E-mail a friendMaya Angelou
airdate January 19, 2009
Maya Angelou is celebrated as a poet and writer and has a notable career as an educator, producer, director, actress and civil rights activist. She was among the first African American women to hit the best-sellers lists. In '93, she became only the second poet in U.S. history to write and recite original work at a presidential inauguration. Angelou has traveled from poverty in segregated Arkansas to journalism in Africa to being hailed as a renaissance woman and one of the great voices of contemporary literature.
Celebrated author reflects on why Obama will be an amazing leader for the country. (3:04)
Full interview. (25:12)
Maya Angelou
Tavis: Tonight, though, on this King Day 2009, I am pleased, honored, delighted - I could go on and on - to welcome Dr. Maya Angelou back to this program. The iconic poet, author, and activist has written so many powerful works, including, of course, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Her latest is a collection of life lessons and stories called "Letter to my Daughter."
On this program last year, you regular viewers know we celebrated our 1,000th show. In 2008 we celebrated 1,000 shows of doing this every night, and I got asked by a number of media people who my favorite guest was over those 1,000 shows, and I said, "I guess the answer can in part be derived from the answer to the person who has most appeared on this program," and here she is tonight, adding another appearance on this program - Dr. Maya Angelou on this program more than any other guest. My dear sister, I love you and I'm glad to have you back.
Dr. Maya Angelou: Oh, my dear. And you flatter me and you also make me think you don't really know me or yourself very much. When you call me sister, that's sweet. Truth is, I'm mother. (Laughter) The truth is a stubborn fact, now, and that is from the time I picked you up in Ghana.
Tavis: Yes.
Angelou: All those years (unintelligible).
Tavis: I tell everybody everywhere I go when I speak, whenever Africa comes up in any conversation I find myself always reminding people that my very first trip to the continent was carrying your bags around for about 10 or 12 days, and I will never forget it as long as I live. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Angelou: Thank you, my dear.
Tavis: But I have a bone to pick with you. I have a bone to pick with you.
Angelou: Okay. All right, come on.
Tavis: Why are you there and I'm here? Why am I not getting my hug today?
Angelou: I'm sending it by the wires. (Laughter) You should be getting it any moment.
Tavis: Okay.
Angelou: (Unintelligible.)
Tavis: I just got it. I just felt that thing. I just felt it.
Angelou: All right.
Tavis: So thank you. You are in your home. You have a couple of homes; you are in your home in Harlem, U.S.A. Tell me if I -
Angelou: That's right.
Tavis: We can't pan the camera around; I won't do that, but tell me about your home there in Harlem. Just tell me about your home.
Angelou: All right. Let me just - I bought - I didn't buy a home, I bought an address in New York, (laughter) and it's on the street outside. But the place I bought had been vandalized and burned in and rained in and all sorts of things, but I bought it. And I was married for about maybe 312 years to a builder (laughter) and he taught me to build, so I've built every home I have. He told me building had nothing to do with being male or female, nor with strength - physical strength - but it had to do with determination, intelligence, and eye, and so I have those.
And so I build. Well, this house, I wanted it to look like a bowl of summer fruit - (laughter) ripe summer fruit - and it's green, lime green, and plum purple and lemon yellow and tomato red, and it's so glorious. It's welcoming to all those who come into it. So when you come, you'll be right at home.
Tavis: I look forward to it. I heard that distinction - I listen to every word you say, as you know, and I heard that distinction you made earlier between an address and a home, and I can take that any number of ways. So let me ask what, for you, is a home?
Angelou: My home is North Carolina. I live in North Carolina. I have a wonderful house and home here in New York, but my books and my paintings, my letters, my sculptures, are in North Carolina. That's where I will go if I have enough time. You don't always know, but if I have enough time to know that the lord is ready to meet me, I want to be in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to meet the lord.
Tavis: Why do you want to be in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when that moment comes?
