Maya Angelou - Wouldnt Take Nothing for My Journey Now

My thanks to Susan Taylor, editor in chief of Essence magazine, and Marcia Gillespie, editor in chief of Ms. magazine, who persuaded me that some lessons in living, which I had learned over many years, would be of use if featured in a magazine article.

My tender love to Rosa Johnson, The Black Rose. My tender love to Araba Budu-Arthur Bernasco.

Maya Angelou, author of the bestselling A Song Flung Up to Heaven, Even the Stars Look Lonesome, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin and Swingin and Gettin Merry Like Christmas, Wouldnt Take Nothing for My Journey Now and the Oprah Book Club selection The Heart of a Woman, has also written five collections of poetry: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie; Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well; And Still I Rise; Shaker, Why Dont You Sing? and I Shall Not Be Moved, as well as On the Pulse of Morning, which was read by her at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton on January 20, 1993. In theater, she produced, directed and starred in Cabaret for Freedom in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New Yorks Village Gate, starred in Genets The Blacks at the St. Marks Playhouse and adapted Sophocles Ajax, which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974. In film and television, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life. In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she became Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1975 she received the Ladies Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in communications. She has received numerous honorary degrees, was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Womens Year and by President Gerald R. Ford to the American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of trustees of the American Film Institute. One of the few female members of the Directors Guild, Angelou is the author of the television screenplays I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Sisters. Most recently, she wrote the lyrics for the musical King: Drum Major for Love and was both host and writer for the series of documentaries Maya Angelous America: A Journey of the Heart, along with Guy Johnson. Angelou is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

GATHER TOGETHER IN MY NAME

SINGIN AND SWINGIN AND GETTIN MERRY LIKE CHRISTMAS

THE HEART OF A WOMAN

MAYA ANGELOU: POEMS

WOULDNT TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW

I SHALL NOT BE MOVED

EVEN THE STARS LOOK LONESOME

A VAILABLE FROM B ANTAM B OOKS

In All Ways a Woman

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature.

The phrase A woman always has the right to change her mind played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than be like a woman and change my mind.

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough. She must have convinced herself, or be in the unending process of convincing herself, that she, her values, and her choices are important. In a time and world where males hold sway and control, the pressure upon women to yield their rights-of-way is tremendous. And it is under those very circumstances that the womans toughness must be in evidence.

She must resist considering herself a lesser version of her male counterpart. She is not a sculptress, poetess, authoress, Jewess, Negress, or even (now rare) in university parlance a rectoress. If she is the thing, then for her own sense of self and for the education of the ill-informed she must insist with rectitude in being the thing and in being called the thing.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer.

She will need to prize her tenderness and be able to display it at appropriate times in order to prevent toughness from gaining total authority and to avoid becoming a mirror image of those men who value power above life, and control over love.

It is imperative that a woman keep her sense of humor intact and at the ready. She must see, even if only in secret, that she is the funniest, looniest woman in her world, which she should also see as being the most absurd world of all times.

It has been said that laughter is therapeutic and amiability lengthens the life span.

Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives. The struggle for equality continues unabated, and the woman warrior who is armed with wit and courage will be among the first to celebrate victory.

Passports to Understanding

Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.

It is necessary, especially for Americans, to see other lands and experience other cultures. The American, living in this vast country and able to traverse three thousand miles east to west using the same language, needs to hear languages as they collide in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

A tourist, browsing in a Paris shop, eating in an Italian ristorante, or idling along a Hong Kong street, will encounter three or four languages as she negotiates the buying of a blouse, the paying of a check, or the choosing of a trinket. I do not mean to suggest that simply overhearing a foreign tongue adds to ones understanding of that language. I do know, however, that being exposed to the existence of other languages increases the perception that the world is populated by people who not only speak differently from oneself but whose cultures and philosophies are other than ones own.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends.