Lessons from Maya Angelou's last Memoir: Mom and Me

Maya Angelou, was born in 1928, in St. Louis Missouri, and raised in Stamps Arkansas by her grandmother, after her parents dissolved their relationship. The name, Maya Angelou, was a consolidation of her childhood nickname and a shortened form of her married name. Maya Angelou not only scripted her name, she scripted a successful life as a multi-talented, dancer, performer, director and world famous author.

During the course of Maya Angelou’s self-made life, she became a civil rights activist and close friend of Martin Luther King, and James Baldwin, all during the early 1960’s; later  becoming a friend-mentor to one of the greatest personages of our century, Oprah Winfrey.

The autobiographical memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird sings, was the first of many memoirs. Mom and Me was the last. The story of the relationship forged between the two powerhouse women, Maya Angelou and her mother Vivian Baxter, covers several decades, from the racially segregated and tumultuous years in The South, to the California years spent with her mother as a young teenager.

The power of Maya Angelou’s mother’s influence upon her life journey was not completely realized by the author until after her mother’s death. As is the case with most of us, it is only after the years of life experience that our personal introspection can match our external analysis of the world we inhabit; therefore, Mom and Me was written as the last autobiographical book of the great author.

It is through the pages of Mom and Me that we discover the subtleties of life created by the strain between the dominant white culture and black subculture that fueled the strong determination to not only merely survive , but thrive, by Vivian Baxter. In a short excerpt of Mom and Me, Maya Angelou’s mother encouraged her to persevere when faced with rejection based on race, and when Maya succeeded in becoming the first female and first black person to secure the job, Maya’s mother asked her what she had learned by her unrelenting determination:

Angelou gave the simple answer which was that she learned she was not afraid to work, and that was “about all”, at which her mother corrected her by pointing out the deeper lesson.

“No, you learned that you have power”. 

 The awareness of personal power was perhaps one of the greatest gifts bestowed upon Angelou by her mother. The acutely attuned sense of self-perception, and the strong inner drive that was forged by Angelou’s mother and grandmother, was transferred to Angelou during her formative years. The strength, resilience, fearlessness, and courage of Maya Angelou became the trademark character traits that defined her as a public figure, and served her for a lifetime. It was Angelou’s mother, Vivian who moved her to think ‘large thoughts’ and to dream big. Without Vivian, there would not have been a Maya.

In order to fully appreciate the journey of Maya Angelou, you must read Mom and Me, because it is more than the last memoir of Maya Angelou, it is a window into the development of a cultural phenomenon. The ultimate lesson is the positive force of parent upon child is never to be underestimated.

Oprah Winfrey: Lessons from The Butler

Once in a while, the world experiences a persona so powerful and utterly refreshing and inspiring, the  whole world falls in love with that person; sometimes, but not often, that person becomes an international symbol of humanitarianism and good will. The rarity of encountering such person in a single lifetime makes such a unique person stand out in your mind like a beacon.

In the year 1954, while right smack in the middle of rising racial tension and imminent social change, Oprah Winfrey was born  to a poor family in one of the poorest states of the union: Mississippi. When you consider Oprah’s beginnings, the odds of Oprah becoming Oprah, seems unfathomable: Born into poverty as the child of a single mother who worked as a housemaid, with the likely possibility of achieving anything great in her future appearing to be a far off shadow in the night.

I won’t trouble you to read the ending to this story since the world already knows Oprah and what she has become in life; what I will draw attention to, is the fact that Oprah is probably the most powerful woman in the world, Black or White, or of any other race. Oprah could easily forget her roots and her lowly beginnings and saunter off into her glamorous future and leave her past behind-but she didn’t. I greatly admire that fact that Oprah is still a Black woman, and obviously very proud of it; and Oprah remembers her past, and is also very proud of it.

I read the September, 2013 issue of Oprah magazine (the one with Oprah wearing a HUGE afro), and the article about Oprah’s role in the new movie, The Butler, had a paragraph from Oprah that moved me to tears. In this paragraph, Oprah recounted what the historical significance of The Butler meant to her personally. In essence, Oprah said she found herself thinking a lot about the history behind the movie and the many people that were affected by this history, including herself, the offspring of  three generations of housemaids because “That was all they could be”(Oprah). The choices that are held before all of us today, for both our sons and daughters, are much better choices than those that existed during the early days of ‘The Butler’ in his real life. But what must not be forgotten is the fact that butlers and maids, and the many other hard working Americans from the past, are the ones who paved the way for those choices we have today. We owe much of our hope to the future to those who lived in the past.

The need to recognize our pasts and where we come from is important because “If you don’t know where you came from, how do you know where to go?” (Oprah, 2013)

Sara Niles  Author of Torn From the Inside Out