By Yemi Adebisi, Acting Head, Literary/Arts
Award winning poet, journalist, activist and film producer, Maya Angelous, whose death occurred on Wednesday, May 28, was described as a symbol of stars and talents, worthy of emulation.
Chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Femi Onileagbon, said despite her background and challenges, she made a name for herself.
Angelous was raped at the age of eight by her mother’s boyfriend. She spent her early years studying dance and drama in San Francisco, but dropped out of school at age 14.
When she was 16, Angelous became San Francisco’s first female streetcar driver.
She returned to high school to get her diploma, but gave birth a few weeks after graduation. While the 17-year-old single mother waited tables to support her son, she developed a passion for music and dance, and toured Europe in the mid-1950s in the opera production Porgy and Bess.
In 1957, she recorded her first album, “Miss Calypso.”
Chronicling her mother’s abandonment as a young child, Angelous dedicated her last memoir, Mom & Me & Mom to her mother’s reunion and reconciliation. She ended the book with an emotional stanza: “You were a terrible mother of small children but there has never been anyone greater than you as a mother of a young adult.”
Affectionately referred to as Dr. Angelous, the six-foot-tall professor never went to college. She has more than 50 honorary degrees and taught American studies for years at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
“Maya Angelou has been a towering figure – at Wake Forest and in American culture.
She had a profound influence in civil rights and racial reconciliation,” Wake Forest University President Nathan O. Hatch said Wednesday. “We will miss profoundly her lyrical voice and always keen insights.”
In a telephone interview on the death of Angelous, the Nigerian-born Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Professor Tanure Ojaide, said she was a great influence in global literature.
“The death was a great loss. She was not just a writer, but a great activist. Of course she started black literature and brought it into national debate. Partly because of her background and mental torture at her early stage of life, she exposed child abuse in America. We have lost a gem in North Carolina and world literature,” he said.
The acclaimed doyen of African children’s literature, Professor Akachi Adimorah-Ezeigbo, told Sunday Independent that Angelous has left a great vacuum as an activist and reputable icon.
“I feel so very sad to hear that Maya is dead. She was a great writer indeed. Her life experience as reflected in her book, I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing was very wonderful.
“She was a courageous woman till death. I love her poetry. She was a very strong woman.
“I teach her poetry in University of Lagos too. Angelous was a source of inspiration to many writers including me.
“She lived her life to inspire black women especially. We have lost somebody special in the literati,” she said.
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