Maya Angelou, "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes"

.

 

 

Maya Angelou, "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986)

 

 

닷새 전에 Koelbel Library Cafe에서 우연히 눈에 띄어 몇 쪽 읽어보다가 산 책이다. 저자의 3년간(1962-1965)의 Ghana 시절 회고록이다. 책 뒤표지의 Washington Post Book World 인용 문장에 공감한다:  "Maya Angelou regards the world and herself with intelligence and wit; she records the events of her life with style and grace."

 

(갖고 있는 Maya Angelou의 다른 두 책 ”The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou"(1994)와, 아직 읽지 못한, "The Heart of A Woman"(1981)도 역시 우연히 Koelbel Cafe에서 산 것으로 기억한다. 지금 찾아보니, 내 블로그에 Maya Angelou의 시편 "Passing Time" (그리고, 답글에서, "Canging")과 "Human Family"를 포스팅했었다.)

 

 

본문에서

 

I thought of my grandmother who said, "If you want to know how important you are to the world, stick your finger in a pond and pull it out. Will the hole remain?" (p. 135)

 

     I began the old song softly, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Coming fot to carry me home." ...

     Other voices picked a harmonic path into the song, and I heard Banti's high soprano waver, "If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me hone, Tell all my friends I'm coming too, Coming for to carry me home." They sounded neither like Whites nor like Black Americans, but they sang with such emotion that tears filled my eyes. Save for a few Egyptian government officials and me, all the singers were African. ... [S]o for what chariot were they calling and what home could they possibly missing? I dropped my voice and gave them the song. ...

 

     Still, their faces glowed as they picked up the melody.

 

                     See that host all dressed in red,

                     Coming for to carry me home.

                     It looks like a band that Moses led,

                     Coming for to carry me home.

 

     They were earnest and their voices were in tune, but they could not duplicate the hunting melody of our singing. ...

     The strains faded away and beautiful smiles accompanied the audience's applause. In the absence of my creative ancestors who picked that melody out of cotton sacks, I humbly bowed my head. (pp. 182-84)

 

We had crossed the unknowable oceans in chains and had written its mystery into "Deep River, my home is over Jordan." Through the centuries of despair and dislocation, we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope. (p. 207)

 

[F]or now I know my people had never completely left Africa. We had sung it in our blues, shouted it in our gospel and danced the continent in our breakdowns. As we carry it to Philadelphia, Boston and Birmingham we had changed its color, modified its rhythms, yet it was Africa which rode in the bulges of our high carves, shook in our protruding behinds and crackled in our wide open laughter/ (p. 208) 

 

 

 

 

Maya Angelou (위, 아래 사진: Learning For Justice Magazine에서)