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Dialogues@RU is published annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume One
Spring 2002
Maya Angelou:
Finding a Voice through her Complex Vision of Self and Shakespeare -
Page 3
by Lisa Giberson
In Angelou's autobiography she searches for a way to portray her ethnic and racial roots along with the isolated and unique vision of self that she has formed. Angelou cannot separate herself entirely from the black community. She brings her self that is connected to the black community together with her isolated self. In Michael M.J. Fischer's article, "Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory", he writes, "[…] the ethnic search is a mirror of the bifocality that has always been a part of the anthropological rationale: seeing others against a background of ourselves, and ourselves against a background of others" (6). Fisher's "bifocality" is the experience that one has as a minority in search of an identity representative of one's ethnicity and individuality. The autobiographer must be able to recognize the differences and similarities between the prevailing, segregating culture and the underlying ethnicity. Angelou sees herself not only as a member of the black community but also as an individual isolated from that community. She may appear to be black but she does not speak in the black vernacular of Stamps and she sees past the limited existence offered to her by the black community. Despite the imaginary world that Angelou has created she is acutely aware that she is a member of the oppressed society. "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult" (Angelou 4). It is bad enough to grow up in a society where you are categorized as inferior, but to be conscious of the lack of opportunity for you to move beyond this limited scope makes it almost impossible to endure. Angelou looks for a way to see past the image of ethnicity that is projected back at her, therefore she creates an imaginary identity where she is white and therefore powerful. This alter ego allows her to think she has opportunities and makes the insults possible for Angelou to endure.
Maya Angelou develops another facet to her imaginary world at a very young age; her love of literature and Shakespeare help her to escape the ugliness of reality. It is this love and consequent identification with Shakespeare that allows Angelou to find her voice in the racially segregated town of Stamps. Angelou finds a way to look past the oppression experienced by her family and the other black families in Stamps by creating a "dual consciousness". Angelou develops a world where she identifies with the writing and the characters of literature. This new consciousness affords Angelou an identity that is removed from the racial inequality of the South. By burying herself in books Angelou can escape the reality of her existence. This "dual consciousness" is a concept in "Woman's Consciousness, Man's World", by feminist theorist Sheila Rowbotham and outlined in Susan Stanford Freidman's article:
…cultural representations of women lead not only to women's alienation, but also to the potential for a new consciousness of self (26-46) . Not recognizing themselves in the reflections of cultural representation, women develop a dual consciousness - the self as culturally defined and the self as different from cultural prescription (95).
Friedman interprets Rowbotham, saying that women (and this would apply
to other minorities as well), not seeing themselves in the prevailing
culture that surrounds them, must create a "dual consciousness"
that incorporates the self connected to their group identity and the self
that is separate and unique from the group. Rowbotham's theory of "dual
consciousness" complicates and parallels that of Du Bois' "twoness",
because a woman or a member of a minority must see themselves also through
the eyes of the oppressors, this can inspire them to create a separate
identity apart from the group. When the prevailing culture places a group
identity on women or minorities, not seeing themselves in the group can
result in the creation of a different and "isolated identity"
which affords them a new "consciousness". Angelou uses literature
to create this separate identity. Her consciousness that is linked to
literature can provide her with the power and opportunity that she does
not have as a black minority in Stamps. Creating a world within her books
provides Angelou a new isolated vision of herself. Angelou's "dual
consciousness" frees her from the limited collective identity of
the black community.
Angelou enlists her love of literature and Shakespeare to form her new
consciousness and to free her from the oppressed society that holds her
down. Literature provides Angelou with a more diverse view of the world,
including her own ethnicity. Angelou is able to read and be influenced
by the literature written by and about blacks outside of Stamps along
with the classic white literature. Angelou writes:
During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love. Although I enjoyed and respected Kipling, Poe, Butler, Thackeray and Henley, I saved my young and loyal passion for Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois' 'Litany at Atlanta.' But it was Shakespeare who said, 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.' It was a state with which I felt myself most familiar (13-14).
Unable to express herself in her own bailiwick, Angelou finds refuge and validation in the world of literature. Angelou is able through literature to find black voices and role models unavailable to her in Stamps. Angelou is loyal and passionate about the literature of the authors of the Harlem Renaissance period, however she most identifies with Shakespeare's Sonnet 29, because what he writes mirrors how she feels as a young black girl in Stamps. Wishing to be "white" with long blonde hair and blue eyes isolates her from the rest of the black community and she feels "in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes". Her "dual consciousness" is reflected in her choice of literature. Angelou is connected to the literature of the black authors, however Shakespeare lends a voice to the ideas that Angelou is unable to express. Shakespeare is the part of her identity that she has isolated from her cultural roots, the desire to be "white" and all that being "white" entails. The voice she finds in literature and especially Shakespeare is what forms the basis of her "isolated" identity.
This "isolated" identity is heightened when she returns to Stamps, in a self-imposed silence, after living for a short time in St. Louis with her mother. Experiencing the trauma of being raped at the age of eight, Angelou finds solace in the world of silence. According to Angelou:
I discovered that to achieve perfect personal silence all I had to do was to attach myself leechlike to sound. I began to listen to everything. I probably hoped that after I had heard all the sounds, really heard them and packed them down, deep in my ears, the world would be quiet around me. I walked into rooms where people were laughing, their voices hitting the walls like stones, and I simply stood still- in the midst of the riot of sound. After a minute or two, silence would rush into the room from its hiding place because I had eaten up all the sounds (87-88).
Angelou writes of her silence as if it were a way for her to gain verbal control. By not speaking it allowed her a better opportunity to listen and perhaps to hear something previously unattainable. When she was silent she felt as if she "had eaten up all the sounds", this made her silence powerful and afforded her a control that the eight-year old Marguerite lacked. Angelou's silence was a new "consciousness" that provided her with a way to deal with her rape and her inability to control her own life.