Soul Sisters
~ We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
~ There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
~ Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.
~ If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
One could easily be convinced that the above quotes all come from the same person, but one would have been deceived. The first and third quotes were said by Nikki Giovanni; and the second and fourth come from Maya Angelou. Both are renowned poets and authors with a propensity for civil rights activism. Much of their writing focuses on the struggles endured in the black community and the beauty of being a woman. Born fifteen years apart, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni seem to share the same soul.
Maya Angelou’s early beginnings were fraught with dramatic, life-altering events. Marguerite Ann Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928 (“Maya” is a nickname from childhood and “Angelou” is a takeoff of her first husband’s last name “Angelos”) (“America’s Renaissance”). At three years of age, Maya’s parents divorced and Angelou and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother. When they were sent back to live with their mother, about four years later, Angelou confessed to her mother that her mother’s boyfriend had sexually abused her (“Maya Angelou”). Her uncles eventually beat the man to death; after which she became mute until the age of thirteen. Angelou said that, “the power of [her] words led to someone’s death” (“Maya Angelou”). She ran away, becoming homeless after being assulted by her father’s girlfriend while staying with him one summer. She became pregnant at sixteen, and gave birth to her son, Guy Johnson, just weeks before graduating high school (“America’s Renaissance Woman”). (Angelou never attended college.) Of her experience on the streets, Angelou wrote in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, “After a month my thinking processes had so changed that I was hardly recognizable to myself. The unquestioning acceptance of my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity…After hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them with a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a Black girl from Okalahoma, I was never again to sense myself so solidly outside the pale of the human race The lack of criticism evidenced by our ad hoc community influenced me, and set a tone of tolerance in my life” (“Maya Angelou”). Although often tumultuous, Maya Angelou’s life has created the backdrop to her powerful and inspiring poetry.
Giovanni’s childhood seems to have been fairly uneventful, especially in comparison to Angelou’s turbulent beginnings. Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. (Giovanni’s older sister gave her the name “Nikki” early on), on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee, she grew up in Lincoln heights, an all-black community just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio (Wahlberg). She and her sister spent their summers with their grandparents in Knoxville, but Giovanni eventually moved in with them permanently due to the growing hostility between her parents at home. Nikki’s grandmother was probably her biggest influence in life; instilling in her the need to fight injustice. As a teenager, Nikki attended her first demonstration with her grandmother, protesting segregated dining at a local department store (Wahlberg). Giovanni attended Fisk University, her grandfather’s alma mater, enrolling as an early entrant. Partially due to conflicts she had with the conservative values of the school, as well as with the Dean of Women, Ann Cheatam, she was expelled from the university. A few years later, she re-enrolled, once Dean Cheatam had left the school and been replaced by Dean Blanche McConnell Cowan, who became another major influence in the young writer’s life (Wahlberg). In 1968, Giovanni graduated, with honors, from Fisk University (Wahlberg). The racism Nikki Giovanni encountered, coupled with the powerful influence of her steadfast grandmother, undoubtedly had an effect on the context of her writing.
Many events and several varying careers preceded Angelou becoming a full-fledged writer. In her teens, when she was struggling to raise her son on her own, she worked as a waitress, a cook, and even a madam and prostitute in order to make ends meet (“Maya Angelou: Poet”). In 1949, while married to a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos, she became a nightclub singer, where she took on her stage name, “Maya Angelou” (“Maya Angelou: Poet”). Shortly after their divorce in 1952, Angelou began touring, performing in productions like “Porgy and Bess” and “Calypso Heatwave” (“Maya Angelou: Poet”). Eventually, guilt got the best of her (her son was living with her mother) and she gave up life on the road to raise her son properly. Back home in New York, Angelou became deeply involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Three days prior to Malcolm X’s assassination, she had spoken to the activist, discussing working with him further (“Maya Angelou: Poet”). In 1968, Maya spoke to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., agreeing to help him to gain the support of black preachers for a future march, the day after her birthday. Dr. King was assassinated on her birthday. These two terrible events helped to push Angelou’s writing career forward; she published “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in 1969 (“Maya Angelou: Poet”). Maya’s long, hard road to the top inspired her writing and propelled her to continually move forward; she knew that if she did not do so, she would be left behind.
Although Nikki Giovanni did not endure the difficult times that Maya Angelou did growing up, she was definitely faced with obstacles in adulthood. On August 31, 1969, shortly after graduating from Fisk, she gave birth to her son, Thomas Watson Giovanni (McDaniel). Though an unwed mother, she claims she became pregnant because she wanted to – this was no “accident”, as many would assume (McDaniel). At this same time, Giovanni’s writing career was blossoming, with the publishing of her first book of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk” (McDaniel). While she may have wanted to have a child, there is little doubt that it was challenging to raise a child on her own. In 1995, Giovanni publicly announced that she had been battling lung cancer since the early 1990’s (Wahlberg). In her fight with the disease, she had part of a lung and some ribs removed to stop the spread; eventually, she lost a lung (Wahlberg). Considering both her mother and sister died as a result of lung cancer, Giovanni must have feared the worst, and, therefore, fought it all the more (Wahlberg). Of life after cancer, Giovanni says, “I get so sick of these people who talk about how cancer made them better people. I don’t think I’m any nicer or kinder. If it takes a near-death experience for you to appreciate your life, you’re wasting somebody’s time” (Wahlberg). Cancer may not have made the poet more amiable, but it had to have made her stronger than she already was.
