Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

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Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969)

 

 

 

우리 동네 도서관 라운지는 커피숍이기도 하지만 기증받은 책들을 3-4불에 파는 서점이기도 한데, 여기서 눈에 띄어 산 책들 중에는 Maya Angelou의 이 책(이 달에), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes(지난달에), 그리고 시집(11년 전에)도 있고 Joseph Epstein의 The ideal of Culture(2018에)와 A Literary Education(2019에)도 있다. 이 다섯 책들이 내겐 다 재밌었고, 아무튼, 다 'literary interest'였다. 한 흑인 여성 Maya Angelou 그리고 한 유태인 남성 Joseph Epstein에 대해서도 조금은 알게 됐고,  Israel Joshua Singer의 소설 The Brothers Ashkenazi를 읽게 된 것도 "The Ideal of Culture"에 실린 Epstein의 에세이 덕분이었다. 더 안 나아가기로 하지만 이렇게 시작한 것은 "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"를 읽다가, 문득, "A Literary Education"에서 Epstein이 흑인 작가들에 대해 언급한 게 생각 나서다. 그 부분을 찾아 다시 읽어본다:

 

"How account for the distance in seriousness between, say, Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou, between Martin Lither King and Jesse Jackson?" --- 에세이 "My 1950s"에서

 

"In the contemporary university literature and painting are often put through the meat grinder of race, class, and gender. This is well known. What is perhaps less well-known is the odd way it has skewed the arts themselves. To give an example of how the skewing works, ... I was called by the (London) Daily Telegraph for my opinion of the poet Maya Amgelou .... I told the reporter that I had no opinion of Maya Angelou, for i had read only a few of her poems and thought these of no great literary interest." --- 에세이 "What To Do About the Arts"에서

 

 

The Guardian 서평에서:

 

Angelou finds her voice and a love of language and books through the help of Mrs Bertha Flowers who, writes Angelou, "has remained throughout my life the measure of what a human being can be". The memoir's absorbing emotional arc traces Angelou's growth from inferiority complex to confidence, finding the strength to tackle "the puzzle of inequality and hate" and be hired as the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco thanks to her "honeycomb of determination."

 

본문에서

 

    There was shuffling and rustling qround me, then Henry Reed was giving his valedictory address [중학교 졸업식에서], "To Be or Not to Be." ... Henry Reed, the conservative, the proper, the A student, turn his back to the audience and turn to us (the proud graduating class of 1940) and sing, nearly speaking,

 

          " lift-ev'ry-voice-and-sing

           Till earth and heaven ring

           Ring with the harmonies of Lliberty ..."

 

It was the poem written by James Weldon Johnson. it was the music composed by J. Rosamond Johnson. it was the Negro national anthem. ...

 

    And now i heard really for the first time:

 

          "We have come over a way that with tears

           has been watered,

           We have come, treading our path through

           the blood of the slaughtered." (pp. 180-1)

 

    George Washington High School was the first real school I attended. My entire stay there might have been time lost if it hadn't been for the unique personality of a brilliant teacher. Miss Kirwin was that rare educator who was in love with information. ...

    She was stimulating instead of intimating. Where some of the other teachers went out of their way to be nice to me -- to be a "liberal" with me -- and others ignored me completely, Miss Kirwin never seemed to notice that i was Black and therefore different. ...

    Years later when I returned to San Francisco I made visits to her class room. ... I was never encouraged on those visits to loiter or linger about her desk. She acted as if i must have had other visits to make. I often wonderes if she knew she was the only teacher I remembered. (pp. 212-3)

 

The fact that adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance. (p. 268)