Maya Angelou: "Mom & Me & Mom" & Maya Angelou, Poet, Activist And Singular Storyteller, Dies At 86 & 'Fresh Air' Remembers Poet And Memoirist Maya Angelou & Maya Angelou Reads 'Still I Rise' 8MAI13 & 28MAI14

BLOCK: Five days ago, Angelou tweeted one last time. She wrote, listen to yourself, and in that quietude, you might hear the voice of God. (From NPR, Maya Angelou Reads 'Still I Rise' full post below)

Dr. Maya Angelou attends her 82nd birthday at a party with friends and family at her home on May 20, 2010 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

MAYA ANGELOU died yesterday, 28 MAY 14 and we have lost a beautiful and great voice of and for the people, faith, compassion and love of life. She was and forever will be an amazing woman, and will be missed, but for those who believe, we shall meet again. Godspeed Maya Angelou, and thank you for all you have been for us. Here is an interview from the +Diane Rehm Show on 8 MAY 13 (click to listen to the interview) , followed by other tributes to and stories from +NPR programs about Maya Angelou.

Maya Angelou: "Mom & Me & Mom"

Transcript for: 

Maya Angelou: "Mom & Me & Mom"

MS. DIANE REHM

11:06:56

Thanks for joining us. I'm Diane Rehm. When Maya Angelou was three, she was sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. At 13, Angelou returned to live with her mother in California. Now, in a new memoir, acclaimed poet and author, Maya Angelou, writes for the first time about this pivotal time in her life, how she overcame feelings of abandonment and the strength she drew from her mother's steadfast love.

MS. DIANE REHM

11:07:30

Her book is titled "Mom & Me & Mom." And Maya Angelou joins me. You are always welcome to be part of the conversation, give us a call, 800-433-8850. Send us an email to drshow@wamu.org, follow us on Facebook or send us a tweet. Good morning to you and welcome.

MS. MAYA ANGELOU

11:07:59

Good morning to you and welcome.

REHM

11:08:02

Oh Maya, so glad to hear your voice. I hope you are well.

ANGELOU

11:08:09

I am well and I hope the same for you. I love you.

REHM

11:08:12

Thank you. I love you too. And, you know, I was most interested in your title, "Mom & Me & Mom." Tell me what you want to convey with that title.

ANGELOU

11:08:30

Yes, I wanted to say first there was mom and what she endured and then when I joined her, what for a brief second, a brief few years, what I felt. And then again, it was mom and how she grew herself, how she herself not only endured but strengthened so that when I did ask her, my brother and I asked her -- I was 13, my brother 15 and I really disliked the fact that she had abandoned us.

ANGELOU

11:09:12

And I couldn't get close to her. And my brother asked her, Why did you leave us so long? Why did you not come and get us? She said, Because I wasn't ready. I had no capability of being a mother of a small child. She said at one time, I was three, and I had asked her for something and she didn't give it to me and so I slapped her on the leg.

ANGELOU

11:09:40

She said without thinking she backhanded me off the porch into the dirt. And she said when she saw me scrambling around the dirt, knowing that she had knocked me out there that she said, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to be a mother. And she was absolutely right. And, Diane, although it was painful, it was angst and (word?) and just terrible feelings of loneliness and aloneness, I realized she did the best thing for me.

ANGELOU

11:10:14

Because when I went to my grandmother, my grandmother was a devout Christian and she spoke quietly and she was a very tall woman. Even when she died she was over six foot, very tall woman and very quiet. We couldn't say hot dog because she said that was a way of saying, of cursing.

ANGELOU

11:10:38

We couldn't say "by the way" because she said Jesus was the way of the truth and the light. And so if we said, "by the way," we were saying by Jesus and she wouldn't have cursing in her house.

REHM

11:10:50

I see.

ANGELOU

11:10:50

All that. But she was also so kind and although I stayed with her for 10 years, she never once kissed me, but she was so proud of me. She would have visitors over and she'd tell me to take my shirt off and show my arms and she'd say, Now look at these, look at these. Have you ever seen an arm straighter than this, straight as a plank and brown as peanut butter?

REHM

11:11:19

So clearly she gave you the support, the love, even though physically she did not show that kind of caring, you knew it was there. The question I have for you, though, why did you decide to write about your mother now after all these years?

ANGELOU

11:11:45

Yes, thank you. I wanted to write about her about 20 years ago, but the book wasn't ready. And I suppose I wasn't ready. I hadn't learned enough. I didn't know that love was healing. I didn't understand that and I think I was still wrapped in an erroneous belief that love had something to do with sentimentality and mush and romance.

ANGELOU

11:12:17

And after years I found, I see, that was love. As strange as it may seem, that was love. It was love which allowed her to send her children away because she wasn't ready for children. There are some people I've found who can be great parents of small children. They put beautiful little bows in their hair and put bowties on the little boys and they're amused by the quaint and curious things that they say.

ANGELOU

11:12:48

My mother was nothing like that, nothing. But then there are parents who are -- who can take little children, but when the children grow up to 13 or 14, they are no longer amused by them and they say, Shut up, sit down. Don't you have some homework to do? Why don't you go over and sit down. Okay, you can go out. Yes, please. So, but there then parents like my mother who was a fabulous mother of a growing adult. She just respected me.

