Maya Angelou

Some accomplishments of a life of 86 years.

Charles Pierce's reliably apt words—

Hers was an authentic American voice, as much as are Whitman or Dickinson, Melville or Dylan, Poe or Twain or Baldwin or Wright. It at first was marginalized as an American voice because she was an American whom Americans wanted to marginalize. But she broke through. She made art out of her life, and she made her life into art. She touched every element of the freedom struggle, from the marches in the streets to the arguments in literary salons, to the demand of the African American voice simply to be heard. She insisted on telling her story in order to tell the rest of us something about ourselves. She insisted -- nay demanded her place in the collective American narrative. She engaged in a lifelong project of reinvention, and she put that reinvention always to high and noble purpose, and that was what made her an authentic American voice after all. Her passing leaves a silence, but only a brief one. We will come back to Maya Angelou, again and again.

Among other worthwhile comments is this thought—

David Clayton · The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

That she continued to live and die in the newly insane state of North Carolina should give readers of this blog hope for the future. Our greatest light has gone dark, but thankfully her voice will never be extinguished.