Jamila Bey
Journalist, radio host, director of communications at Secular Student Alliance
When I was in 6th grade, the report I chose to do was on Maya Angelou. Our "Internet" at the time, the World Book Encyclopedia, didn't have a listing. My scholars teacher insisted that the author's name was actually D'Angelou. But I wrote about "Still I Rise," "Phenomenal Woman" and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Jabari Asim
Author, editor, educator
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I wish I understood why my choice of author and subject was actually a brilliant, dare I say, revolutionary one at the time. I knew nothing of Feminist Studies or Women's Studies or Black Studies. I had no idea that simply deciding to write about a woman who wrote about her own black female experience was actually not the obvious choice for a girl from The Hill District in Pittsburgh, an overwhelmingly black, mostly working-class and tight-knit community.
And I wish that paper hadn't misspelled her name.
She reminded me of Paul Robeson because both were polymaths who had both actual and metaphorical stature. She was a six footer who never slouched but wore her height with grace and confidence.
She was a member of that great generation of African-American expatriates who congregated in Ghana in the 1960s, including David Levering Lewis,
Malcolm X, and W.E.B. and Shirley Graham DuBois.
She was part of a significant cultural turning point in 1970, when she, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker each published her first major prose work: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, The Bluest Eye and The Third Life Of Grange Copeland.
I last saw her at the National Book Awards in November, when she was honored for her life’s work. I was very aware that it was a historically significant moment that it was
probably one of the last times
she’d appear at such a gathering. Toni Morrison presented her award to her, and though Morrison had been wheelchair-bound for a while,
she insisted on walking to the podium because she wanted to walk for Maya.
I tweeted from my seat in the audience. Like her friend James Baldwin, Angelou was always so imminently quotable.
One memorable quote that evening: “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”