REHM

11:13:23

You know, it is interesting to hear you say that there are some young people who are simply not prepared to cope with young children, really young children. And if one could recognize that as your mother did, it truly is an act of love rather than, as you interpreted it at the time, an act of rejection. And I'm glad that however many years it took you to reach that point you did. Tell us about your mother. What was Vivian Baxter's bringing up?

ANGELOU

11:14:19

She was amazing. She was the oldest of six children and her father was a Trinidadian who believed that boys should be -- that the violence is a part of their lives and it's a good part. And so she, he encouraged them to fight. He said, If you get in jail for thievery or burglary I'll let you rot. But if you get in jail for fighting, I will sell your mother to go to your bail.

ANGELOU

11:14:53

And so he encouraged her, my mother, since she was the oldest of them to fight. He encouraged her to teach them how to jump on trains and how to climb trees and how to fight bullies and she had that always in her. She had an anger that was just under the surface if there.

REHM

11:15:18

So when she and your father met, how did they come together?

ANGELOU

11:15:27

Well, they were both beautiful to look at. My father was from Arkansas and had been in World War I and he was handsome as the devil. And she was very pretty and they just, I'm sure, the lust must have been palatable. They fell for each other and after a few years, they found they didn't like each other at all.

ANGELOU

11:15:51

And when they decided to separate, neither of them wanted these toddlers of three and five. So they put us on a train in California and sent us, without adult supervision, from California to a little village in Arkansas about the size of your studio and to my grandmother with just tags on our arms, which said, These children are to be delivered to Mrs. Annie Henderson in Stamps, Ark.

REHM

11:16:23

My goodness.

ANGELOU

11:16:26

And even now, 80 years later, I still wonder, did we really get that?

REHM

11:16:31

Yes, and you know, I mean, you could've gotten off at the wrong stop or somebody could've taken you off.

ANGELOU

11:16:38

Of course. But the Pullman Car porters and dining car waiters used to children, black children, traveling alone from the North, which had probably given them their parents promise back to the South, which they knew and they had little promise, but very little disappointment. And so the dining car waiters and Pullman Car porters took us off trains, put us on other trains and we actually arrived in Stamps, Ark.

REHM

11:17:11

And your grandmother was waiting for you at the station?

ANGELOU

11:17:15

Yes, she was, she was.

REHM

11:17:16

How marvelous. And you took a liking to her immediately?

ANGELOU

11:17:23

Yes, I did. I did. I trusted her and probably because she spoke so quietly and moved so really graciously and gracefully. She wore long dresses and she used to say, Sister, you know, mama don't know what she's going to do, but mama going to step out on the Word. Mama just going to step right out on the Word of God.

ANGELOU

11:17:47

And I could picture this six foot tall woman standing up in the heavens with nothing under her that was visible, just standing and moons around her shoulders and stars around her feet and just stepping out on the, so I wrote her a song. I wrote a song for her, which is sung by, I think, the Mississippi Choir, that big 100 voice choir.

ANGELOU

11:18:11

And it says, (Singing) You say to call on your name and I'm calling and you said to trust in your Word and I'm trusting. You said to lean on your arm and I'm leaning. I'm stepping out on Your Word. So that was mom.

REHM

11:18:29

How beautiful to hear your voice, Maya Angelou. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll talk about why you stopped talking at the age of 13. Stay with us.

REHM

11:20:05

And welcome back. We are blessed today to have with us Maya Angelou. She's Reynolds professor of American studies at White Forest University. My only sadness is that I am not sitting across from her here in my studio, but rather she is joining us from Winston-Salem, N.C. We're talking about her new memoir. It's titled "Mom and Me and Mom," and talks about her relationship with her mother and love and forgiveness and reconciliation. Maya, tell us why you stopped talking at age 13.

ANGELOU

11:21:04

Yes. Actually, I was with Grandmother Henderson in Stamps, Ark. from the time I was three until I was seven, whereupon my father came down and picked me and my brother up. He came from California to Stamps, got us and took us to St. Louis where my mother had returned to be with her family. I'm sure he was jealous of this beautiful woman who is now divorced and free to look around.

ANGELOU

11:21:38

And so without telling her we were arriving, he just brought us to her doorstep and rang the doorbell in St. Louis. And there we were, two -- a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. We stayed with her. She took us in and...

REHM

11:21:57

You mean, he just deposited you and left.

ANGELOU

11:22:01

Yes. Yes, sir -- yes, ma'am, without any faldera, without any preparation. So obviously he was -- it was an act, an unkind act on his part. It wasn't to give us a better life or a different life. It was to drag her. And so she did take us in and she was kind and funny. And although they spoke fast and -- neither my brother nor I could really understand those northerners up in St. Louis, but they did amuse us. And so -- and we learned to eat liverwurst and sliced bread and things we'd never even heard of.

