The Heart of a Woman

“She painted a picture of a lovely land, pastoral and bucolic, then added eyes bulged and mouths twisted, into the Southern landscape. Guy broke into her song. ‘What’s a pastoral scene, Miss Holiday?’ Billy looked up slowly and studied Guy for a second. Her face became cruel, and when she spoke her voice was scornful. ‘It means when the crackers are killing the n*****s. It means when they take a little n***** like you and snatch off his nuts and shove them down his goddam throat. That’s what it means.’ The thrust of rage repelled Guy and stunned me.”

Billy Holiday, who was already ill from years of substance abuse, emerges as a deeply embittered figure with highly erratic behavior. During her short friendship with Angelou, Holiday makes an effort to tone down her language and reactions around Guy, but during this scene, after Guy repeatedly interrupts her while she is singing the song “Strange Fruit,” she suddenly snaps at him, painting a sadistic picture of racial violence. Angelou does not speculate on the source of Holiday’s sudden rage or express any judgment on the singer for her reaction. A parallel emerges between the scenes in the song and Angelou’s house. In the song, the natural beauty of the Southern landscape is sharply and abruptly contrasted with the horror of the lynchings. For Holiday, her time with Guy has been a rare ray of hope, but recalling the horror of racial violence, she falls into despair and sees the boy as nothing more than another doomed object of white hatred.

“I followed the jobs, and against the advice of a pompous school psychologist, I had taken Guy along. The psychologist had been white, obviously educated and with those assets I knew he was also well-to-do. How could he know what a young Negro boy needed in a racist world?”

In choosing to keep her son with her as she follows employment opportunities around the country, Angelou differs from her own parents, who left her and her brother with their grandmother for a significant part of their childhood. The white psychologist is representative of the multiple white authority figures who appear to undermine and compromise Black mothers. The difficulty of raising an African American child in an endemically racist society will be a key concern throughout the text and highlights the theme of African American Motherhood.

“The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. She questions whether she loves her children enough - or more terribly, does she love them too much? Do her looks cause embarrassment - or even more terrifying, is she so attractive that her son’s begin to desire her and her daughters begin to hate her? If she is unmarried, the challenges are increased. Her singleness indicates that she has rejected, or been rejected by her mate. Yet she is raising children who will become mates. […] In the face of these contradictions, she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged.”

Angelou interpolates this long reflection on Black, single motherhood after she is shocked to realize that Guy has been alone in Los Angeles while she has been trying to establish herself in New York. African American Motherhood is one of the central themes of this volume, and the concerns raised in this passage will continue to emerge throughout the narrative. Angelou makes repeated use of the conjunctions “yet” and “or” to present the series of seemingly irreconcilable contradictions with which she is faced as an African American single parent.

“Most of us had been Toms at different times of our lives. There had been occasions when the price of freedom was more than I wanted to pay.”

Here, as elsewhere, Angelou alludes to the stereotype of the subservient, deferential enslaved person associated with the 19th-century novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The “price of freedom” is a recurrent issue throughout the text. Angelou often worries that her personal emancipation as a woman is being won at a high price to her son, and her reflections on her abandonment as a child suggest that her own mother’s freedom came at a high price to her loved ones.

“If I ended in defeat, at least I would be trying. Trying to overcome was black people’s honorable tradition.”

At the end of Chapter 2, Angelou commits to reading a new short story at the Harlem Writers Guild. Here again, the personal and the political—the situation of Black people in general and Maya Angelou in particular—are conflated.

“I didn’t expect the director to know that my life, like the lives of other black Americans, could be credited to miraculous experiences. But there is one other thing I was sure he didn’t know. Black people in Harlem were changing, and the Apollo audience was black. The echo of African drums was less distant in 1959 than it had been for over a century.”

