Turning 75 this month, Maya Angelou has led many lives. She is best known as a writer, for her numerous books of poetry and her six poignant memoirs, including the masterful 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In February, she won a Grammy for the recorded reading of her most recent memoir, A Song Flung Up to Heaven. Her works have earned her more than 30 honorary degrees as well as nominations for a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy— invited to compose an inaugural poem. She is constantly on the lecture circuit and a regular guest on talk shows; she recently created a line of greeting cards for Hallmark. And there is little sign of her slowing down. But when we met recently in her art-filled home in Winston- Salem, it was her family, not her varied career, that she most wanted to discuss. Our conversation often returned to the loved ones who helped her triumph over the tragedies of her childhood and made her believe she could meet whatever challenge life threw in her path. Her grandmother Annie Henderson was one of the most important, a pious woman who ran a general store in Stamps, Arkansas. When Angelou was 8 and briefly living with Baxter in St. The man was arrested, convicted and released; soon after, he was found beaten to death. Believing she had caused the killing because she had told of the rape, Angelou refused to speak for several years; only her beloved older brother, Bailey, could coax her to talk. He remained a source of support throughout her life until his death more than a year ago. How do you see yourself? I just received a letter yesterday from the University of Milan. Aperson is doing a doctoral dissertation on my work. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. You have never been bored? How is that possible? Oh God, if I were bored, now that would interest me. I realized when I was about 20 that I would die. It frightened me so. I mean, I had heard about it, had been told and all that, but that I. Once I really came to that conclusion, I started enjoying life, and I enjoy it very much. Another occurrence took place at about the same time— maybe about a year later—and the two occurrences liberated me forever. I had two jobs. I was raising my son. We had a tiny little place to live. My mother had a 14-room house and someone to look after things. She owned a hotel, lots of diamonds. She put on silver-fox furs—this was when the head of one fox would seem to bite into the head of the other—and she would wear them with the tails in front; she would turn it around with the furs arching back. I looked down at this pretty little woman made up so perfectly, diamonds in her ears. She crossed the street to the right to get into her car. I continued across the street and waited for the streetcar. And I got onto the streetcar and I walked to the back. I shall never forget it. I remember the wooden planks of the streetcar. The way the light came through the window. Suppose I really am somebody? One of your large thoughts must have been about planning to have a diverse life and career. How do you move so easily from one thing to another? I have a theory that nobody understands talent any more than we understand electricity. I think you can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you study it, and you put reasonable intelligence and reasonable energy, reasonable electricity to it, you can do that. You may not become Max Roach on the drums. But you can learn the drums. And I say, yes, yes, when do you want it? My mom, you know, was a seaman. At one point, I was in Los Angeles. They called her the mother of the sea. Who made that rule? You ever see a person lay bricks? It is that precise, that established, that organized, that sort of development from the bottom to the top. I was an abandoned child as far as I was concerned, and Bailey also. And then I realized that she was funny and loving and that there are certainly two different kinds of parents. There is the person who can be a great parent of small children. They dress the children in these sweet little things with bows in their hair and beads on their shoestrings and nice, lovely little socks. Well, my mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God—I thank God every time I think of it—I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult. Run me a bath, please. Maybe two or three times in my life she had asked me to run her a bath. So I ran her a bath and then she invited me in the bathroom. My mother sat down in the bathtub. She took me to the hospital. My mother went in, told the nurses who she was, she washed up, they took me into the delivery room. So throughout her life she liberated me. Respected me, respected what I tried to do, believed in me. Mother knew all of them and knew all the bartenders. Let the streets know you have somewhere to go. Mutism is so addictive. You have nothing to do—just stop talking. Tell me a story. What went through your mind during the years you were mute? Oh, yes, I memorized poetry. I memorized 60 Shakespearean sonnets. I loved Edgar Allan Poe and I memorized everything I could find. And I loved Paul Laurence Dunbar—still do—so I would memorize 75 poems. It was like putting a CD on. So I believe that my brain reconstructed itself during those years. I believe that the areas in the brain which provide and promote physical speech had nothing to do. You see what I mean? I seem to be able to direct the brain; I can say, do that. I say, remember this, remember that. How did she respond? She gave me so many gifts. Confidence that I was loved. She taught me not to lie to myself or anyone else and not to boast. She taught me to admit that, to me, the emperor has no clothes. Because of her, I think, I have remained a very simple woman. What you see is all there is. I have no subterfuge. And she taught me not to complain. My grandmother had one thing that she would do for me about twice a year. Shall I tell you? And she would call me in. It makes my face crack and my shins burn. Their beds have become their cooling boards, their blankets have become their winding sheets. They would give anything for just five minutes of what she was complaining about. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then. Were you on the road when you composed it? I take a room for about a month. And I try to be in the room by 6 a. I would have had everything removed from the room, wall hangings and all that stuff. Then I come home and pretend to operate in the familiar, you know? Where does writing rank in your accomplishments? I know of no other art form that we always use. So the writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood.