ANGELOU

11:22:44

But then after about three months my mother's boyfriend raped me. And he told me if I spoke -- if I told it to anyone, told the name of the rapist he would kill my brother. Well, my brother was my heart. And so I wouldn't tell anyone. And then my brother said I had to tell him. So I said, if I tell you he will kill you. My brother was nine. He said, I won't let him, so I believed him. I told him. The man was put in jail for one day and night and released.

ANGELOU

11:23:20

And a few days later the police came to my mother's house and told her in front of me that the man had been found dead. And it seemed he'd been kicked to death. I thought my voice had killed him so I stopped speaking.

REHM

11:23:40

You thought your...

ANGELOU

11:23:40

I stopped speaking for six years to everyone but my brother. Somehow I knew that my love for him and his for me were too strong -- our love was too strong to allow any curse to get between us and hurt him. So my mother's people did their best, I give them. They did their best to woo me away from my mutism, but they didn't know what I knew about the power of my voice. So after a few more months they wearied of the presence of this sullen silent child so they sent us back to mama in Stamps, Ark.

REHM

11:24:23

To your grandmother.

ANGELOU

11:24:24

To my grandmother who I adored. And mama would say -- she'd braid my hair the way old black ladies still braid girls' hair. The girl sits on the floor on a pillow and the mama sits in a chair. And she just takes a brush and brushes this mass of curls. So my hair was very thick and very curly. So mama would braid my hair and she'd bend her hand -- the left hand around and put it behind my neck so she wouldn't break my neck by accident. And she'd say, now sister, sister, mama don't care what these people say about you must be a moron and you must be an idiot because you can't talk. Sister, mama don't care.

ANGELOU

11:25:10

Mama know when you and the good Lord get ready, sister, you're going to become a teacher. You're going to teach all over this world. And, Diane Rehm, I used to sit there and think, this poor ignorant woman. Doesn't she know I will never speak? And now I have talked at the Habima Theater in Israel and in Tel Aviv and journalist in Egypt and translator and (word?) in Yugoslavia. I teach in Spanish and French.

REHM

11:25:42

Your grandmother was so right.

ANGELOU

11:25:43

My grandmother, so wise. She was the daughter of a former slave. How did this woman know so much? She was just wise. She was wisdom itself.

REHM

11:25:57

And, Maya, what was it that finally broke your silence?

ANGELOU

11:26:04

Well, it was poetry really. There was a woman in our town, a black lady who took me to the black school. She knew I wasn't going to talk but she said, I want you to read every book in this library. So I read every book. I didn't know what I was reading most of the time but I read. And I found I loved poetry. I could almost hear it. And I would write it down. And finally one day -- I was about 12 -- and she invited me to her house. And she used to read to me. And I went back, she said, you know something, Maya? You don't love poetry

ANGELOU

11:26:43

So I had a little tablet my grandmother had given me. I wrote, yes, ma'am and tried to give her the tablet. She said, no, no, you don't love poetry. You will never love it until you speak it, feel it come across your tongue, over your lips. You'll never love poetry. I ran from her, I ran out of her house. She followed me. She harassed me for months. And finally I went under the house, under my grandmother's store which was built on stilts. And the dirt under the store was soft like powder because of chickens.

ANGELOU

11:27:18

And I went under the house with Bailey and I realized I had left my voice. My voice had not left me. And I started speaking. I admit slowly at first. I didn't trust it at first. At 13 we were sent back to -- my grandmother took us back to California because Bailey was by that time 15. And my grandmother was afraid that a 15-year-old, a teenage boy growing up in the south, if he looked at a white girl and whistled he could be lynched.

REHM

11:28:01

Indeed.

ANGELOU

11:28:02

Indeed. So she took us back. And slowly, slowly I learned to talk again. And I learned to trust my mother. At first I couldn't stand her. She laughed all the time. She wore lipstick, real red lipstick and high heel shoes. And she did the time stepping, danced in the kitchen and danced in the living room and had record players all the time.

REHM

11:28:31

But you know there was one really significant moment. When your mother saw you she said, Maya, Margarite, my baby. And she kissed you.

ANGELOU

11:28:50

Yes. I'd never been called anybody's baby. I'd never been called anybody's daughter. And she told me, she said, I want you to smile. Smile for me. And I couldn't. And she made faces. She put her fingers in her mouth and pulled her lips across and crossed her eyes. And finally I did laugh. I laughed at her and she started to cry. She said, you have a beautiful smile. Mother's baby has a beautiful smile. And she went around the house telling people, you should see my baby's smile.

REHM

11:29:28

Now, Vivian Baxter ran a gambling business and a rooming house with her husband, Daddy Clidell. And she was also a registered nurse.

ANGELOU

11:29:44

Yes.

REHM

11:29:45

She became the first black woman officer in the Merchant Marines.

ANGELOU

11:29:51

That's true.

REHM

11:29:52

So you had to have understood her power in that situation. She also owned a gun.

ANGELOU

11:30:06

Yes, she did, at least one.

REHM

11:30:07

So you grew up with guns around you. What's your feeling about guns now?

ANGELOU

11:30:14

Well, I still feel that a woman alone in a house alone needs some sort of protection, and especially as people are -- they're doing house interventions and house break-ins and taking such advantage. Look at the three women we're just finding just in the last few days.