In addition to being an internationally known poet and author, Maya Angelou is also a historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and she has written several best-selling books including autobiographical works such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). Angelou won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for On the Pulse of Morning in 1993. In that same year, she became only the second poet to write and recite her work at a presidential inauguration. She has taught at several universities including the Universtity of Ghana, University of Kansas, and Wake Forest University. Although she has no college degree, she has received honorary degrees from Smith College, Mills College, and Lawrence University (“Maya Angelou: Poet”). In addition to English, the poet is fluent in other languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Ghanian Fante. Dr. Angelou is self-taught; she was a voracious reader and studied a multitude of subjects throughout her life (“America’s Renaissance Woman”). Dr. Angelou is proof that while traditional education is important, it is not the only path to success.
Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator who prides herself on being “a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English” (Wahlberg). Early on in her writing career, she was designated the “Princess of Black Poetry” (Wahlberg). Giovanni has been publishing and lecturing for more than thirty years, and in that time, has written thirty books for adults and children (A). Her autobiography, Gemini, was a National Book Award finalist and her poetry book “Blues: For All the Changes” went to #4 on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list (a huge accomplishment for a book of poetry) (Wahlberg). Her children’s book, “Rosa”, became a Caldecott Honors book and made it to #3 on the New York Times bestseller list (Wahlberg). She has received numerous awards and honors, including being awarded the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry and being named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine, The Ladies Home Journal, and Ebony Magazine (Wahlberg). In addition to these accomplishments, Nikki Giovanni has received twenty-five honorary degrees from various institutions including Smith College and Indiana University (Wahlberg). Oprah Winfrey even named her one of twenty-five “Living Legends” (Wahlberg). Giovanni’s popularity does not end in the literary and entertainment worlds; apparently, the science world loves her, too! One scientist named a new species of bat after the poet – Micronycteris Giovanniae (Wahlberg). She is currently a professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she gave a passionate reading of her poem, “We ARE Virginia Tech”, in April 2007, at memorial services held at the school shortly after a student went on a shooting rampage killing over thirty people and wounding several others. As opposed to Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni is a prime example of where a good traditional education can take you.
The poetry of Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni is what is known as “accessible”. The average person can read and understand it quite easily. There are many poets who write for the critics and the literary elite – not the average person – and those poets are often criticized by others for doing so. In so doing, both Angelou and Giovanni do not always receive the highest regard from some in the literary world – despite all of their accolades. Many believe that if it were not for Angelou’s mesmerizing life story and struggle for survival, she would not be so highly regarded as a poet (“Maya Angelou”). Some critics believe her work to be “thin in substance, lacking in poetic invention, and lackluster in language” (“Maya Angelou”). Those on the other side of the argument say that her work is part of a “neglected oral tradition, incorporat[ing] elements of African-American slave songs and work songs, and must be seen as lyrics which require performance to reveal their depth and riches” (I). According to critic Lyman B. Hagen, “Angelou may rank as a poet of moderate ability, but her poetry is praised for its honesty and for a moving sense of dignity” (“Maya Angelou”). Many criticized Nikki Giovanni for her often controversial, politically motivated poems, particularly in her early writing. Others who enjoyed the controversial Giovanni later complained that once she gave birth to her son, her poetry became less political and more “romantic” and not angry enough (“Maya Angelou”). While she may be polemical, she is also always easy to understand. Writer Jan McDaniel says of Giovanni’s work, that her poems are “easy to read and understand and her work is capable of reaching an audience regardless of age, race, gender, or social class” (McDaniel). She has touted herself as a “poet of the people”, acknowledging her desire to write for everyday people, rather than literary critics (McDaniel). Both Angelou and Giovanni write for “real” people who, when reading a poem, have no desire to, in the words of another real-world poet, Billy Collins, “torture a confession out of it”.
Two poems with similar elements are “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou and “Woman” by Nikki Giovanni. In “Phenomenal Woman”, Angelou speaks of the power of femininity, despite not being “cute” or a “fashion model’s size”. Men “swarm” around her and other women, who are more attractive, simply do not understand it. She does not need to “shout” or “talk real loud” – it is her “inner mystery”, her confidence when she walks into a room – that makes others take notice. Giovanni’s poem, “Woman”, has a similar confidence in it. In “Woman”, Giovanni gives several metaphors explaining how the man in her life is not really there for her; he is not there to back her when she needs him to. But in the last stanza, she decides that she is going to be a woman anyway, even though he has decided not to “be a man” – and that is okay. She does not need him to support her in everything she does because she has decided to “become a woman”. Although certainly different poems altogether, they have a similar basis – woman must be confident and self-assured to make it in life. She does not need to depend on those around her to “make it”. If a woman has a strong sense of self, she can accomplish what she pleases.
Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni are both strong, confident Black American women who have both endured tribulations in their lives, which undoubtedly contributed to the subjects explored in their writing. They are also very accomplished writers who have similar qualities in their writing, as well as in their activities outside of writing. With all of the positive attributes these two women share, it is a shame that the “role models” young women look to for inspiration are the likes of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. It is thought provoking to imagine the country if, rather than broken-down, drug-addicted “celebrities” with highly questionable moral compasses, Angelou and Giovanni were sources of inspiration for young women today.
Phenomenal Woman
~Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
We Are Virginia Tech
We are Virginia Tech
We are sad today
And we will be sad for quite a while
We are not moving on
We are embracing our mourning
We are Virginia Tech
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly
We are brave enough to bend to cry …
And sad enough to know we must laugh again
We are Virginia Tech
We do not understand this tragedy
We know we did nothing to deserve it
But neither does a child in Africa dying of aids
Neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army
Neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water
Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of night in his crib in the home its father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destablized
No one deserves a tragedy
We are Virginia Tech
The Hokie nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds
We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid
We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be
We are alive to the imagination and the possibility
We will continue to invent the future
Through our blood and tears
Through all this sadness
We are the Hokies
We will prevail
We will prevail
We will prevail
We are Virginia Tech
– Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor of English, VPI&SU