Angelou has just decided to ignore the Apollo director’s advice not to sing the audience participation song, “Uhuru.” She is reflecting on the growing identification among African American people with their African roots as a consequence of the Pan-African movement. For all of his experience working in Harlem, Angelou feels that the white director of the show lacks insight into contemporary Black experience and that, as a Black woman, she is more in tune with the mood of the audience.

“We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country.”

Here, Angelou is paraphrasing the speech by Martin Luther King Jr. that inspired her to launch the “Cabaret for Freedom” initiative and become involved in the SCLC. Her use of the collective “we” reveals how strongly Angelou identifies with King’s message. King argued that Black people could redeem the society United States as a whole, and this viewpoint contrasts to the more partisan Pan-African vision of Malcolm X and others. Angelou tends to oscillate between these two approaches throughout The Heart of a Woman.

“My people had used music to soothe slavery’s torment or to propitiate God, or to describe the sweetness of love and the distress of lovelessness, but I knew no race could sing and dance it’s way to freedom.”

Over the course of the text, Angelou gradually passes from her career as a musical entertainer to pursuing her vocation as a writer and activist. Here, as on several other occasions, she questions the political seriousness of “singing and dancing” when compared to other forms of artistic expression and political activism. Although the promotional role for which she volunteers still proves important, there is a degree of inherent irony in this statement. The enormous socio-political impact of the arts, from the spirituals to the jazz albums of Max Roach to the “Cabaret for Freedom” itself, is evident throughout the text.

“It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom.”

This passage draws an analogy between motherhood and the civil rights movement, which is pertinent to the text as a whole. Throughout the text, Angelou struggles to reconcile her maternal and political commitments, but the two are ultimately inextricably connected. Guy, with his growing political engagement, represents the future hope of the movement, and Angelou’s political activism is, in turn, contributing to a better future for her son.

“The Clancy Brothers’ fans had found room to accept my songs and the black people who came to hear me had been surprised to find that not only did they enjoy the Irish singers’ anger, they understood it. We drank to each other’s resistance.”

Angelou meets the traditional Irish music duo, the Clancy Brothers, while performing in Chicago. Despite the geographical and cultural differences between the two, the Black and Irish audiences and artists immediately understand each other because of their shared history of oppression.

“They were young black men, preying on other young black men. They had been informed, successfully, that they were worthless, and everyone who looked like them was equally without worth. […] I understood the Savages. I understood and hated the system that molded them, but understanding in no way licensed them to vent their frustrations on my son.”

In Chapter 5, Angelou finds herself able to empathize with and understand the young members of the Savages gang who are threatening her son. The devastating effect that growing up in an endemically prejudiced society can have on Black youth is a recurrent concern in the novels and represents a major source of anxiety for Angelou as the mother of an African American teenager. She uses repetition in “I understood […] I understood” and “worthless […] without worth” creates a sense of monotonous hopelessness and underscores the strength of her own feeling.

 “I was still suspicious of most white liberals, but Shelley Winters sounded practical and I trusted her immediately. After all, she was a mother just like me, looking after her child.”

On many occasions in The Heart of a Woman, Angelou expresses distrust of white liberals’ interest in the Black struggle for civil rights. In the case of the actress Shelley Winters, she trusts her public statement because she can relate to Winters’s desire to leave a better world for her child. The shared experiences of motherhood create a sense of community which surpasses barriers of race.

“Martin King had been a hero and a leader to me since the time when Godfrey and I heard him speak and had been carried by glory on his wings of hope. However, the personal sadness he showed when I spoke of my brother put my heart in his keeping forever, and made me thrust away the small constant worry that my mother had given me as a part of an early parting gift: Black folks can’t change because white folks won’t change.”

During her first meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., Angelou is profoundly touched by his compassion for her brother, Bailey. At a rational level and politically, she retains a degree of skepticism regarding King’s optimistic, integrationist doctrine and his Christian rhetoric of forgiveness and redemption through suffering. However, on a personal, human level she is devoted to him. Bailey is presented as a promising, bright, and strong-willed young man not unlike Guy in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and his current plight is a haunting reminder of the potentially devastating effects of growing up in a prejudiced society.

