Gems from Maya Angelou’s LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER
Of course, Maya Angelou has no daughter, only a son. That fact may be why this readable collection of short essays is so honest and original. Most of them are rooted in some incident in Angelou’s colorful life. Often the incident is an embarrassing mistake, as when at a chic party in Senegal she mistook a fancy tablecloth for a rug and carelessly walked on it. She describes these incidents with sparkling prose and draws lessons from them. The lessons never descend into the kinds of platitudes parents tell their kids.
Angelou, whose life spanned from 1928 to 2014, began with poverty and divorced parents. She became a mother at an early age, beaten by a lover, bounced around several cities, worked odd jobs, eventually gravitated to the arts where she was a singer, actress, poet, writer and eventually teacher. Maya Angelou traveled widely and assembled a designer collection of close friends including Jessica Mitford and Coretta Scott King. Maya Angelou reached the zenith of her public life when she read a poem at Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
Letter to My Daughter is readable in one or two sittings if the reader doesn’t reflect on the poetry with the leisure that it deserves. The prose has just a touch of elegance with no hint of ostentation.
Below are some of Letter to My Daughter’s wisest sentences that stand on their own as aphorisms.
Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.
The South, in general…had hundreds of years experience in demoting even large adult blacks to psychological dwarfs. Poor white children had the license to address lauded and older Blacks by their first names or by any names they could create.
I learned that I could be a giver by simply bringing a smile to another person.
Let’s tell the truth to people. When people ask, “How are you,” have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know however, that people will start avoiding you because they too have knees that pain them and heads which hurt and they don’t want to know about yours. But think of it this way, if people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.
Most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old…but generally our real selves, the children inside are still innocent and shy as magnolias.
I know I loved my son and I know I was blessed that I was not in love with him, that I would not smother him by trying to be too close, and at the same time I would love him and raise him to be free and manly and as happy as possible.
I learned that a friend might be waiting behind a stranger’s face.
All great artists draw from the same resource the human heart, which tells us all that we are more alike than we are unalike.
Every citizen wants to stand on the world stage and represent a noble country where the mighty do not always crush the weak and the dream of a democracy is not the sole possession of the strong.
In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, no lessons.
The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity.
I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense whenever and wherever needed
Divorce like any other rite of passage introduces new landscapes, new rhythms, new faces and places, and sometimes races.
Within three months of [starting] teaching, I had an enormous revelation; I realized I was not a writer who teaches, but a teacher who writes.
Courage is the most important of all virtues.
Blithering ignorance can be found wherever you choose to live.
For the past four decades our national spirit and national joy have ebbed. Our national expectations have diminished. Our hope for the future has waned to such a degree that we risk neers and snorts of derision when we confess that we are hoping for bright tomorrows.
African adage: “The trouble for the thief is not how to steal the chief’s bugle, but where to play it.”
I know that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything.
I’m startled or at least taken aback when people walk up to me and without being questioned inform me that they are Christians. My first response is the question, “Already?” It seems to me that becoming a Christian is a life long endeavor.