REHM

11:30:35

Unbelievable.

ANGELOU

11:30:36

Unbelievable. I think a woman -- for me if somebody wants to come into my house unwelcomed, uninvited, I'd say to the person, I have not bothered you. I do my best for everybody, black or white, fat or thin. I do my best to do the kind thing. And you're going to come in my house and take advantage of me? I hope not. For your sake, don't do it, please. No. Because by the time I call 911 and get some help out there I can be already hurt. And I will not do it. I will not take that chance.

REHM

11:31:19

I understand. You chose to address your mother as Lady and not Mom. How come?

ANGELOU

11:31:30

Yes. Well, she didn't seem like a mother to me. Mother was my grandmother. And mothers spoke softly and mothers were gentle I thought. And Vivian Baxter was so pretty and so quick. And she sang rough songs and -- I mean, rough blues, you know, with some...

REHM

11:31:55

Sure.

ANGELOU

11:31:56

...lyrics that even made me blush at 13 and 14. A lot of white people don't know black people blush. We blush just like anyone else except that the complexion hides the color change of the red, the blood rushing to the cheeks and to the neck. But she should sing these songs and dance. And Bailey would laugh but I didn't think it was funny. I didn't think a mother should do that.

ANGELOU

11:32:27

So she said to me after I wouldn't call her mother, she said, you're going to have to address me as something. What would you like to call me? And I said, Lady. And Lady -- she asked why. I said, because you're very pretty. You don't look like a mother. And she said, all right.

REHM

11:32:44

But eventually you did begin calling her mom.

ANGELOU

11:32:50

That's true, that's true.

REHM

11:32:52

That must have meant that she had somehow won you over.

ANGELOU

11:32:58

She won me over. She won me over. Diane, she was kind. She was kind to everybody. The poorer the person, the kinder she was. And she never laughed at people, at their infirmities. She -- when the person was in her presence she was kind. When the person left, she didn't then make her face into a kind of scowl, then laugh. She really felt sympathy and empathy for people.

REHM

11:33:30

And you're listening to "The Diane Rehm Show." How about your brother Bailey? How did he see your mother? How did he experience being back at home with her?

ANGELOU

11:33:48

Not positively. He loved her so. I think he was in love with her. And he just couldn't stand that she was loved by my stepfather. And also he was jealous and thought that other men wanted her. They may have but he was jealous. And before -- my brother had -- we stayed in Arkansas, my brother would have probably gone to the Howard University on Fisk and become a lawyer. We went to California and by the time he was 19 he was in drugs.

REHM

11:34:32

And no one could do anything about it?

ANGELOU

11:34:36

No.

REHM

11:34:37

Oh, Maya. How long did that go on?

ANGELOU

11:34:42

Well, almost all his life. He fought drugs and I fought drugs with him. I used to go to houses where they sold drugs and -- shoot-up houses. And I would just go in and say, I'm here for my brother. I'm here to get my brother. And all the druggers understood and I would get Bailey and take him outside. And sometimes we'd sit...

REHM

11:35:11

Why do you think you were not tempted?

ANGELOU

11:35:18

Honestly, Diane Rehm, I never know. I can just say it was the prayers of my grandmother. And just -- I have no idea. I just know every day when I awaken I thank God for it. I am just so blessed beyond the talking of it. I just saw in today's news that there are five celebrities from around the United States were listed. And five of them -- there was -- the top was Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Denzel Washington. And the fourth person I don't remember, but the fifth person is Maya Angelou. It's amazing. And I have 4 million people on the Facebook list. It's amazing.

REHM

11:36:14

It's amazing.

ANGELOU

11:36:14

I'm just blessed beyond the telling of it.

REHM

11:36:16

Indeed, indeed.

ANGELOU

11:36:18

And I'm grateful.

REHM

11:36:20

And tell us what happened to your brother.

ANGELOU

11:36:26

Well, finally I was -- I moved to North Carolina and I was able to bring him here. And he died here in Winston-Salem, N.C.

REHM

11:36:39

How old was he?

ANGELOU

11:36:42

He was 70 -- about 75.

REHM

11:36:46

And by then had he finally rid himself o the drug habit?

ANGELOU

11:36:53

The drug habit pursued him even here where I'm -- I live here and I'm known here, my church is here and my school is here. Even here people could still get to him. And his daughter lives here. And somehow they were able to avoid -- I mean, elude both of us and get to him. And my niece said she knew -- of course she had worked with drug services in San Francisco at Clyde Memorial Hospital -- I mean, the church. And he had worked with him. She knew when he was on.

REHM

11:37:34

Maya Angelou. Her new memoir is titled "Mom and Me and Mom."

REHM

11:40:05

And if you've just joined us author writer Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University, Maya Angelou is with me. We're talking about her latest memoir, "Mom & Me & Mom." And before we open the phones, Maya, I want to ask you about why you almost left your mother's home at age 15.

ANGELOU

11:40:48

Well, I thought at first at 15 I was just coming around to liking her and accepting her. And I went out one night with some kids and we went way across town. And I wasn't supposed to go anywhere without Bailey, but I'd gotten caught up in the group and I found myself way across town without car fare. And so a group of us walked home from the Spanish areas, Spanish-speaking area to the Fillmore (sp?). And when I walked in it was 2:00 o'clock in the morning.

