Book Reviews, Comments & Stories, Quotes, & Poetry & More
"Connections and Why They Matter"
Most of what happens in our life will spark a connection. Life connects with what has been found in books. Books connect with what happens in life. Use the connections to help you see more clearly. A love of reading and writing is what motivated the creation of this blog. Thank you for coming to the blog.
When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African-American women who were able to discuss their personal lives publicly. According to scholar Hilton Als, up to that point, Black female writers were marginalized so they could not present themselves as central characters in the literature they wrote.
The United States Mint has begun shipping the first coins in the American Women Quarters (AWQ) Program. These circulating quarters honoring Maya Angelou are manufactured at the Mint facilities in Philadelphia and Denver. Coins featuring additional honorees will begin shipping later in 2022 and through 2025.
"Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou (April 4, 1928, to May 28, 2014), known as Maya Angelou, was an American author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, poet, and civil rights activist best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman."
She used her skills to leave people feeling different because of her writing. Her writing approach has sometimes been labeled "autobiographical fiction" because it went beyond some traditional bounds. She wrote, often speaking in the first person singular, using the word "I" when what she meant was "we.” This approach is also considered the "slave narrative tradition," it is a way to buffer a claim intended to be meant for everyone, not just the author. Like the oral tradition she followed in her poetry, her message came in the more expressive language of the street or ghetto. Her autobiographies carried a message beyond just her life, and she wanted to correct negative stereotypes of black culture.
President Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. The good news is you don’t have to be famous to leave people remembering how you made them feel. It happens whether you intend it or not. If you care about someone, they will know. If you don’t care, they will know.
Her quotes & poems were more than feel-good platitudes but hard truths you could feel.