Archives: Raymond Enisuoh Meets Maya Angelou

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And still, like dust, she rises-Introducing Maya Angelou • New Nation • 10 June 2002
New Nation - 10 June 2002
By Raymond Enisuoh
‘Black, bitter and beautiful, she speaks of our survival.’ -- the late author James Baldwin on Maya Angelou.

The undisputed highlight of 2002’s EMMA (Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards) presentations was when African-American author and poet Dr Maya Angelou received a thoroughly deserved lifetime achievement accolade.
Angelou, one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary writers, is no stranger to prestigious occasions. She has, after all, previously performed her poetry at former US President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, Minister Louis Farrakhan’s historic Million Man March, in Washington DC, as well as a ceremony to mark the United Nations 50th anniversary. She has received honorary degrees from countless colleges and universities.
But as Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow slowly introduced Angelou, the emotion of the moment became too much and the regal scribe almost burst into tears. A lengthy standing ovation followed and practically everyone in attendance that night, including famous actors, musicians, comedians, and singers, acknowledged that they were in the presence of greatness.
“She is an impossible woman to sum up,” Snow concluded, to much applause, “Save that, she is a phenomenal woman.”
The following afternoon, I arrive to meet Dr Angelou, as she insists on being called (Ms Angelou you can get away with, but definitely not Maya), at the Basil St Hotel in Knightsbridge. She is already seated at the lounge with a small entourage when I arrive and immediately ushers me to sit closer to her. “Why, you look younger than the morning sun,” she chuckles.
After offering to pour me a cold drink, Dr Angelou probes me about my own family history and the knowledge of my family surname before she begins to answer any questions. Her voice is low but grandiose and her manner maternal. “I really meant what I said last night,” she admits.
“EMMA is and has a possibility of being, for a number of people, a rainbow in the clouds. Because a number of young men and women are striving in their professions.
“Whether Gary Younge [fellow EMMA Award winner] in journalism, or whether the young people in the theatre and film. They are striving to find a footing and the ground that they are on is awfully slippery. Especially being black or Asian. It’s a slippery ground and dark days.”
Dr Angelou has an uncanny habit of making the bleak and depressing sound eloquent and optimistic. It’s a gift that has allowed her to reach thousands of lost souls over the years merely with the power of her words.
“So the EMMA is something to look up to see that it is possible and there is hope. I was particularly moved, almost to tears that night. I just had to hold on and breathe deeply.”
It’s rather strange that such a successful and seasoned US author would place so much importance on a British awards show, especially one dedicated solely to ethnic minorities. But Dr Angelou is genuinely emotional. “Nobody owes me anything,” she states matter-of-factly. “When people in another country vote to honour me, my sense of appreciation makes me vulnerable. I’m very pleased. I love London. I wrote most of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in London. I started it at a hotel on Seven Sisters Road. More recently, I’ve been visiting and staying in Kentish Town.”
Born Marguerite Annie Johnson on 4 April 1926 in St Louis, USA, Dr Angelou has always been a traveller. Her divorced parents shuttled her and her late brother, Bailey, between St Louis, Arkansas and San Francisco for much of their childhood. It was her time in Arkansas that provided the inspiration for her classic 1970 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
In their memoir, which was nominated for the 1970 National Book Award, she depicts what it means to grow up as a black female in the overtly racist American South. This was a childhood burden only superseded by the trauma of being raped, aged eight, by her mother’s boyfriend. After finally naming her attacker, a young Angelou had to endure the subsequent court case and murder of her rapist by her uncles. Fearing that her words had the ability to kill, she later became mute for five years. She did, nonetheless, manage to display a prodigious, creative genius that she later learnt to express in the form of singing, acting, dancing, writing and black political activism.
It’s a blessing for all of us that Angelou did reclaim her voice after her childhood ordeals. It’s a voice that has brought the joys and struggles of the African-American community she was reared in to the world stage. It is also a voice that has highlighted international oppression and racism, most notably in Africa, Europe and Britain.
Last week Dr Angelou was scheduled to headline ‘An Evening with Maya Angelou’ with the London Community Gospel Choir to raise money for the Stephen Lawrence charitable fund. On her last such visit, she supported the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, who in turn named their Haringey centre in her honour.
“I just read about that,” she muses on the Stephen Lawrence campaign. “I felt that I wanted to do something. And Jon Snow is a friend of mine. Our families go away for summer once a year. He just asked me and I said I was glad to help raise money.”
She does admit, however, that black British news doesn’t pull much draw in the US and that she is forced to rely on subscription to a British newspaper and friends for updates. Maybe due to the overlooking presence of a Time Warner publicity agent, Dr Angelou doesn’t go into too much detail about her new book, A Song Flung Up To Heaven, although you get the impression that she wants to. “It’s the sixth in an autobiographical series that began with I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” is all she says on the matter.
The other instalments in her widely acclaimed autobiographical series are 1974’s Gather Together In My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart Of A Woman (1981) and All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes (1984).
A Song Flung Up To Heaven details her sojourn to Ghana and emotional return to the US to work in the civil rights movement alongside Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.
Dr Angelou is more forthcoming about her recent poetry, especially in the aftermath of the terrorism and war that have haunted the US of late. “Everything affects my writing, from the sun coming out to the sun not coming out,” she says. “I’ve been writing more inspirational verses since September 11th. Reminding me the we, as human beings, are more alike than we are unalike. And to stop making the decision that because a person is of a different skin tone or uses a different language, that person is really different than us.
“Everybody in the world, whether it be Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham England, wants safe streets,” she contemplates.
“Everybody in the world wants a job, wants a good job and to be paid a little more than they are worth. Everybody wants somebody to love and somewhere to party on a Saturday night [laughs]. So the poetry I have been doing recently has used that central theme. I haven’t been doing any major writing but I have been working on that.”
While many may be more acquainted with her prose, Dr Angelou’s poetry has been equally as enthralling. Collection titles include I Shall Not Be Moved, Phenomenal Woman and On the Pulse Of Morning, can be found in libraries, bookstores and classrooms around the world. Yet the most well-known and universal of her poems, Still I Rise, will probably be etched into eternity in a similar vein to Rudyard Kipling’s If.
“It takes a long time for me to create a poem like that,” she reveals. “There is something in the human spirit that continues to boggle my mind. That we go to bed with pain and fear and terror and loneliness. Yet we awaken, we arise; we see other human beings and say, ‘Good morning’. As the Cockneys say, that makes me come over all queer.
“So I just started to write: ‘You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies / You may trod me in the very dirt but still, like dust, I’ll arise.”
At the age of 72, it’s amazing that Dr Angelou manages to maintain such an inspiring work ethic. Although she has little to prove any more in the field of literature, she still gets up early to go to a hotel room to write before returning home to prepare dinner. She also teaches one semester a year at Maine University.
So as one of the great stalwarts who have paved the way for black arts, along with the likes of Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka, what are her thoughts on the current African-American literary scene?
“Today is healthy,” she claims. “I mean, there is Cornell West, he’s very, very wonderful. Of course there is Toni Morrison [Nobel Literature Prize winner] and I’m there somewhere. Henry Louis Gates Jr is interesting but a philosopher really. There’s also Guy Johnson whose book is called Standing At The Scratching Line. He’s my son,” she whispers tenderly.
“There a slew of young writers coming out with books but I can’t keep up with them. One always wishes for more, you must. It’s not half what it should be but it’s getting there. We just have to continue pushing.”