9 Responses for "Are you passionate about Maya Angelou’s work? Why?"

1. Anne October 27th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

   (I got here via Tayari…) I gobbled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in high school. It was 1982 or so and Angalou’s memoir was the first of memoir of a horrific childhood that I came across on my own. Since then, I’ve come to see her more or less the way you do: I’ll acknowledge her role in literary history, but I find her maudlin.

   BUT…she is easy to read, self-confident and self-promoting and full of that very sweet, reassuring Oprah-style inspiration. It makes a lot of sense to me that many, many women who go to Borders or B&N weekly would see a new Angelou book–with the word daughter in the title no less–and pick it up.

   That’s not exactly the ringing endorsement you asked for. Maybe subsequent posters will offer that…

2. Sue October 27th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

   I think Maya Angelou is great. I doubt that I can change your mind about her work, or convince you that it is anything other than what you already believe it to be. I think that Maya represents wisdom, and that her work is moving.

   I went to a poetry reading once where this poet was just going on and on about his hatred for Maya Angelou and I was thinking, “who could possibly hate Maya Angelou? This guy is obviously jealous of her success”

   To each their own I say. Just like some friends will rave about a movie and then you go see it and wonder what the big deal was, I think it’s the same with writers. Some float our boats, and others do not. NO big deal. Just spend time ejoying the writers you actually do get.

3. Monroe Anderson October 29th, 2008 at 11:22 am

   Anika: Congratulations on saying the Empress has no literary clothes. I’ve thought what you posted for years but never got around to saying it.

4. NaySue October 30th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

   You know you’re not allowed to challenge the talent of Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison, right? There are more names to add to this list of black authors, and when I gather that information, I will get right back to you. :-P

5. anika November 2nd, 2008 at 8:30 am

   @Sue – I certainly don’t hate Angelou, I’ve just found her work not to meet my expectations. I think @Anne had it right: It’s the Oprah-style sweetness-without-substance that really turns me off. In a children’s book, that stuff is OK, but not in most things geared toward adults.

   Ha! @NaySue. Although, to be fair, I don’t challenge Toni Morrison’s talent, I just think her last book was excruciatingly boring. I’m hoping her newest won’t have that problem.

6. Dirk August 1st, 2009 at 11:29 pm

   Your post Are you passionate about Maya Angelou’s work? Why? | WriteBlack was very interesting when I found it over google on Sunday by my search for angelou maya poem. I have your blog now in my bookmarks and I visit your blog again, soon. Take care.

7. elaine December 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am

   No, I’m not. God forbid, I find her the very antithesis of an engaging or intelligent litterateur; however she’s utterly perfect for the sort of style-over-substance ultra self-confident posturing that passes for literary quality these days. When we’re living in an era in which Queen Oprah is regarded as the ne plus ultra of judging writerly worth, and wallows such as the appalling ‘The Lovely Bones’ and the works of the dread Jonathan Safran Foer consistently reach the tops of the best-seller lists and are ranked by supposedly serious critics as great and enduring works of art, I suppose it should come as no surprise that a complete and self-invented phony as Angelou should be elevated to the status of Empress. However, the Empress has no clothes–she’s really little more than a James Frey who trades in shallow and phony race-consciousness and sentiment rather than shallow and phony bad-boy antics.

8. Lu January 5th, 2010 at 6:38 pm

   She has modelled herself as an oracle of wisdom and she makes a good soundbite. Hence the popularity.

   But I don’t believe a word that comes out of her mouth. I can’t put my finger on it but she has a way of telling outlandish stories (white girls flashing their vag’s at her proud grandfather to taunt him or whatever) and no one questions her. She says all the right things and has this great literary education which came from a history of childhood rape, prostitution & being a single parent? I don’t hate on any of these groups and all power to anyone who makes it past disadvantage but it certainly seems a bit odd that everything bad that could ever happen to someone has happened to her and she’s come through it so eloquently.

   Most importantly I came from a lousy family & often had to lie to avoid abuse so I think I may have a subconscious sense in detecting when other people are lying & she’s always set off my radar big time.

   I suspect if anyone ever took a good hard look at Maya’s stories & tried to match dates & times they’d find some problems in the telling. Did anyone ever look at whether a trial or death cert for her childhood rapist ‘Mr Freeman’ was recorded? Or whether anyone else remembers any of this the same way?

   I’m having serious doubts she’s even black (joking…kinda).

9. elaine January 6th, 2010 at 7:13 pm

   I had once heard (and don’t quote me, because I cannot remember precisely where; it’s been some years back) that Angelou’s claim of being an impoverished sharecropper’s daughter was false; that she was, in fact, the child of a relatively prosperous general-store owner whose clientele consisted primarily of poor black farmers and sharecroppers–and that he (Angelou’s father) was viewed unfavorably by these people, who felt that he overcharged and otherwise bilked many of his low-income customers.

   I agree with you, Lu, that Ms. Angelou has a way of setting off my B.S. detector big time. It would indeed be very interesting, I suspect, for someone to run a detailed checkup of dates and events in her tales. I too think there’d be some problems with the reality being in precise correspondence with her retailing of it in many cases.

   She’s a terrible writer, in any case.