Honoring Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

This year we lost one of the most important and influential writers, poets, and essayists of African American--and American Literature. Maya Angelou passed away today in her Winston-Salem home at the age of eighty-six.

Marguerite Johnson was born in 1928, and "before she and her brother [Bailey] were old enough to start school, her parents divorced. Angelou and her brother grew up in Stamps, Arkansas," and were cared for by "their grandmother, Annie Henderson." In the autobiographical text that has been recognized as Angelou's finest, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the author recounts the events of her first seventeen years, and the methods of surviving the Jim Crow South taught to her by her benevolent and resilient grandmother. However, a traumatic event she endured at age ten drove her into a state of silence that was broken only by her love of literature (Hill). I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings could easily be located in a feminist genre, inspiring other feminist (and Womanist) writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker; however her writing transcended racial, gender, and socio-economic lines and touched readers across multiple demographics.

In the more than eight decades that Angelou lived, she produced volumes of poetry and essays, and became a formidable instrument of change in the Civil Rights Movement, acting as the northern coordinator for the SCLC, and in her cooperative associations with leaders such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Her marriage to Vus Make led her to a fuller absorption into African culture, and though the marriage did not last, extended Angelou's influence as an advocate of civil rights and liberties on a global scale (Hill).

Clearly the author's talents reached beyond the pen and page and extended to the theater, for which her talents earned her a Tony; a successful nightclub performance; and her performance as the grandmother of Kunta Kinte in the television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots earned her acclaim. Further accolades include her over thirty honorary doctorates, accomplishments in film and stage, and the lecture circuit (2). The nation recalls her recitation of "On the Pulse of Morning" at the 1993 presidential inauguration of fellow Arkansas native, Bill Clinton:

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon.The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no more hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spilling words Armed for slaughter. The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A River sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side. Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, Clad in peace and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I and the Tree and the stone were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your Brow and when you yet knew you still Knew nothing. The River sings and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing River and the wise Rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the Tree. Today, the first and last of every Tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River. Each of you, descendant of some passed On traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, you Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of Other seekers--desperate for gain, Starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ... You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am the Tree planted by the River, Which will not be moved. I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree I am yours--your Passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, the Rock, the River, the Tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then. Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, into Your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning (3). Maya Angelou's work, life, and influence have made an indelible mark upon this nation, our lives, and our literature. Works Consulted: Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary      Tradition. Patricia Liggins Hill, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 1577. "Maya Angelou." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou. 28 May 2014.           . "Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86." NewYork Times Online. 28 May 2014.

The Mother of AfroFuturism: Octavia Butler

Born in Pasadena, California in June of 1947, Octavia Estelle Butler, was raised by her mother, a maid, and her father, who shined shoes for a living. When her father passed away when Octavia was seven years old, her grandmother helped to raise her. According to one source, Butler grew up with a painful shyness that made making friends difficult, and dyslexia, which made schoolwork even more difficult. She was often the target of teasing from bullies, but she found a haven in the public library, where she pored over Science Fiction magazines like Amazing Stories and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She determined that she would write her own stories, so she begged her mother for a typewriter for the purpose (1).

photo of Butler from tansyrr.com

Recipient of two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and the first Science Fiction writer to have received a MacArthur Fellowship, Octavia Butler was the first African American woman to have traversed the largely white male-dominated genre of Science Fiction (1). Her novels such as Kindred, The Parable Series, Patternist Series, and Xenogenesis Series have been praised as biting social criticism and commentary, told in terse, economical language. Butler's work often featured strong, solitary, black female protagonists, confronted by bleak and dystopian landscapes and fates that one might at first judge "insurmountable" (2).

In Kindred the author focuses on an African American woman who travels back in time to find herself living on the antebellum plantation of her great, great grandfather. In the vein of speculative fiction, which envisions alternate histories, Butler's narrative allows the reader to experience, with great immediacy, the horrific indignity of slavery and racism through her character. It is a story she was inspired by her mother to write. Butler is quoted in the New York Times as having said that "I didn't like seeing her go through back doors...If my mother put up with all those humiliations, I wouldn't have eaten very well or lived very comfortably. So I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that place people have had to live through in order to endure (2).

Though Butler did not categorize her work generically, she has been chiefly associated with the genres of Science Fiction and Afrofuturism--the latter term introduced by Mark Dery, who defines it as "speculative fiction that treats African American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture" (1). Her themes included the necessity for community cohesiveness, the heroic lone survivor, the "remaking of the human," as well as social critique. Butler also broke traditional barriers with narrative voice, often assuming a male, or ungendered narrative role.

Believed to have suffered a stroke and fallen at her home, Octavia Butler passed away at her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington after a long period of depression and illness. Only fifty-eight when she died, she left a significant legacy for new ways of envisioning the world, of treating topics like race, gender, class, and the specific questions confronting African Americans (and African American women) in the advancing technologically-dominated age (1).