“Intelligence always had a pornographic influence on me.

He asked for questions and was immediately satisfied.

“Which organization was the most popular in South Africa?” Was he really flirting with me?

“Did Luthuli and Sobukwe get along?” Did fat men make love like thin ones?

“When would the average South African become politically aware?” Was he married?”

In this passage, Angelou alternates between direct and free indirect discourse to contrast the political questions being asked out loud with the questions she is asking herself. Her erotic desires are thus placed side by side with the public, political activity in which she is engaged, and her priorities as a political activist are rather comically intertwined with her fantasies as a single woman.

“I haven’t lost anything in Africa and they haven’t lost anything in our country.”

Here, Thomas Allen flatly denies the principles of Pan-Africanism, which were increasingly informing the civil rights struggle and Angelou’s conception of her own identity. He establishes an “us and then” dichotomy between America (“our country”) and African countries, which are referred to in the third person plural (“They haven’t lost anything…”). Historically, African culture was portrayed as “primitive” by the American educational system, and while many Black American activists embraced Pan-Africanism, others used the phrase “I ain’t left nothing in Africa” to distance themselves from a culture considered both distant and “inferior.” Malcolm X denounces this view in his “Message to the Grassroots” speech on Black nationalism in 1963.

“The little mirror over the washstand was vague with dust but I looked in it and saw misery in sharp outline. If I went through with the wedding with Thomas, I would load our marriage with such disappointment, the structure couldn’t stand. He was too good a man to abuse, yet I knew I would never forget or forgive the facts. […] Make needed me. I would be a help to him. I was brave. Abbey had once told me I was too crazy to be afraid. I would be a fool to let Make go to a bunch of whorish white women in Amsterdam. In fact, I might be betraying the whole struggle. I wouldn’t do that. And then Guy. Guy would have the chance to have an African father.”

In this passage, Angelou uses free indirect discourse to reproduce her interior monologue as she gradually justifies her decision to choose Vusumzi Make over Thomas Allen. The dusty mirror in which she sees her vague reflection as she argues with herself is symbolic of her difficulty in Finding an Authentic Voice as an African American woman, mother, activist, and artist. Angelou’s thoughts begin with Thomas Allen, then shift to Make, and then ultimately to Guy. At the same time, she moves from her need for personal happiness to her loyalty to the civil rights movement, to her responsibility as an African American mother. Both shifts are marked with a sentence fragment (“And Make […] And Guy […]”), which provides a sense of Angelou’s agitated mental state, as do some of the rather hyperbolical stretches of her argument (e.g., the notion that leaving Make to visit sex workers in Amsterdam would be “betraying the whole struggle”).

“Vus saw me as the flesh of his youthful dream. I would bring to him the vitality of jazz and the endurance of a people who had survived three hundred and fifty years of slavery. With me in his bed he would challenge the loneliness of exile. With my courage added to his own, he would succeed in bringing the ignominious white rule in South Africa to an end. If I didn’t already have the qualities he needed, then I would develop them. Infatuation made me believe in my ability to create myself into my lover’s desire.”

This passage, which occurs just before Angelou leaves Allen, already hints that the author’s relationship to Make lacks sound foundations. Although the passage should be describing Angelou’s role in their future marriage, the subject of the first sentence is her new fiancé: “Vus saw me.” Moreover, the basis for Make’s idealized vision is described as a “dream,” and Angelou’s own faith in her ability to make this dream come true is fueled by “infatuation.” This foreshadows that Make does not value Angelou’s agency either as an activist or a woman.

“‘He’s African, ain’t he? Then, he’s a n***** just like me and just like you. Except that you try to act like a goddam ofay girl. But you just as much a n***** as I am. And so is your goddam Martin Luther King, another blackass n*****.’