REHM

11:41:29

Ooh.

ANGELOU

11:41:29

I put my key in the door and my mother -- and the door pushed back the other way to me. And my mother stepped out on the -- on the platform, the first step of it and she hit me. She had a bunch of keys in her hand and she hit me in the face with her fist. And I screamed and she pulled me inside and said the whores were in bed and my 15-year-old daughter's walking the street. And she was screaming at the top of her voice. And my stepfather and other people came out what's the matter, what's the matter. And my brother came downstairs and he said let's go. He heard all that and he saw me crying and he said let's go, let's go upstairs.

ANGELOU

11:42:14

And he took me by the hand and took me to my room and said now wash your face and here's this and here's that. And he said I'll figure out what we're going to do. So about three hours later I'd stopped crying and I looked in the mirror and my face had swollen and my teeth, it was just terrible. And my brother brought a suitcase in -- a bag in -- and said put two skirts and two under slips and two of this in there and let's go. And I said where are we going? He said I don't know, but we're leaving this house. We walked down the steps and my mother saw us and she says and where the hell do you think you're going. And Bailey said anywhere but here.

ANGELOU

11:42:58

And she looked up and saw me and saw my face swollen, my eyes blue and black and she said oh, please, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And Bailey said nobody beats up my baby sister. Now you have to picture this, too, Bailey -- I was -- at 15, I was six foot. At 17 he was five foot four and a half.

ANGELOU

11:43:19

And so my mother said, please come into the kitchen, please, please, please. Let me explain something. So we did. We followed her to the kitchen and she took a tea towel off the rack and put it on the floor. She asked us to sit on the chairs and she knelt down on the floor and prayed to God for forgiveness.

REHM

11:43:44

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:43:44

And then she prayed to me. And she said everybody had gone to bed and she was knocking at the house and had about 20 keys on this ring. And she'd passed my door and the door was open. And I wasn't in there. And she began to wonder what on earth and where -- had somebody taken advantage of me. And as she walked down the steps I'd put the key in the door and I was smiling. And she exploded. She said please, I beg you, I beg you. And I thought about leaving her. And I thought she loves me. It's not that she hit me because she loved me. She loved me and she's sorry that she hit me. And I understood that then.

ANGELOU

11:44:37

Two years later when I had a baby and I told her I was leaving, my baby was two years -- two months old. I said I'm leaving your house. And she had live in help and all of that. She said you're leaving. I said, yes, I found a room and with cooking privilege down the hall. The landlady will be the babysitter. And I found a job. She said all right, remember this. You already have been raised. You know the difference between right and wrong, do right. That's all. And there's this thing to never forget. You can always come home.

REHM

11:45:12

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:45:12

And at that moment I was flushed with love for her and it has never decreased from that moment on.

REHM

11:45:21

So that was truly a turning point in your relationship.

ANGELOU

11:45:25

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

REHM

11:45:28

All right. We have many, many callers. I want to open the phones now. Let's go first to St. Louis, Mo., good morning, Lauren, you're on the air.

LAURA

11:45:43

Good morning.

ANGELOU

11:45:44

Good morning.

LAURA

11:45:46

First of all, Maya Angelou, I can't believe I'm talking to you. I've loved you since I was a 10-year-old little girl in St. Louis and you are what made me love poetry.

ANGELOU

11:45:56

Thank you so much.

LAURA

11:45:58

You're welcome. My question is just about your advice for forgiveness. You describe these terribly hard things from your childhood, but you're able to forgive in such a beautiful poetic way really. What would you advise for other people?

ANGELOU

11:46:17

Well, one of the things that, Ms. Laura, is I've changed that word to make it two words and turn it around to give for. So if I have someone who has embarrassed me or broken a promise to me or betrayed me or in any way hurt my feelings I will find something, a bag of potatoes, a bag of onions and a roast and give it to a needy family. And I say I'm giving this for Joe who hurt my feelings. And somehow I'm free. I'm not carrying Joe around on my back. I'm not tugging him along everywhere I go. He's not making me look old and tired and weird. I'm free of him. I have given for him. I don't where I got that, but that's what I do.

REHM

11:47:11

Great advice. Here is a message posted on Facebook from R.C. It says, "One of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou is 'there is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.'"

ANGELOU

11:47:35

That's right.

REHM

11:47:36

"In today's fast paced world many of us have become human doings instead of human beings. So many Americans are consumed with consumption. Many are adrenaline junkies. Many hyper focused on achievement and approval yet many of us miss the simple, yet profound experience of just being lovingly present with our fellow human beings on this great earth."

ANGELOU

11:48:16

What a statement. What a --thank you so much for saying that.

REHM

11:48:20

Isn't that beautiful?

ANGELOU

11:48:20

I believe in everything you've said.

REHM

11:48:22

Absolutely. Let's go to Las Cruces, N.M., Alena, you're on the air.

