Maya Angelou is gone, and we are made immediately less by her passing. That remarkable, sonorous voice will not grace our ears again, but all that she has created can remain in our memories and our libraries.
Her life was astonishing, and I doubt that any one of us knew all the elements of it completely. Raped at seven years old, by her own admission, she became a “voluntary mute” for several years until the discovery of books opened a new dimension and a new voice in her.
Who among us did as many things as Maya Angelou did! She was a single mother, a singer, a dancer. She was an activist, a college professor, an Inaugural poet, an author, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. She has been called a cultural pioneer and a Renaissance woman. I think we can only smile and say, “Of course!”
It was as if she achieved heroic proportions during her 86 years quite naturally, as if life had a special intention for her, and she continually grew into it. Maya Angelou did not hide herself from us, for she revealed herself to us through her evolving memoirs. Hers was as informed a life as any that has been lived among us. She is irreplaceable.
“ Into a daybreak miraculously clean, I rise…”
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