Angelou: Because I feel I'm supported. I have the whole history of the South - the negative and the positive. I have the pain of slavery, the ugliness and brutality of it, and I have the beauty of courage for African-Americans to say, "I don't want to be a slave anymore, not that I ever did want to be it. But I refuse." And to allow the White Americans who hated slavery and supported African-Americans, not because they liked African-Americans but because they liked right.
They loved right, and so I love the South. I'm a Southern woman, with all of that thereto appertaining.
Tavis: (Laughs) It flows off your lips with such ease. Indeed, I watched your face as you were talking. There's a smile on your face, so it flows off your lips. There's a smile on your face when you talk about meeting your maker. I get the sense that whenever that moment comes, now that you've achieved 80 years, I get the sense at least you're already at peace with that whenever that moment comes.
Angelou: Oh, yes, and yes, I am. Also, you know, sometimes parents have a mistake - they make a mistake and think that they own the children. The children don't belong to the parent. The parent is a vehicle. The children belong to God. And so sometimes parents make the mistake of intruding into a place that is not for them to intrude. There's a place in everybody which must remain pristine, clear, clean, because that may be the place where the person goes to meet God at that last moment.
And so sometimes parents say, "Shut up, get over here." They shouldn't do that. They should respect that every person has a place within herself, and this is true for husbands and wives, for lovers, whatever they may choose to be. This is true of bosses and employees. Nobody should stomp in in rain boots into certain places in a person's life.
That place is sacred, and so for me, I encourage us all to be respectful. Have enough courage to respect each other. Have some patience with each other. Have some patience with yourself. Have patience. Nobody came here knowing everything, so have patience. It's just grace which helps us get over.
Tavis: Let me get philosophical with you for just a second. I love having these philosophical conversations with you. Let me just hit it and quit it, just a quick philosophical thing.
Angelou: All right.
Tavis: You said something a moment ago that made me think about this. I was in a conversation the other day with a mutual friend of ours, Dr. Cornel West, and Doc was making a philosophical point to me, and I got it. He made the point that every one of us dies a failure. His argument was, "I don't really believe in success because we all die failures."
And I asked him to unpack that for me. And when he unpacked it, Dr. Angelou, what he said to me essentially was that we all die failures because in the end, there's stuff we didn't get done. Nobody gets everything done while they're here. Something's going to get left undone, some project never got started.
So I wonder whether you might agree with that and if so, what's on your list of things that you didn't get done?
Angelou: Well, no, I agree with Cornel West. That's one of the bright - we have some bright minds in our world, and that's one of them. However, I think that we're also geniuses in that we did get some things done. Even to be able to dare to say that shows incredible intelligence and courage.
I think that what we have to do is see that we dared - we're a carnivorous group who probably - who has decided not to eat our brothers and sisters, who may be delicious. (Laughter) But who decide not only not to eat them but to accord them some rights and to try to love them, whatever that mystery is. It's amazing. We are successful, we are triumphant. Here we are, trying to be charitable, trying to be kind, trying to be loving. So I think we are - absolutely we are successful.
I think at the same time we live such brief lives we can't get anything really done. We have to count on those who are yet to come.
Tavis: I take that. I take that. I take it. I should say in fairness to Dr. West, to the Westian formulation that I was expressing a moment ago, in fairness to him, his rejoinder, Dr. Angelou, was that since we all die failures the real question is how good is your failure. That's the ultimate question - how good is your failure? And that's the point you're making in your own way, of course.
Angelou: Absolutely. Absolutely. I can't be all - I live about that long in the sense of time. It's less than a second. So I live about that long, and the chance I have of being important is the chance I have of bringing one piece of sand to the making of the pyramid. But I can do it, and if thousands and millions and multi millions of others do it, we build a pyramid.
Tavis: Speaking of "I can do it," I want to cover some more ground here. But when you say, "I can do it," it obviously makes me think of that phrase that we all know now etched in our brains - yes, we can. And that yes, we can, of course, courtesy of one Barack Obama.