ALENA

11:48:29

Yes, hi, good morning. I just wanted to thank Ms. Angelou for being who she is and putting forth poetry which has given me, you know, writing skills and sentiments and feelings that we can all have, that we all dig deep to put on paper. And then you are a definite star in our writing club.

ANGELOU

11:48:58

Thank you.

ALENA

11:48:58

And we just want to say that when we hear your name we always cheer.

REHM

11:49:02

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:49:03

Thank you so much. Thank you.

REHM

11:49:05

You can hear those cheers from Las Cruces, New Mexico, Maya. Maya, talk about Mark, who he was and how your mother saved you from him.

ANGELOU

11:49:21

Yes. Well, he was a wonderful looking man. If wishes were horses...

REHM

11:49:31

Mmm.

ANGELOU

11:49:31

Yes, he was incredible looking and he was very kind at first, very generous. And then one night I left a movie house and he picked me up and drove me out to an area outside of San Francisco called Half Moon Bay. He said to get out of the car. It was very romantic. It was over a cliff looking right out at the bay. It was beautiful. So I got out of the car and he came around and hit me.

REHM

11:50:00

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:50:00

And really beat me. And sometimes I'd be unconscious and I'd wake up and he'd have me standing against the -- a wall of the cliff.

REHM

11:50:13

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:50:13

And hit -- he finally put me in the back of his car and drove to Betty Lou's Chicken Shack, which was a restaurant in downtown San Francisco in the black area. And he called some men over and said this is what you do to a -- he used the word, bitch, who has been unfaithful.

REHM

11:50:34

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:50:34

And the men went back into the Chicken Shack, into the restaurant, and told Miss Betty Lou, who was a friend of my mother, that this man, Mark, had me. And they thought I was dead in the back of his car. So Miss Betty Lou called my mother and my mother called Boyd Puchanelli (sp?), who was a bail bondman. And she said -- he said he didn't have this man. He didn't have any name for him, but he'd find him. So my mother called the police and all that.

ANGELOU

11:51:09

And the man took me to his room in a rooming house. And he -- I remember once awaking and he had a razorblade, a single edge razorblade. He'd put it to his throat. He said I should kill myself. I've treated you so badly. And then he said, no, I'll kill you. And he put the razor to my throat and he said because I can't leave you here for somebody else to have. He was mad, of course. I went to sleep. I couldn't sit up. I'd only found later that my ribs had been broken. He said I'm going to get you some pineapple juice. You like juice? He said I'm going to the store. I'm going to get it. And then I'm going to nurse you back to health. Don't worry. He left the room and I couldn't even get up off the pillow.

REHM

11:52:10

Oh, oh.

ANGELOU

11:52:11

And I prayed please let something happen or take my life. Don't let him take it. A little while -- I don't know how much later I heard a (makes noise) down the hall screaming and people kicking doors and my mother's voice saying break it down. Break the S.O.B. down. And two huge men that she'd gotten from her pool hall broken down the door of this man's room, of Mark's room, and my mother stepped in and she fainted when she saw me.

REHM

11:52:44

Oh.

ANGELOU

11:52:45

She said it was the only time in her life she'd ever fainted, but I was just really, really beaten up.

REHM

11:52:53

How long did it take you to heal?

ANGELOU

11:52:57

I guess about three or four months.

REHM

11:53:00

Oh my.

ANGELOU

11:53:00

It was terrible.

REHM

11:53:02

And you're...

ANGELOU

11:53:03

But...

REHM

11:53:03

And you're listening to "The Diane Rehm Show." You know when I hear you talk about all these experiences in your life, the rape as a young girl, the loss of your mother, the regaining of her, the kind of treatment you've had at the hands of some people. One has to wonder whether the blessings of your grandmother were so deep inside you that you simply knew you would survive.

ANGELOU

11:53:50

Yes. I wanted to say something away from my own situation in this book. I like you so much, Diane Rehm, and so do your -- so does your audience. And I have a feeling all the time that you and I are best friends.

REHM

11:54:06

Hmm.

ANGELOU

11:54:06

And I know that if we lived near each other, at least, we'd see each other once a month, have a cup of coffee, a glass of wine or something together. I think that you are --you are the kind of best friend everybody would like to have. You're honest, you're direct and you're not brutal. Some people think in order to -- they say I'm brutally frank. That's stupid. You don't have to be brutal about anything. And that's what you're -- you're frank, you're direct and you're also kind. And I like you very much.

REHM

11:54:41

Maya, such lovely words coming from you. I shall treasure them forever.

ANGELOU

11:54:49

Thank you.

REHM

11:54:50

Let's go to Englewood, Fla., Vidayo, you're on the air.

VIDAYO

11:54:55

Well, good afternoon, oh, good morning, almost afternoon.

ANGELOU

11:54:59

Good morning.

VIDAYO

11:55:00

And I would like to say that I just -- what you said, Ms. Angelou, is that I do believe this is a great show. And, Diane, a woman like yourself, Ms. Angelou, Oprah, I think you're all kindred spirits and it's a wonderful thing. It's wonderful. And this is the reason I'm calling. I've been enlightened by many writers and also some of this, if you will, the insightful awareness books that are out there.

