Letter to My Daughter (8 page)

Poetry

To fling my arms wide

In the face of the sun,

Dance! Whirl! Whirl!

Til the quick day is done.

Rest at pale evening…

A tall, slim tree…

Night coming tenderly

Black like me.

(Published in
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
by Alfred A. Knopf & Vintage Press)

If African and many African American poets have one theme it most assuredly is “Wouldn’t everyone like to be…Black Like Me?” Black poets revel in their color, plunging pink palmed, black hands deep into blackness and ceremonially painting themselves with the substance of their ancestry.

There is a flourish of pride in works which must stupefy the European reader. How can exaltation be wrenched from degradation? How can ecstasy be pulled out of the imprisonment of brutality? What can society’s rejects find inside themselves to esteem?

Aimé Césaire, speaking of the African, wrote:

Those who invented neither gunpowder nor compass

Those who never knew how to conquer steam or

electricity

Those who explore neither seas nor sky

But those without whom the earth would not be

earth….

My negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled

against

The clamor of the day;

My negritude is not a speck of dead water on the

earth’s dead eye,

My negritude is neither tower nor cathedral….

It perforates opaque dejection with its upright

patience.

(Published in
Return to My Native Land
by Bloodaxe Books)

Césaire was writing in the same spirit as that which inspired the black American poet Melvin B. Tolson. When he wrote:

None in the Land can say

To us black men Today:

You dupe the poor with rags-to-riches tales,

And leave the workers empty dinner pails.

None in the Land can say

To us black men Today:

You send flame gutting tanks,

Like swarms of flies

And pump a hell from dynamiting skies.

You fill machine-gunned towns with rotting dead–

A No Man’s Land where children cry for bread.

(Published in
The Negro Caravan
by Citadel Press)

Mari Evans gave heart to African Americans in general and women in particular in her poem, “I Am a Black Woman”:

I

am a black woman

tall as a cypress

strong

beyond all definition still

defying place

and time

and circumstance

assailed

impervious

indestructible

Look

on me and be

renewed

(Published in
I Am a Black Woman
by William Morrow & Co.)

The negritude poets’ exposition of oppression, in fact, was inspired earlier by the Harlem Renaissance writers. The American black poets heralded their blackness carrying their color like banners into the white literary world. When Langston Hughes’ poem, “I’ve Known Rivers,” became the rallying cry for black Americans to take pride in their color, the reverberations of that attitude reached the Africans in the then French and British colonies.

Sterling A. Brown’s “Strong Men” must have had a salutary effect on the African poets:

They Stole you from Homeland

They brought you in shackles

They sold you

They scourged you

They branded you

They made your women breeders

They swelled your numbers with bastards.

You sang, ‘Keep a inching along like a po inch worm’

You sang, ‘Walk together children…don’t you get weary’

The strong men keep coming on

The strong men get stronger.

(Published in
The Negro Caravan
by Citadel Press)

That poem, and Claude McKay’s “White Houses” and Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” were guiding lights to the colonized African poets. The African in the Caribbean and on the African continent had much in common with their black American counterparts. They had the onerous task of writing in the colonial language, poetry which opposed colonialism. That is to say, they had to take the artillery of the foe to diminish the power of the foe. They meant to go farther; they hoped to with eloquence and passion to win the foe to their side.

The hope still lives. It can be heard in Langston Hughes’ poem, “I, too, Sing America.”

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

(Published in
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
by Alfred A. Knopf &Vintage Press)

Mt. Zion

Once in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and an acting agnostic. It wasn’t that I had stopped believing in God; it’s just that God didn’t seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented. And then a voice teacher introduced me to
Lessons in Truth,
published by the Unity School of Practical Christianity.

Frederick Wilkerson, the voice teacher, numbered opera singers, nightclub singers, recording artists, and cabaret entertainers among his students. Once a month he invited all of us to gather and read from
Lessons in Truth.

At one reading, the other students, who were all white, the teacher, and I sat in a circle. Mr. Wilkerson asked me to read a section, which ended with the words “God loves me.” I read the piece and closed the book. The teacher said, “Read it again.” I pointedly opened the book, and a bit sarcastically read, “God loves me.” Mr. Wilkerson said, “Again.” I wondered if I was being set up to be laughed at by the professional, older, all-white company? After about the seventh repetition I became nervous and thought that there might be a little truth in the statement. There was a possibility that God really did love me, me Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the gravity and grandeur of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me, since one person, with God, constitutes the majority?

That knowledge humbles me today, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in my gums. And it also liberates me. I am a big bird winging over high mountains, down into serene valleys. I am ripples of waves on silver seas. I’m a spring leaf trembling in anticipation of full growth.

Gratefully I am a member in good standing of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I am under watch care at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and I am a present member of Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, California.

In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable in the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting.

Keep the Faith

Many things continue to amaze me, even well into my seventh decade. I’m startled or at least taken aback when people walk up to me and without being questioned inform me that they are Christians. My first response is the question “Already?”

It seems to me that becoming a Christian is a lifelong endeavor. I believe that is also true for one wanting to become a Buddhist, or a Muslim, a Jew, Jainist, or a Taoist. The persons striving to live their religious beliefs know that the idyllic condition cannot be arrived at and held on to eternally. It is in the search itself that one finds the ecstasy.

The Depression, which was difficult for everyone to survive, was especially so for a single black woman in the Southern states tending her crippled adult son and raising two small grandchildren.

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother, who was called “Mamma,” is a glimpse of that tall, cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air with nothing visible beneath her.

Whenever she confronted a challenge, Mamma would clasp her hands behind her back, look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and draw herself up to her full six-foot height. She would tell her family in particular, and the world in general, “I don’t know how to find the things we need, but I will step out on the word of God. I am trying to be a Christian and I will just step out on the word of God.” Immediately I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her shoulders. Naturally, since she was over six feet tall, and stood out on the word of God, she was a giant in heaven. It wasn’t difficult for me to see Mamma as powerful, because she had the word of God beneath her feet.

Thinking of my grandmother years later, I wrote a gospel song that has been sung rousingly by The Mississippi Mass choir.

“You said to lean on your arm

And I am leaning

You said to trust in your love

And I am trusting

You said to call on your name

And I am calling

I’m stepping out on your word.”

Whenever I began to question whether God exists, I looked up to the sky and surely there, right there, between the sun and moon, stands my grandmother, singing a long meter hymn, a song somewhere between a moan and a lullaby and I know faith is the evidence of things unseen.

And all I have to do is continue trying to be a Christian.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Poet, writer, performer, teacher, and director, M
AYA
A
NGELOU
was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, then moved to San Francisco. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
she has also written a cookbook,
Hallelujah! The Welcome Table,
and five poetry collections, including
I Shall Not Be Moved
and
Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?

ALSO BY MAYA ANGELOU

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Gather Together in My Name

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas

The Heart of a Woman

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

ESSAYS

Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Even the Stars Look Lonesome

POETRY

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie

Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

And Still I Rise

Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?

I Shall Not Be Moved

On the Pulse of Morning

Phenomenal Woman

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

A Brave and Startling Truth

Amazing Peace

Mother

Celebrations

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me

Kofi and His Magic

PICTURE BOOKS

Now Sheba Sings the Song

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

COOKBOOK

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table