So in a matter of hours from now, in a matter of hours from now this country will inaugurate its first African-American president and what's that grin I see on your face about?
Angelou: (Laughs) And look at what we have. My lord - a young - not just a prince, we have a young king. We have a young king who strides into the arena bringing everyone with him. He is inclusive, he's not - he excludes no one. The poor White, the poor Black, the poor Asian, Native American, Latino - he brings everybody in.
He says, "I'm here for you." That's amazing. The people who didn't really like him, he says, "I'm for you." And it reminded me of - he reminds me of Nelson Mandela. When Mr. Mandela came into the presidency in South Africa, did you know that he made a part of his group, invited group, the wardens of the prison he'd been in for 27 years?
Tavis: Oh, yes, at Robben Island.
Angelou: They were invited.
Tavis: Absolutely.
Angelou: At Robben Island. They came, he invited them - "Come. I am your president as well." I admire President-elect Obama. I admire him; I love him with my heart because he sees himself as an American president.
Tavis: You mentioned - not mentioned, you referred specifically to Barack Obama not as a prince but indeed as a young king. We of course commemorate today, we celebrate, we raise up the name of your friend Martin Luther King Jr. as we celebrate this holiday - your friend who was gunned down on your birthday, April 4th.
He's gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee. Talk to me about these King-Obama comparisons. They're on t-shirts, they're on billboards, they're TV commercials. Talk about these King-Obama comparisons.
Angelou: The truth is Martin Luther King and President-elect Obama are not separate from Malcolm X and John F. Kennedy, who is not separate from Robert Kennedy and Medgar Evers. None of them are separate from Fannie Lou Hamer.
You see, the truth is people who want to make a better world, people who really hope to open up the arms of freedom, liberty, justice, fair play, make us all the same. So we are more alike than we are unalike, and it's important that we see that.
Tavis: Clearly, we have elected Barack Obama. Most importantly, I suspect, most principally because he was the better of the two candidates on November 4th. Most of us at least thought he was the better of the two candidates, and so he ends up being elected president. I guess the question is whether or not we are ready for what we have.
Angelou: I think so. Mind you, it must be said that I was chairing and supporting Senator Clinton. I was in her camp; I was there on the foreground saying, "Yes, this is my choice." After the voting, after the primaries and we found that the majority of the people wanted Senator Obama, then I stepped down - waited after Mrs. Clinton, Senator Clinton stepped back - I wouldn't step out before her.
When she stepped down I stepped down and went to Senator Obama's camp and said, "Can I be of any use?" The main thing - and now mind you, this must be said for my first candidate, Senator Clinton - she got on the phone and called everybody and said, "Support Senator Obama. Don't try to support me. Support Senator Obama, because our dreams are the same."
Now that's what I wanted as a president - I wanted a woman who would be a woman, not just an old female, and I wanted a man (laughter) who would be a man (unintelligible). Because this is very important. If you're born with certain genitalia, if you don't get run over by an out-of-control truck, you can become an old that, whatever "that" is. But to become a man, you can know when a man is in the room. A man may be five foot tall and White and old, he may be Asian, he may be six foot. You know that a man is in the room. That means you're not going to be insulted, you'll not be in any way hurt. A man is not going to shout at you.
An old male may do anything, (laughter) but a woman - (unintelligible) the truth. Truth now.
Tavis: Speak the truth, speak the truth.
Angelou: Truth.
Tavis: Yes.
Angelou: To make it true.
Tavis: Make it true.
Angelou: A woman, too - a woman is going to be kind. Not indulgent, but kind. A woman - now if she's an old female, she may be anything. She may be a hag (laughter) or rude and mean and cruel. But a woman knows enough to take responsibility for the time she takes up and the space she occupies. And that's true of a man, too. And I love it.
