Contributed Photo: “Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration” by Marcia Ann Gillespie, Rosa Johnson Butler and Richard A. Long, foreword by Oprah Winfrey.
New Book Celebrates Poet Maya Angelou
Sunday, May 04, 2008 - 12:00 AM
BY Terri Schlichenmeyer Special to the Herald Courier Send e-mail |
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Printer Friendly“Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration” by Marcia Ann Gillespie, Rosa Johnson Butler and Richard A. Long, foreword by Oprah Winfrey, 2008, Doubleday, $30/$34 Canada, 192 pages; and 2008, Brilliance Audio, read by Dion Graham, $26.95, 3 CDs/appx. 3 hours: Life, they say, is meant to be enjoyed. Nobody ever looked back on their life and wished they had worked an extra day. Carpe diem. Never stop looking for opportunity and never stop having fun.
Chances are, your heroes took all of the above to heart. Their exuberance for life and their zest for experience are two traits that made them who they are.
The same goes for poet Maya Angelou. In the new book “Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration” by Marcia Ann Gillespie, Rosa Johnson Butler and Richard A. Long (with foreword by Oprah Winfrey), you’ll read about the rich life of a modern American hero.
Marguerite Johnson was born in St. Louis on April 4, 1928, the second child and only daughter of her parents.
When she was still a baby, the family moved to California, but the Johnson marriage collapsed soon afterward. Three-year-old Marguerite and her older brother, Bailey, were sent to Stamps, Ark. to live with their grandmother.
Annie Henderson, Marguerite’s paternal grandmother, gave the girl a good foundation and a stand-up-for-yourself spirit. Henderson was a formidable person in the community and a businesswoman, and her portrait is one of the three that Angelou looks at every day, even now.
As a typical teenager, Marguerite spread her wings and tested her maturity but her first encounter with intimacy resulted in a surprise. In 1945, at a time when unmarried pregnancy was scandalous, Marguerite became a mother. In 1951, she married Tosh Angelos, a man who would give her son a father and Marguerite, her last name.
Following her marriage, Marguerite decided to reach for a dream and become a dancer. At about this time, she changed her first name to “Maya” and tweaked her last name a bit. She wrote plays (often to critical scorn), and she was in great demand as a performer on and off-stage.
Following a divorce, Angelou married South African Vus Make and she gave up her career for her husband. The couple moved to Ghana for a time, but America called to Angelou.
She returned stateside to work with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
And she began writing in earnest.
I was extremely fortunate to get this book both in paper form and on CD. The problem is, I can’t decide which one to recommend to you. I loved them both.
On one hand, I enjoy listening to Dion Graham, the narrator on the audiobook. Graham’s voice itself is like poetry, and his strong performance brings Angelou’s experiences to life.
On the other hand, I can’t imagine missing out on the photographs included in the book. Friends and followers of Angelou alike will find rarely-before-seen pictures in here, including some from Angelou’s early years and of her family.
As Angelou proceeds through her 80th decade, either of the versions of this wonderful, rich book would be great ways to fete her.
“Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration” is a book about a life lived and one you will definitely enjoy.
‘SUCKAH’ REVIEW
“How to Duck a Suckah” by Big Boom, 2008, Fireside Books, $15/$17.50 Canada, 175 pages: Your last relationship started out well, but it fizzled, fast. Sound familiar? Maybe you’ve been looking for Mr. Right in the wrong places. In the new book “How to Duck a Suckah” by Big Boom, you’ll learn first-hand ditching advice from a former suckah.
Big Boom says that he’s done some things in his day that you wouldn’t believe. That’s because he was a young suckah. By “suckah,” he means a man who has a serious relationship but cheats on his woman. Boom says there are lots of things you can do to avoid suckahs. First, he says, take time to learn who you really are. Then be true to the person you know yourself to be.
Once you find a man you think you can love forever, be safe and don’t let your new man rush you into something that makes you uncomfortable. Dig into his history and find out who he is. Let’s say you found someone you love, but he turned out to be a true suckah. What next? Boom says you should never put up with abuse of any sort. Get out of a bad relationship, fast. Most of all, enjoy being a woman. Pick yourself up when things get lousy, and get back into the race. There are good men out there.
Oh, my. I had such high hopes for this book.
“How to Duck a Suckah” seems to be written with a woman’s best interests in mind; in fact, author Big Boom calls himself “The Bodyguard for Women’s Hearts.” He gives some good advice, but he also gives plenty of bad.
Why, for instance, does his book take readers from supposedly-real “Pimp Rules” to the necessity for nice, matching underwear? Child-rearing advice is in here, but I didn’t see how that related to ditching a man. Neither did misogynistic statements like “Girls follow, men lead. Girls are not supposed to be in the front” and “We (men) don’t need that … talking, because you are the one who got this mess started, anyway.” Despite the title, I thought much of Boom’s advice was more about making an overly-demanding man happy and less about how to get rid of an unwanted boyfriend or pest.
“How to Duck a Suckah” is not the light-hearted book I had hoped it would be. Instead, it’s scattered and not very useful to women who know their minds. Unless you’re in an abusive relationship that you honestly, truly don’t know how to escape, consider this a book to duck.
TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.
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