A PERCEPTION OF MAYA ANGELOU AND HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY SINGIN' AND SWINGIN' AND GETTIN' MERRY LIKE CHRISTMAS An autobiography by Maya Angelou is not just another life story. Perhaps it is because she is Black, with a capital "B" or maybe it is that she is a Woman, with a capital, "W," or it could be the dynamic combination of the Black Woman that allows her to reveal the things that make this story something very different. In revealing her personal feelings, Angelou also presents some deep-rooted, universal attitudes of blacks concerning white people, the oppression of blacks, various relationships, and perhaps most importantly, the confidence that surfaces in the discovery of untapped creativity. To put it simply, Maya Angelou's life has not been uneventful. Throughout her travels she has learned seven languages, has been a dancer and a singer, a television interviewer, an actress on Broadway. Maya was the first black woman to run a Muni-street car, the first to write the screenplay for a motion picture, and the first to direct a motion picture. She adapted Sophocles' "Ajax" for the modern stage, produced and wrote a ten-part television series, and has cut two records. She has lived in Ghana where she wrote columns for a local newspaper. She has been awarded honorary degrees from several universities. Her books and collections of poetry are required reading at many universities.1 Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas is the third installment of her autobiography. In short, Maya Angelou exhibits her ever-flowing literary talent as she leads the reader on a tour of her twenties; her first positive contact with whites, a short marriage to a handsome Greek man, and the "snow-balling of her theatrical career." Young Maya's theatrical tour through Europe and Africa is the best growing experience of her life. She carries with her the omnipresent advice of her mother and a constant mental picture of her son. She is able to relive the events of her journey with poetry, enthusiasm, and wit. Maya forms emotional bonds to the servants in Egypt, intellectual ties to Israel. Often there are strangers who hover around her with surprising attachment. Even though her apparent neglect of her son, Clyde, makes her return home, her entire trip is enchanting, a sign of her sense of adventure, and a display of her many talents. Maya is smart, she is full of the joy of life and in touch with value of pain. She is ever-growing open to change. She's so alive that she will not bring herself down to the dilemma of a "black-career-woman-feminist-wife-mother." As Linda Kuehl points out, her unwillingness to offer a "paradigm of her identity keeps her singin' and swingin'," as her graceful style and self-reliance make her glow in all her "psychic disparateness."2 Maya gets caught up in the activity of "Porgy and Bess" on its tour through Canada and Europe. She gets very involved emotionally and artistically in the stage presentation. When the musical ends and the performers leave the stage, life is back in its proper perspective. Maya feels let down, deflated. I didn't like the frivolity. It seemed as if they were being disloyal to the great emotions they had sung about and aroused in me. It wasn't pleasant to discover they were only playing parts. I wanted them to walk off stage wrapped in drama, trailing wisps of tragedy. The above quotation is from the autobiography, during the time when she was in her early twenties. Now that she is fifty-ish, her expressiveness is more refined and practical. Yet, the sparkle is still there. Maya is still Maya as she relates her feelings, showing love, recognizing traits, and distinguishing a piece of Black literature, all in the same mood. In an interview pertaining to her desire to change TV's image of black people, she says that the older blacks are often reluctant to tell a child that he is loved. "I'd often ask my grandmother, 'Momma, do you love me?' She'd say 'Now you be a good girl and Jesus Christ will love you.'" Or, Maya tells, her grandmother would say that she was acting so nervous. Grandmother would say, "Sit down here and let me scratch your scalp." That was the same as being scooped up, sat on the lap, and told, "I love you." In a world where the only thing that is constant is change, Maya Angelou feels that things haven't changed that much. She states that if one is American and Black he still must be twice as good, twice as courageous, and twice as prepared as anyone else. "I take very seriously what I believe is my responsibility. If I can get the door open, others, who may be more qualified than I, can come in." She believes, also, that maybe then they can show things on television that introduce more of the "marrow of the black American life than the shallow fingernail clippings we now have." 1 want to do something important that will make a difference, a change for black people. I want to expose parts of our multi-faceted character that go beyond "dy-no-mite!"3 In her autobiography, Maya Angelou encounters various shades of prejudice that cause her to search for another outlet or another meaning. She is invited to a party to sing and is expected to bring one of her good friends who happens to be white. This friend cannot make the engagement so Angelou invites two friends of hers from Senegal. When the hostess sees these two strangers who are black, her friendly and welcoming tune changes to a formal monotone. This incident causes Maya to banish all thoughts of having her young son join her to live in Paris. Paris is not the place for her, after all, or her young, impressionable son. She realizes that the French could entertain the concept of her because they are not enveloped in guilt about a mutual history. She compares