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Angelou beams
sunshine on audience
By LAURIE GRANIERI,
thnt.com Online, June 20, 2007
NEW BRUNSWICK -- Maya Angelou
is probably the only person capable of framing a lecture around people being
"rainbows in our clouds" without sounding one false note.
"We've all had rainbows in our clouds, or we wouldn't be here," the
internationally acclaimed author, professor and civil-rights activist said.
Her lecture -- or was it a performance? -- on Monday at the State Theatre
concluded the Home News Tribune Smart Talk Women's Lecture Series.
"I will probably use African-American verse to prove my point. I may not;
it's not in my contract," she quipped to much laughter.
She spoke, she sang, she laughed, she recited poetry. She even managed to
rap Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
Angelou, 79, best known for her 1969 memoir, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,"
and her poem "On the Pulse of Morning," which she recited at President Bill
Clinton's 1993 inauguration, delivered a warm and lyrical performance in her
trademark resonant voice.
Angelou perched behind a podium in a black evening gown and recounted her
shiftless childhood, which included a rape that left her mute for six years,
stints living in California, rural Arkansas and St. Louis, and pregnancy at age
16. She mused in a conversational tone on the ways in which people can
reach across color lines to extend small kindnesses to one another.
But this wasn't mere greeting-card sentiment, though Angelou has issued a line
of cards for Hallmark; Angelou said she's witnessed "rainbows" in her own
"clouds," pointing to an enthusiastic school teacher, a loving grandmother and a
fiercely devoted Uncle Willie, a poor, crippled man who encouraged a black boy
to stay in school. That young man became the mayor of Little Rock, Ark.,
and encouraged a young white man to get an education. That man became a
lawyer, and his son later served as a U.S. congressman.
"Each of us had the potential of being a rainbow for someone who does not look
like us," Angelou said.
Angelou sprinkled her orations with snatches of verse by William Shakespeare,
Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar and others. She
recited much of it from memory, sounding more like a beloved professor or a wise
auntie than an august author who has been described as a "national treasure" and
a "living legend" on more than one occasion.
"You need someone to say you are wonderful," Angelou said upon reciting Lucille
Clifton's poem "Miss Rosie" (when I watch you / in your old man's shoes / with
the little toe cut out / sitting, waiting for your mind / like next week's
grocery). "... You need to have some poetry which says, "You are wonderful.' "
Angelou's paternal grandmother said she was wonderful. After the rape,
Angelou revealed the name of her rapist; the man was killed shortly thereafter.
"I thought my voice had killed a man, so it was dangerous for me to speak
because my voice could kill anybody," Angelou said.
Her family in Missouri, frustrated by the girl's silence ("My voice hadn't left
me. I had left it," she said), sent her back to live with her grandmother.
" "Mama knows when you and the good Lord get ready, you're gonna be a teacher,'
" Angelou remembered her grandmother telling her.
"It's important for me to tell you I teach all over the world," Angelou added.
She said those "years of thinking of my whole body as an ear, absorbing sound,"
made her a polyglot. She speaks six languages.
Alnisa White of South Plainfield described Angelou's lecture as "very moving,
very inspirational." She said Angelou reminds us that "something happens,
and you can turn it around."
Her mother, Andrea White-Spann of Plainfield, agreed. She said it's clear
that Angelou's dramatic childhood "shaped the way she is. Even her voice.
Now she's an orator. And a powerful one at that."
But if Angelou marvels at how far she's come, from a tiny town in Stamps, Ark.,
to the White House, the United Nations and lecture halls across the globe, she
also marvels at how she got there.
"If I'm bragging at all," she gently reminded the audience, "I'm bragging on the
rainbows in my clouds."
granieri@thnt.com
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