New Directions Volume 13 | Issue 4 Article 5 10-1-1986 Maya Angelou: From ‘Caged Bird’ To ‘All God’s Children’ Eugenia Collier Follow this and additional works at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections Recommended Citation Collier, Eugenia (1986) "Maya Angelou: From ‘Caged Bird’ To ‘All God’s Children’," New Directions: Vol. 13: Iss. 4, Article 5. Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol13/iss4/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Howard @ Howard University. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Directions by an authorized administrator of Digital Howard @ Howard University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ARTS The sweep of Angelou’s work includes not only womanhood but, indeed, what it Maya Angelou means to be a Black person — ultimately, a Black person on a pinnacle of history. The series of autobiographies begins in From ‘Caged chaos. After a tempestuous marriage, her parents separate. Maya’s early mem­ Bird’ to ‘All God’s ory is of her three-year-old self and her brother Bailey, only a year older, alone on C hilden’ an interminable train ride to begin life anew at the home of their paternal By Eugenia Collier grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. That fearful journey characterizes much of Maya’s early life. Adrift in a chaotic n her literary contributions, Maya world, the two babies have little other Angelou speaks for us all. Her latest than their own inborn courage and their autobiography — or rather the fifth survival instinct to see them to safe haven segment of her ongoing autobiogra­ out, is intensely personal. Yet it is a — this time with Momma Henderson — Iphy — is the culmination to which thecollective experience, an ongoing collec­ only to venture forth again on a different other four have pointed. All God’s Chil­ tive history which has molded us and journey to another haven which also dren Need Traveling Shoes tells of An- which provides the context in which the dissolves. There are many journeys in the gelou’s three years in Ghana, along with a personal is couched. Therefore, Cudjoe series of autobiographies. On one level, little band of American Blacks whom she concludes, the Black autobiographer most are escapes from some situation called the Revolutionist Returnees. The emerges not as an egotistical, unique which has become unbearable. On an­ book is not only good reading, but also an individual but rather as a member of a other level, each is a further step in important statement which touches a group, speaking of and for the group. Maya’s journey toward awareness. nerve in the Black American psyche. On As we all have observed, literature has The introduction to I Know Why the some level of our being, we all want to go dealt harshly with the Black woman. Caged Bird Sings 2 pinpoints a moment “home” again. Maya Angelou actually did Seldom shown as more than a sex object of anguish. Tiny Marguerite (Maya’s birth it. or a mother-type, she has received super­ name) forgets her lines in an Easter Of all genres, autobiography is particu­ ficial and sometimes distorted treatment, program. In her nervousness and embar­ larly suited to the experience of Blacks in even in the canon of Black American rassment, she tries desperately and un­ the diaspora. Beginning with the slave nar­ literature. In the 1970s, women them­ successfully to get to the bathroom in ratives, Black folk have given eyewitness selves took the reins in creating more time, and there is yet another reason to testimony to human history’s most tragic rounded, more realistic portrayals of be spanked by her grandmother and chapter. women in their complexity. ridiculed by her peers. Disillusion and Critic Selwyn Cudjoe, in an article on Cudjoe reiterates that Angelou’s auto­ despair, self-doubt, aloneness in trouble, Angelou’s autobiographies, states, “The biography, in response to inadequate, and a sense of being somehow out of tune practice of the autobiographical state­ surface treatment of Black women in with everybody else — these were the ment, up until the contemporary era, re­ literature, presents “a powerful, authen­ colors of Marguerite’s world. Yet the mains the quintessential literary genre for tic and profound signification of the condi­ incident marks the dawn of awareness. capturing the cadences of the Afro-Amer­ tion of Afro-American womanhood in her The development of this awareness flows ican being, revealing its deepest aspira­ quest for understanding and love rather through all the subsequent autobiogra­ tions and tracing the evolution of the Afro- than from bitterness and despair. Her phies. Growth is not easy; often it is American psyche under the impact of slav­ work is a triumph in the articulation of agonizing. “If growing up is painful for the ery and modern U.S. imperialism.”1 truth in simple, forthright terms. ” Southern Black girl, ” Angelou writes, Black autobiography, as Cudjoe points (Evans, P. 11). “being aware of her displacement is the NEW DIRECTIONS OCT 1986 rust on the razor that threatens her Christian Leadership Conference. Even­ throat.” (CagedBird, 3). tually she meets and marries Vus Make, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an African freedom-fighter, and moves itself a remarkable statement of what it is Maya has traveled far, not with him to Cairo. The marriage fails; she like to be a Black girl-child in a hate- is unable to be the submissive wife of his ridden land, which, as Cudjoe says, is only in physical distance expectations. She and Guy move to characterized by “the violation of the but also in the spirit. Ghana. Afro-American because he is too helpless Maya has traveled far, not only in to defend himself consistently, and the physical distance but also in the spirit: further degradation of his social being as from a white commune to Cairo, to Ghana the nature of the system worked toward — to independence, to commitment, to his further diminishment.” (Evans, 8). the search for understanding. We are witnesses to the impact of The autobiographies are exciting in a racism, superimposed on the stresses number of areas. They are, first of all, a normally characteristic of growth as Mar- systematic unfolding of the life of one of guerite-now-Maya, grown, reveals the the most talented people of our times. incidents which are, ultimately, cor­ Moreover, they give us glimpses of other nerstones of becoming. Her selfhood is had no idea what I was going to make of personalities — artists, writers, enter­ assailed from within and without. The my life, but I had given a promise and tainers — whose public image we know: too-frequent uprooting and shunting back found my innocence. I swore I’d never Julian Mayfield, John 0. Killens, John and forth between grandmother and lose it again.” (Gather, 181). Henrik Clarke, Paule Marshall, Rosa Guy mother, the traumatic encounters with In Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ — too many to name here. There is a both the white world and the Black, and Merry Like Christmas,4 Maya has a brief particularly moving vignette of the the ultimate outrage — rape at age eight marriage with a man of Greek extraction. doomed Billie Holiday. There are telling by a trusted adult — each occurrence is a She is immersed in the American myth of portraits of Malcolm X and Martin Luther wound. Yet in the tradition of the sur­ a woman’s goal — a nice man to take care King. Maya moves from the awful days of vivors, Marguerite develops the inner of her. Her lessons are painfully learned. rabid racism through the terrible/wonder- strength apparently inherited by her fore­ Then she embarks on a fantastic journey ful civil rights movement, and she takes mothers, and each wound becomes a — she joins the cast of Porgy and Bess us with her. In this journey through time source of strength and self-knowledge. and tours Europe. She emerges with a she is both unique individual and voice of Each subsequent autobiography con­ deeper self-knowledge, a wider vision of the collective Us. tinues the theme of developing aware­ the world, and a start toward becoming a Although these autobiographies have ness. In Gather Together in My N am e,3 successful artist. the sound of casual storytelling, actually Maya leaves her mother’s house, along The Heart of a Woman 5 begins in they are carefully crafted. Maya Angelou with her young son, determined to prove 1957, in the days of the Civil Rights uses the techniques of fiction. Her her worth. With her way of handling life movement. Maya sees herself and Black characters are vivid. Her relationships with courage and even daring, Maya America in the context of America. She with her family are as ambivalent and becomes a cook, a madame, a dancer, and believes in integration: She and twleve- complex as such relationships always are. a prostitute (to help a perfidious man year-old Guy live for awhile in a commune Her mother Vivian Baxter, her grand­ whom she loves). She has two serious, with white people. When she comes out mothers, her beloved and troubled unhappy love affairs, for which she sheds of the commune, she rents a house in a brother Bailey, her son Guy, and the lonely tears. Her beloved brother Bailey white neighborhood; for awhile she lives various characters whom she meets marries, but his wife dies, and he begins remote from Blacks. along the way are real because she makes his road downward, a road which even­ Later, she moves to New York, where them so and because they resemble tually leads to prison.