this to the fact that white Americans find it much easier to accept Africans, Cubans or South American blacks than the 'Blacks who had lived with them foot to neck for two hundred years." She sees 20 no reason or benefit in exchanging one type of prejudice for another. In another party-atmosphere instance Maya Angelou is called by an unknown admirer who arranges for a quiet dinenr for two. Interestingly enough she accepts the invitation and is dropped off by a friend at her admirer's houseboat. Naturally, anticipation causes those gears and wheels to turn in the mind. She walks up the stairs wondering if she had been set up for an orgy or something similar. She says she knew you could never tell about white people. Negroes had lived through centuries of inhuman treatment and managed to retain their humanity. They hoped for the best from their "pale-skinned oppressors" but at the same time were prepared for the worst. During the time that Maya Angelou is still in the States, at the beginning of her career, she performs at the Purple Onion in San Francisco. She has auditioned for a touring part vacated by Eartha Kitt. However, the management at the Onion refuses to let Maya go. Her begging and pleading and threatenting bring no affirmative results. She remembers that she made the statement in her youth, hoping to prove herself worthy of acceptance, "There's nothing as loyal as a Negro. Once you make a friend of one, you have a friend for life." She sarcastically (perhaps) equates this with making a pet of a grizzly bear. The Negro youth, if asked to make a comparison as such, would probably parallel the statement with making a pet of a kitten. Growing up and emotional maturity enables one to think of himself (or herself) in more powerful terms. Maya Angelou writes about the dilemma of the Blacks; a poem that casts the slightest flicker of confidence, therefore hope: HARLEM HOPSCOTCH One foot down, then hop! It's hot. Good things for the one that's got Another jump, now to the left. Everybody for hisself. In the air, now both feet down. Since you're black don't stick around. Food is gone, the rent is due Curse and cry and then jump two. All the people out of work, Hold for three, then twist and jerk. Cross the line, they count you out. That's what hopping's all about. Both feet flat, the game is done. They think I lost. I think I won.4 Maya has her first positive encounter with a white person at the age of about 21. She is browsing through her favorite record store when the white saleslady offers to let her listen to some new records. Maya is cautious at first, wanting to remain safely distant. She feels it isn't wise to allow one's real feeling to show in front of a stranger. To Maya, nothing on earth is as strange as a friendly white woman. Maya wonders why this woman is so unnecessarily friendly toward her. She feels this woman could not be seeking friendship after all she is white. As far as Maya knows, white women are never lonely. She had discovered that only in books were they lonely. White men adore them; black men desire them; and black women work for them. When the record store white lady offers Maya a job at the store, Maya is just short of stunned. Later that day she tells her best friend, Yvonne, about the job offer. Yvonne is quite happy for Maya and cannot resist throwing in a snide remark or two about the "ways" of white women. "We cackled like two old crones," Maya tells in her book, "remembering a secret past." The laughter is not sweet and happy and not really directed at white women. "It is a traditional ruse that was used to shield the Black vulnerability; we laughed to keep from crying." When a few years later, Maya flys to Montreal to join the cast of "Porgy and Bess," she notices a different aura about the city, about the people. She loves Montreal for its deviance from America. She loves to walk the streets alone and just see things, and think. Among the many perversities in American race relations in the fact that Blacks do not relish looking closely at whites. After hundreds of years of being the invisible people ourselves, as soon as many of us have achieved economic security we try to force whites into nonexistence by ignoring them. Maya Angelou, in her younger self, finds a way of oppressing the white people in her own way. She can laugh at them as if the entire race were a big joke. She can ignore them and pretend that only blacks walked the earth.Why not? She realizes that the white race has been doing the very same things to her race. Shortly after Maya's first positive encounter with the white woman she meets a man at the record store who seems to share the same interests. He also has an interest in Maya as a prospective bride and he tickles her weak spot by becoming good friends with her son, Clyde. Maya soon realizes that this man, a handsome Greek, is discreetly courting her, but she feels she must not let him know she knows."The knowledge has to remain inside me, unrevealed, or I would have to make a decision, and that decision had been made for me by the centuries of slavery, the violation of my people, the violence of whites." She knows that before her birth anger and guilt had decided that Black was Black and White was White. Although the two may share the sexual experience, "they must never exchange love." Maya decides to marry the Greek because she needs the man-woman, husband-wife relationship and she feels that Clyde needs a father. The marriage lasts a couple of years then dissolves because Maya finds her independence and liberation and her husband loses his feelings of marital stability. At another of many parties, Maya meets eyes with a very handsome black man. The attraction on her part is squelched when he introduces her to his petite, white wife, 21