Tavis: How does your heart take - how do you celebrate, how do you revel in this 48-hour period where the country celebrates Martin and Obama back to back two days in a row.
Angelou: Yes, sir.
Tavis: It's like Black folk hitting the lottery, ain't it?
Angelou: Yes. (Laughter) Well, it means that my country is growing up.
Tavis: Right.
Angelou: This is what we're doing. We're growing up past the idiocies of racism and sexism. Oh well, my family always believed that so I believe it, too, but sometimes you've got to say, "Hold on just a minute - that was stupid and I have enough courage to say, 'Listen, Mama, I understand you believe that. I don't.'" So what's happening is my country is growing up, and it's so fabulous I don't have to apologize when I go to Europe.
When all the Europeans say, "Oh, welcome, Dr. Angelou. Welcome, we're happy to invite you away from the racism of your country." Oh. (Laughter) I don't have to defend my country when some of the actions are not defensible. And on the other hand, I don't have to attack them because they, the Europeans, may not have been involved with the racism that I experienced, but they are racist still because they're colonials.
And sometimes you have to say, "Well, yes, I know you feel sorry for me, but what about all your colonial - what about the Senegalese and why don't I see them behind desks and running the cameras? Hello, excuse me." (Laughter) And voting. Truth, now.
Tavis: Yeah, I hear you. I want to mention this book again. So for weeks and weeks and weeks I've been waking up on Sunday morning, getting my "New York Times," and seeing that Dr. Angelou has done it again - another "New York Times" best seller.
But I was stunned by the fact that the title says "Letter to my Daughter," and as well as I know you, did I miss something? Who's the daughter you're writing the book to?
Angelou: No. (Laughs) No, I never had any - I only had one child, and that was a boy.
Tavis: Exactly.
Angelou: My great blessing. My great blessing is my son. But I have daughters - I have White ones and Black ones and fat ones and thin ones and pretty ones and plain. I have gay ones and straight - I have daughters. I have Asian ones, I have Jewish ones, I have Muslim ones. And I know, because they Fed-Ex me and email me and write to me from all over the world. It's a blessing.
Because one thing they know is I will not lie to them. I may not always be right, but I will try to be right, and I will not tell everything I know. But I will try to make sure that what I say is the truth about being a human being - about being alive, about being courageous. Yes, being courage.
Tavis: I love that.
Angelou: It's true.
Tavis: Let me close right quick with this. I have a copy on the wall in my house; I see it every day as I walk past this particular wall, because you can't miss it in my house. So all my guests see it all the time - when you walk in my house you see a wonderful poem from a great sister named Maya Angelou, and it's called "On the Pulse of Morning."
It was delivered, of course, at Bill Clinton's inauguration. There's a signed copy on the wall in my house and it's not lost on me that the second woman who gets a chance to deliver that poem is a woman named Elizabeth Alexander, a professor at Yale, a Black woman, doing it tomorrow for Barack Obama. What do you make of that?
Angelou: That's right. And a great poet - wonderful poet. I knew that Mr. Obama, Senator Obama, President-elect Obama would not make a misstep in this area, so I told journalists all along when they asked, "Will you be the one to write it?" I said, "No. I'm sure that President-elect Obama has his own poet.' And his own poet is a lovely poet.
She would deserve every bit of appreciation because she earns it, and I'm so proud of her. And I've called her, we've talked, and I've told her, "If you want to talk to me I can be reached anywhere." (Laughter) She's just all of that.
Tavis: Well, Dr. Maya Angelou, you are all that and then some. You are my poet, my friend, my sister, my mother, and my favorite guest, and I'm always glad to have you here.
Angelou: Thank you, my dear. God bless your heart, and hello to our brand-new world.
Tavis: The new book by Dr. Maya Angelou is called "Letter to my Daughter." Again, on the "New York Times" best-seller list for many weeks, and you got to add it to your collection.
Back to January 19, 2009