VIDAYO

11:55:29

My question I would really love to get your opinion on this, Ms. Angelou, is I have -- I was -- I feel truly, you know, betrayed in a true loving relationship of, you know, many years, 20 years, and bottom line I don't need to consider that, you know, the specifics, but when you forgive someone --okay, I've moved on. It's been, you know, it's been over five years, but the hurt, you know, occasionally comes and haunts you when the specter is there.

VIDAYO

11:55:58

But my thing is when I do understand letting go and I have moved on, there are still people who say, well, you know, you should be able to see this person in public. And my question is when someone has really betrayed you, hurt you, whatever, whatever, they're very severe. And you have moved on and you have realized, well, that was that and this is now.

REHM

11:56:20

All right.

VIDAYO

11:56:21

Do you still need to see the -- do you -- I mean, is it -- I mean, are you wrong to say but I just don't need to be a part of that person or their situation here.

ANGELOU

11:56:33

Thank you for the question. It's one that which it troubles me sometimes, but I also know that just as I have asked God to forgive me, I do forgive people. At the same time God has given me intelligence. I don't -- I know now that fire burns. Okie dokie. I have learned that. I don't have to put my hand in fire anymore. I don't have to explain myself to the brute why I don't want to be in his or her company. People tell you they are. Once they tell you believe them. They know themselves better than you do. So, okay, you're this kind of person. You're a betrayer, all right, I see that. I forgive you for the action you did to me because I've given for you. I'm finished with that, but I'm not going to put myself in the arena again.

REHM

11:57:27

Maya.

ANGELOU

11:57:28

No, I won't do that. I've got good sense.

REHM

11:57:31

Maya Angelou, Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Her new memoir, "Mom & Me & Mom." I love you, Maya.

ANGELOU

11:57:49

I love you, Diane Rehm.

REHM

11:57:50

Thank you.

ANGELOU

11:57:51

And I look forward to seeing you and talking to you again and again.

Maya Angelou, Poet, Activist And Singular Storyteller, Dies At 86

by Lynn Neary

May 28, 2014 9:41 AM ET

LISTEN to the story 

Poet, performer and political activist Maya Angelou has died after a long illness at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C. She was 86. Born in St. Louis in 1928, Angelou grew up in a segregated society that she worked to change during the civil rights era. Angelou, who refused to speak for much of her childhood, revealed the scars of her past in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of a series of memoirs.
Growing up in St. Louis, Mo., and Stamps, Ark., she was Marguerite Johnson. It was her brother who first called her Maya, and the name stuck. Later she added the Angelou, a version of her first husband's name.
Angelou left a troubled childhood and the segregated world of Arkansas behind and began a career as a dancer and singer. She toured Europe in the1950s with a production of Porgy and Bess, studied dance with Martha Graham and performed with Alvin Ailey on television. In 1957 she recorded an album called "Calypso Lady."
"I was known as Miss Calypso, and when I'd forget the lyric, I would tell the audience, 'I seem to have forgotten the lyric. Now I will dance.' And I would move around a bit," she recalled with a laugh during a 2008 interview with NPR.
"She really believed that life was a banquet," says Patrik Henry Bass, an editor at Essence Magazine. When he read Angelou's memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, he saw parallels in his own life in a small town in North Carolina. He says everyone in the African-American community looked up to her; she was a celebrity but she was one of them. He remembers seeing her on television and hearing her speak.
"When we think of her, we often think about her books, of course, and her poems," he says. "But in the African-American community, certainly, we heard so much of her work recited, so I think about her voice. You would hear that voice, and that voice would capture a humanity, and that voice would calm you in so many ways through some of the most significant challenges."
Film director John Singleton grew up in a very different part of the country. But he remembers the effect Angelou's poem "" had on him as a kid. It begins:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
"I come from South Central Los Angeles," he says. It's "a place where we learn to puff up our chests to make ourselves bigger than we are because we have so many forces knocking us down — including some of our own. And so that poem ... it pumps me up, you know. ... It makes me feel better about myself, or at least made me feel better about myself when I was young."

Singleton used Angelou's poems in his 1993 film Poetic Justice. Angelou also had a small part in the movie. Singleton says he thinks of Angelou as a griot — a traditional African storyteller.
"We all have that one or two people in our families that just can spin a yarn, that has a whole lot to say, and holds a lot of wisdom from walking through the world and experiencing different things," he says. "And that's the way I see Dr. Maya Angelou. She was a contemporary of Martin Luther King, a contemporary of Malcolm X and Oprah Winfrey. She transcends so many different generations of African-American culture that have affected all of us."
Joanne Braxton, a professor at the College of William and Mary, says Angelou's willingness to reveal the sexual abuse she suffered as a child in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was unprecedented at the time. The critical acclaim and popularity of the book opened doors for both African-American and female writers.
"Maya Angelou brought about a paradigm shift in American literature and culture," Braxton says, "so that the works, the gifts, the talents of women writers, including women writers of color, could be brought to the foreground and appreciated. She created an audience by her stunning example."
For Braxton, the world will never be quite the same without Angelou.
"I love her," she says. "She's beloved by many, including many, many people who have never met her in person, and who will never meet her in person — but she has extended herself that way, so that her touch extends beyond her physical embrace. That is truly a gift, and we are truly blessed to have known her through her presence and her work."
Angelou once said she believed that "life loves the liver of it," and she did live it, to the fullest.

