Lessons from a Master Teacher: Dr. Maya Angelou

Lessons from a Master Teacher:

Expressions of Enduring Gratitude for the Life and Legacy of

 Dr. Maya Angelou – Part One

“A mighty tree has fallen.”  That sagacious and enduring African proverb honors the passing of an elder and griot whose physical absence resounds throughout the village. Just as the sound of a falling oak, sequoia or fir reverberates in the forest, the loss of a literary giant, Dr. Maya Angelou, deeply affects the hearts and minds of countless millions of citizens in the global village who learned from her poetry, novels and literary criticism.  Her personal pilgrimage from the brutality of rape at seven years of age through paralyzing silence to completing her earthly journey as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, further inspires nameless, average persons.  Spanning her humble origins in segregated Arkansas on 4 April 1928 and her formative years in St. Louis, Missouri to periods of residence on the continent of Africa and ending 28 May 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where she taught on the faculty of the prestigious Wake Forest University, Maya Angelou’s impressive Pan-African life, personally powerful legacy and intriguing myriad experiences connect African-American, Caribbean and native continental segments of the African Diaspora. 

Conversant with her brothers and sisters of each major component of the Diaspora, she encouraged and empowered various cultural, linguistic and ethnic strands of people of African descent to appreciate their interrelatedness and interdependence within the global community.  As griot to the Diaspora, she taught her racially monolithic yet experientially and existentially diverse community to find self-acceptance and self-love in the nuances of being a Black person.  Cosmopolitan in the genuine sense, she transcended the stark limitations of her origins; she equally resisted the comfort and familiarity of bourgeois culture in America.  Thereby, she proactively forged an identity that enabled her to speak to all neighbors in the global village.  Her seminal poem, “On the Pulse of the Morning,” delivered for the first time on the occasion of President Clinton’s First Inauguration, enduringly demonstrates her inimitable ability to translate a Pan African perspective to the world.  She challenges the nation and world to see personhood, worth, dignity and respect in each person as you greet someone with a sincere “Good morning.”  In so doing, everyone affirms and accepts himself or herself.

In many ways, Dr. Angelou was just an average person who overcame formidable obstacles.  Her fame emerged as an outcome of her steadfast spirit.  The tragedies of her formative years are far too common for many people.  She lived down a brutal rape and seven-year period of substantial silence, shame and self-blame.  She harbored untold and unspeakable guilt for the “mob justice” and wanton retribution that necessitated the murder of her rapist.  Her silence became an ironic period of compassion for her victimizer.  Had she not said anything, he would have lived longer; quite possibly, he eventually would have met a similar fate as he was bound to repeat his dastardly deed.  Her voice saved other girls!  Equally, her silence became a cocoon which defined, developed and nurtured one of the most important American, African American and woman voices in the twentieth century.

Her life teaches the definite probability of healing that awaits victims of trauma who courageously confront their fearful and foreboding experiences.  Dr. Angelou refused consistently throughout her life to be a victim.  Her period of silence prevented the petrification of her victimization.  Her story contains many powerful motivations and encouraging and empowering examples for any average person.  She became a college professor though she did not earn a doctorate degree.  She maintained her quest for love and romance despite several challenging relationships.  Using writing as a cathartic, therapeutic and healing mechanism, she became an international bestselling author.  Notwithstanding Dr. Angelou’s humble origins, she transcended provincialism in her appeal to an international audience.  She fostered inner resources and abilities to overcome the psychological wreckage and fierce adversity of her formative years.  Her acquisition of celebrity did not spoil her authenticity or contaminate her personality.  Dr. Angelou rebuffed affectations thereby remaining an average, approachable and accessible person.  Her humility and genuineness enabled her to gain the respect of younger generations.  Literary critics, scholars of literature and historians undoubtedly will study her body of work for decades to come.  Their analyses will not compare with the transformative epiphanies which average people will experience when they read her work and learn from her unique and powerful human experience.  Chief among these lessons will be her powerful example relating to conquering fear in daily living. 

Within Dr. Angelou’s stimulating and inspiring collection of writings, three works particularly empower me: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Heart of a Woman and “On the Pulse of the Morning.”  Her first installment of a five-volume autobiography contains several vivid and realistic church scenes.  Reading them mystically transports me back to the milieu of the African-American Southern church, “The Black Church,” a setting in where I was reared and for which I hold lifelong endearing reflections and heartfelt devotion.  On the first Sunday of each month, regardless of where I happen to be, I travel through the corridors of my personal history to New Zion AME Church in Wisacky, South Carolina where I brilliantly see the celebration of The Lord’s Supper.  I hear the celebrant’s rhythmic recitation of the “Second Collect” as he recounts Christ’s indescribable and illimitable sacrificial gift of His life as a propitiation for the totality of humankind’s sin.  I join in the jubilant singing of the Senior Choir adorned with white robes and red stoles.  Rather than digressing to the naiveté of my formative years, I retreat to an enduring comfort and compassion of a ritual in my childhood church where theological arguments and life’s myriad inconsistencies could not contaminate my exuberance.  As I am conversant with the Southern Black Church culture and its prophetic, accommodationist, bourgeois and rural, “country,” iterations, Angelou’s writings equate with spiritual comfort food for my soul.  They empower me to persevere despite life’s myriad mysteries, adversities and experiences.

Moreover, the caged bird sings about freedom.  He realizes that life offers more to him than confinement.  Autobiographically, Angelou employs this powerful literary motif to narrate retrospectively her heartfelt desire to surmount myopia, provincialism and paralyzing limitations in her trauma and formative years.  She rebukes the predominant orthodoxy of an atavistic view of African American segregated communities.  Chances are “the good ol’ days” were not as pleasant as enduring romanticists claim.  Black men were subject to lynch mobs whenever they spontaneously formed.  Black children were denied full educational access.  Black teachers taught with very limited resources though Black communities paid their fair share of taxes.  Nonetheless, Angelou encourages readers to let their minds, hearts and souls sing freely and openly as they serve God through concrete service to humankind.  Thereby, they actualize the unique life which their Creator graciously and generously gives.