Maya Angelou

I was fifteen when I read I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. It was a self-chosen book in my tenth grade American Literature class. I think I chose the book partly for the mystery of the title, partly for an interest in the auto-biography of Maya Angelou's youth and teenage years, I had never heard of Angelou before, but African American literature had always resonated with me. I remember reading Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison a few years earlier and had long felt passionate about equal rights, diversity and the civil rights movement.

Angelou's auto-biography remained with me in the coming years. Vivid descriptions of her childhood in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas and later, San Francisco felt familiar yet so foreign, as she writes of the poverty she was engulfed in in the Jim Crow-era south. Woven throughout is her strength and resilience.

As a recent graduate, life lately has been busy, full of commitments, ideas and plans, but little structure and organization. Each morning is a bit different, and lately I've been thinking of the overarching goal for each day, going forward. To admire and remember the past, but to focus on what lies ahead, remain committed to move in a positive direction. When I read of Maya Angelou's death yesterday, I thought of what she achieved in her life, of how far forward she progressed, of the literature, poetry, and life she spread to the world, and the benefit the world received.