

And I started talking to him and started crying. I said, "Do you know how much at risk you are? Do you know how valuable you are to us? You're all we've got, baby."

He started crying, and said to me, "Don't cry." I don't know who has cried for him. And let him see how much he means, not accusingly, just "Darling, I love you so much. I'm going to tell you when you're wrong."

Bring the children into the life you live, and let them see you cry. Whatever they are, they're your children. They really don't want to see mother cry.

Too often we stem the tears and won't let them see us cry. We'd rather they see us shout and argue and slam doors. But let them see you cry. Explain to them, "Darling, my heart is broken and I'm worried to death. Now, I don't know where we're going from here, but I want you to know that you are my heart. You are all I have. You're the best I have. There's nobody better than you, and my heart is hurting now."

Let them see you cry. You don't have to accuse them of anything. Often what's needed is allowing your children, who are so vulnerable, to see that you are vulnerable, too. You will be surprised by how they respond to that because they always think that mother is so powerful. It's very important not to be such a superwoman as a mother that you don't have super children. You got to give to them. Let them be super-duper. Lean. Don't be ashamed of leaning.

What I do with my son, my grandson and three women I consider my daughters is put myself in their hands. I say, "I'm yours. Whatever you do will affect me. I am yours. I'm yours."

Now, I look after them. They're under my umbrella, but I don't take all of it. I say, "You take half. Look after me. I need you desperately. If you don't look after me, who will?" They begin to grow umbrellas so that their children will have something to stand under. And their friends, and I.

Black people say when you get, give; when you learn, teach. As soon as that healing takes place, then we have to go out and heal somebody, and pass on the idea of a healing day - so that somebody else gets it and passes it on. Upon admitting that we're about to go over the hill, about to slip down the crevice, one must stop and consider, admit and then heal. Takes a lot of courage to heal.

Each person must find her or his own mode of healing in the family. And bear in mind that true healing cannot come at someone else's expense. You have to be healthy. You have to develop the desire for health so deeply that you can liberate other people.

To get there you have to lay claim to your spirit. To those who would try to diminish me, I say you cannot cripple my spirit. You cannot do that, it is not yours to cripple. I alone am responsible to my God for my spirit. Not you, unless I give it to you. And I would be a fool. That is all I've got. I don't have my life. An airplane could fall down on me in this house, this minute. I don't have my health; in a blink of an eye, I could have a stroke. I don't have anything. The house can burn up, the telephone can ring, and I can be told my son and grandson have gone. I have nothing but my spirit, and I will not allow anyone to have or trample on it.

COPYRIGHT 1992 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group