Maya Angelou died today.
A sad day and a great loss, but her passing in no way diminishes the spirit or the wisdom or the strength she shared through her words and her life. She fought for Civil Rights alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. She survived and healed from growing up in the Jim Crow South and once said that writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was therapeutic for her as it was the first time she could let go of the tragedies of her childhood and not be ashamed or afraid to speak of the unthinkable violations she endured because of the color of her skin. It was cathartic, it was healing. It was freeing.
Her essence didn’t allow negative energy to enter her life. She once said that negative people carry negative energy that gets in your clothes and your furniture and your carpet and your hair. It fills the air that you breathe and she’d have no part of it. The “N” word was not allowed in her home. It’s a word that she said was “vulgar and dangerous to the Black community” and there was no place in her life for it.
Caged Bird was the first book I ever read by Angelou. I still have it and keep it, with its somewhat tattered paperback cover, on my bookshelf. Her words are simultaneously poetic and coarse. There was no way for Maya to pretty up the life she wrote about – her life – the one she endured and was brave enough to share. It’s a poignant, stark, necessary reminder of how sadistic and inhumane people can be and the strength it took for Black America to rise above the injustices, the abuse, the raw hatred that White America heaped (heaps) upon it.
This book has earned itself a perpetual place on banned book lists as critics claim it is too vulgar, too graphic, too dirty for young adults, for teenagers (or maybe for all white people) to read, but what they really mean is that it’s too disturbing, too sickening, too horrific to read because it is too truthful and too real. It is an undeniable lesson in American history. A lesson that people who keep their heads buried in the sand don’t want any part of. They prefer facts glossed over or forgotten or, at least, minimized. These are the same people who conveniently refer to the systematic imprisonment, dehumanization, abuse, rape and torture of humans for multiple generations as "The American Slave Trade", making slavery a mere business transaction for savvy white men who had enough money to buy and keep humans. Maya wouldn't allow that. She was real. She was honest. She was a survivor.
Goodbye Maya Angelou. You've taught me a lot.