More On Maya Angelou

At 80, Maya Angelou Reflects on a 'Glorious' Life

  

In A New Memoir, Maya Angelou Recalls How A 'Lady' Became 'Mom'

  

When Parents Refused To Talk, Angelou Explained Sex — And Healing

  

Maya Angelou's Cooking Advice: Ignore The Rules

 

Maya Angelou on Wisdom, Pride and Independence

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING by Ray Charles

'Fresh Air' Remembers Poet And Memoirist Maya Angelou

May 28, 2014 2:43 PM ET

LISTEN to the interview 

(Do yourself a favor and listen to it)

 

Maya Angelou talks about the poem she wrote for President Clinton's inauguration, from her office in Winston-Salem, N.C., in September 1996.

Chuck Burton/AP

In her memoirs, Maya Angelou explored how race and gender affected her life. Her first memoir, , was published in 1969 and describes growing up in the segregated South. It includes the story of how, as a child, Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend. After the rape, she withdrew into herself and went through a long period of not speaking.
Angelou got pregnant and became a mother when she was 16 and unmarried. Her autobiographies describe how she traveled around the country with her son, Guy, earning her living as a waitress, prostitute, madam, singer, actress and writer. In the '60s, Angelou was active in the civil rights movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. as the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was the inaugural poet for Bill Clinton when he took office in 1993.
Maya Angelou died Wednesday at 86. She spoke to Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 1986.

---

Interview Highlights

On what influences her writing style
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best — when I'm at my best — of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music, are in my poetry and prose, or I've missed everything.
On how she fell in love with writing autobiographies
I thought I would be a poet and playwright. Those were the two forms I really enjoyed. I made my living as a journalist, of course, but I thought that I would just stick with those and I would become better and better and better. But in '68 ... I was at a dinner — now this is name-dropping, but these were the people — James Baldwin had taken me over to see Jules Feiffer and Jules' then-wife, Judy Feiffer, and we talked all night, and I really had to work very hard to get a word in because they're all great raconteurs.

The next day, Judy Feiffer called a man who is still my editor at Random House and said, "If you can get her to write an autobiography, I think you'd have something." He phoned me a number of times, Robert Loomis, and I said, "No, I'm not interested," until he said to me, "Well, Ms. Angelou, I guess it's just as well that you don't attempt this book because to write autobiography as literature is almost impossible." So I thought, "Oh, well, in that case, I better try." Well, I found that's the form I love. I love autobiography. ... It challenges me to try and speak through the first-person singular and mean the third-person plural.
On how she began speaking again after choosing to be mute
Mrs. Flowers, a lady in my town, a black lady, had started me to reading when I was about 8. ... I was already reading, but she started me to reading in the black school, and I read all the books in the black school library. She had some contact with the white school, and she would bring books to me and I would just eat them up.
When I was about 11 and a half, she said to me one day — I used to carry a tablet around on which I wrote answers — and she asked me, "Do you love poetry?" I wrote yes. It was a silly question from Mrs. Flowers; she knew. She told me, "You do not love poetry. You will never love it until you speak it. Until it comes across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips, you will never love poetry." And I ran out of her house. I thought: I'll never go back there again. She was trying to take my friend. ...
She would catch me and say, "You do not love poetry, not until you speak it." I'd run away and every time she'd see me she would just threaten to take my friend. Finally, I did take a book of poetry, and I went under the house and tried to speak, and could.
On her childhood love of human voices
I thought of myself as a giant ear which could just absorb all sound, and I would go into a room and just eat up the sound. I memorized so many poets. I just had sheets of poetry; still do. I would listen to the accents, and I still love the way human beings sound. There is no human voice which is unbeautiful to me. I love them, and so I'm able to learn languages, because I really love the way people talk. I would listen. I still get excited about any human being speaking or singing.

Maya Angelou Reads 'Still I Rise'

May 28, 2014 4:06 PM ET

LISTEN to Maya Angelou read Still I Rise

Author and poet Maya Angelou died Wednesday at the age of 86. In a recording, Angelou reads her poem "Still I Rise."

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And we're going to take a moment now to listen to one of Maya Angelou's best-known poems. Here she is, reading "Still I Rise."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MAYA ANGELOU: You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Just 'cause I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I rise.
Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, weakened by my soulful cries? Does my heartiness offend you? (Laughing) Don't take it awful hard just 'cause I laugh (laughing) as if I've got gold mines digging in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like life, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance as if I have diamonds at the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise. Up from a past rooted in pain, I rise. I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide. Welding and swelling, I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak, miraculously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the hope and the dream of the slave, and so I rise. I rise. I rise.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Maya Angelou reading her poem "Still I Rise." The author's gift with words was apparent, even in less than 140 characters.
BLOCK: Five days ago, Angelou tweeted one last time. She wrote, listen to yourself, and in that quietude, you might hear the voice of God.
SIEGEL: Maya Angelou died today at the age of 86.