Thank you, Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou passed away last Wednesday at 86. She was one of my best friends ever, although we  never met. 

We almost did, in 1999, when, as a Ninoy Aquino Fellow of the US State Department, I listed her as one of several Americans I wanted to meet.  I was scheduled to fly from Charlotte to her home in Winston-Salem in North Carolina to meet with her when I got word that she would not be available after all, as she had to go on a sudden unscheduled trip to Paris. 

It was disappointing.  Meeting Maya Angelou would have been the high point of that month-long fellowship.  If we had met, I would have hugged her tight and thanked her for talking to me the way she did in her stories and her poems, with total candor and confidence that empowered me and other women writers to do the same.  I would have told her she was like a favorite aunt, who I felt that I could trust with my secret stories because she knew exactly where I was coming from.  She had seen it all, been there, done that, and yet, here she was — serene, generous, wise, strong and compassionate.

But perhaps, she had heard all that before from other women. I wasn’t unique. Maya Angelou spoke to all of us.

I was on a visit to the United States when my sister Patricia gave me the first of Maya’s biographical books, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It blew me away.  She wrote candidly about her childhood, her broken family, life with her grandmother, the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend which caused her to lose her ability to speak for five years. But her courage in telling her story inspired many women to speak out about theirs.

Hooked, I looked for her other books in Manila. I was surprised to find her next two in the series, Gather Together in my Name and Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting’ Merry Like Christmas in a bin for budget books in Ali Mall.  How could such a great woman writer be so unappreciated in this country? I learned more about Maya’s extraordinary life — her relationships, the disappointments and hurts, including physical pain, she endured from loving and serving others.  She wrote passionately about being a woman, and being black, about freedom, equality, and standing up for one’s beliefs. Her frankness was overwhelming.  

She was a single mother when she graduated from high school, and worked as a cook, a waitress and even as a prostitute to support her son. But she constantly reinvented herself. Introduced to the performing arts in high school, she studied modern dance and performed with Alvin Ailey, sang for her supper, acted on stage and the movies, wrote songs and screenplays. She was also a journalist and editor, she traveled, she joined the civil rights movement where she worked with Martin Luther King Jr., and she spoke her mind fearlessly.

Maya was everywhere her heart led her. She did everything she had to in order to survive and everything she wanted in order to live her life to the full.  As she shared her strengths and weaknesses, her joys, pains and the resultant insights and wisdom, those of us who followed her stories and her poetry were inspired and empowered to live our lives as fully and as well.  Maya taught us to face our challenges head-on, seize the day, roll with the punches, and, to paraphrase the song by Jerome Kern, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again.

She did it all with an inimitable style that was smart, sassy, sexy. 

I had Maya’s books lying around the house when my daughters were growing up and, I swear, they  absorbed some of her style.  Her small book of poems, Phenomenal Woman was my bedside reading.  When my older daughter Monica gave me a CD collection of Maya Angelou’s poems, I was happy to know that we have a common idol.  She named her daughter, my grandchild, Maya.

Maya Angelou was, to me a sister, fellow traveller, mentor and virtual friend. I can actually hear her crusty voice in my head. Her poem Phenomenal Woman accompanies me when I walk, confident in “the sway of my hips,” “the arch on my back,” “the smile on my lips,” “the grace of my style,” “the fire in my eyes,” “the joy in my feet,” that I am woman,” “phenomenally.” 

Who else but a friend could give me such confidence?

I was delighted to see Maya on Facebook in the last year, sharing on Twitter her news, her wisdom and deep spirituality as she aged. One of her last entries on May 24 read, “Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.” 

Maya Angelou went quietly on May 28, heeding the voice of God.

Thank you, Maya Angelou, for your life, your friendship, and your inimitable style.