Thoughts
This book was a pleasant surprise on multiple perspectives. The most thrilling aspect was that it wasn't a 'straight auto-biography.' I reckon Hemingway's stories are also spiced up accounts from his life, but the air of fiction emanates much more strongly in his work. Angelou used her critical eye and keen observation skills to document her childhood experiences (subjects ranged from her experience of being raped by mother's boyfriend, life as a African American child in Arkansas, role of faith and religion in her family, adventure to Mexico and driving for the first time...). This book is a recount of some of Maya's most critical and unforgettable childhood moments through reassuming her then naive and young perspective, then etched down by her now mature literary skills.
Unlike reading say... Dostoevsky's work where one consciously examine and analyze the characters (e.g. Rodion) throughout the reading experience, Maya's quest of soul searching and self-examination felt natural and captivating. As if we were given the unique privilege to directly tap into a sensitive young girl's mind and feel what she was feeling through the medium of well crafted words. Maya's parents were downright irresponsible, but fortunately her grandmother's strong will and integrity allowed Maya to experience some stability and sense of security. For other memoirs/semi-fictional auto-biographies of children growing up in a dysfunctional family, The Liar's Club by Mary Karr is a good read. It depicts the struggles and lifestyle of a typical American blue collar family (more specifically oil-field worker) that also happens to suffer from the ill-effects of alcohol and drug abuse. Karr's parents were real gems and her mother reminded me of Maya's mother - glamorous and unstable (though Karr's mother intellectual mind provided more episodes of situational comedy, like when she said niggard yet the saleslady thought she said nigger.) I personally preferred it over The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, though to be fair I don't remember much of its content anymore. Reading TLC and TGC requires a strong heart as the main character's sufferings could strike very close to home as both families suffered from easily relatable 21st century family woes (substance abuse, rise of individualism, unaffected neighbors, American dream etc.). But I can also imagine African Americans and sexual abuse victims finding Maya's book difficult to swallow.
Excerpts
(p 7) The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. It regarded us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children), it closed in around us as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly, but not too familiarly.
- On moving to Stamp, Arkansas to live with Grandma
(p 151) Through the open door, the moonshine fell into the room in a cold radiance to rival our meager lamp.
(p 159) The scent of decay was sweet and clasping. It grope for life with a hunger both greedy and hateful.
- On the death of neighbor Sister Taylor, at her funeral
(p 191) Knowing Momma, I knew that I never knew Momma. Her African-bush secretiveness and suspiciousness had been compounded by slavery and confirmed by centuries of promises and and promises broken.
If an unaware person is told part of the truth, he is satisfied that his query has been answered. If an aware person is given an answer which is truthful but bears lightly if at all on the question, he knows that the information he seeks is of a private nature and will not be handed to him willingly. Thus direct denial, lying and revelation of personal affairs are avoided.
(p. 208) Then the city acted in wartime like an intelligent woman under siege. She gave what she couldn't with safely withheld and secured those things which lay within her reach.
(p. 209) Southern white illiterates brought their biases intact to the West from the hills of Arkansas and the swamps of Georgia. The Black ex-farmers had not left their distrust and fear of whites which history had taught them in distressful lessons. These two groups were obliged to work side by side in the war plants, and their animosities festered and opened like boils on the face of the city.
- On WW2 in San Fran & racial tension
(p 212) Miss Kirwin proved Bailey right. He had told me once that “all knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.”
- Echoing "knowledge banking" and post modernist critiques
(p 229) It seemed hard to believe that he was a lonely person, searching relentlessly in bottles, under women's skirts, in church work and lofty job titles for his "personal niche," lost before birth and unrecovered since. It was obvious to me then that he never belonged in Stamps, and less to the slow-moving , slow-thinking Johnson family. How maddening it was to have been born in a cotton field with aspirations of grandeur.
- Observations of Daddy Bailey during trip to Mexico
(p. 260) Life was cheap and death was entirely free
- On her life in WW2 San Fran after Mexico & junkyard
(p 267) Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School.
(p 276) I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. They shield themselves with an aura of unavailableness (for which after a time they begin to take credit) largely as a defense tactic.
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