He knew I loathed that word and didn’t allow its use in my home. Now each time he said ‘n*****’ he sharpened it and thrust it, rapierlike, into my body.”

Allen responds to the news that Angelou will be leaving him for Make by repeatedly using the racist term “n*****.” Allan uses the term, which, has a long history of being used to dehumanize Black people, to put a cynical twist on Angelou’s activism and show that in the eyes of the white world, all Black people are “less-than.” He does so to avenge himself on Angelou, and she describes his use of the word as a violent penetration, evoking rape imagery.

“She began to speak quietly, near a moan. Her tempo and volume increased into a certain chant. She walked around in rhythm and dribbled beer around the four corners of the room. The women, watching, accompanied her in their languages, urging her on, and she complied. The Somali women’s voices were united into the vocal encouragements. I added ‘amens’ and ‘hallelujahs,’ knowing that despite the distances represented and the Babel-like sound of the languages, we were calling on God to move and move right now. Stop the bloodshed. Feed the children. Free the imprisoned and uplift the downtrodden.”

Angelou finds community with a group of African freedom fighters’ wives. They share stories of women’s role in the fight against oppression and, despite the cultural and linguistic barriers that ostensibly divide them, come away with a powerful sense of sisterhood and shared experience. Although the Ugandan ritual seems unfamiliar and “exotic” to Angelou, she understands the shared sentiment and experience.

“‘The worst injury of slavery was that the white man took away the black man’s chance to be in charge of himself, his wife and his family. Vus is teaching you that you’re not a man, no matter how strong you are. He’s going to make you into an African woman.’ She dismissed the discussion and me. But she didn’t know the African women I had met in London or the legendary women in the African stories. I wanted to be a wife and to create a beautiful home and make my man happy, but there was more to life than being a diligent maid and permanent pussy.”

Back in New York, Angelou, who has left her job at the SCLC, is increasingly frustrated with her role as full-time housewife to Make. Rosa Guy counters that feminism is a Western construct and that to become “an African woman” she must abandon these principles and submit to traditional African patriarchy. Having spent time in the company of strong, politically active African women in London, Angelou remains convinced in her ability to balance her conjugal and maternal roles with an emancipated and intellectually stimulating life.

“I’ll say the whites killed a black man. Another black man.”

As Abbey Lincoln addresses the crowd at the Harlem bookstore following the murder of Patrice Lumumba, she concludes that, rather than being construed as a crime committed by one nation against another it should simply be understood on the level of racial violence that crosses geopolitical borders. In this way, she firmly links the freedom struggles of decolonized Africa with those of African Americans.

“The Blacks was a white foreigner’s idea of a people he did not understand. Genet had superimposed the meanness and cruelty of his own people onto a race he had never known, a race already nearly doubled over carrying the white man’s burden of greed and guilt, and which at the same time toted its own insufficiency.”

Unlike Roach and Make, Angelou has a low opinion of Jean Genet’s play, The Blacks. As elsewhere, she is cautious of white attempts to comment on civil rights issues or contribute to Black political causes. Moreover, she disagrees with the play’s suggestion that Black people would be capable of the same cruelty and tyranny as white people. Roach and Make will both mock her for this belief, accusing her of a racism against white people, but the white producers’ treatment of Black artists during production and the questionable motivations of the mostly white audience leave Angelou feeling vindicated in her suspicions about the play.

“I had never felt that Egypt was really Africa, but now that our route had taken us across the Sahara, I could look down from my window seat and see trees, and bushes, rivers and dense forests. It all began here. The jumble of poverty-stricken children sleeping in rat-infested tenements or abandoned cars. The terrifying moan of my grandmother, ‘Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more’ The drugged days and alcoholic nights of men for whom hope had not been born. The loneliness of women who would never know appreciation or a mite’s share of honor. Here, along the banks of that river, someone was taken, tied with ropes, shackled with chains, forced to march for weeks carrying the double burden of neck irons and abysmal fear. […] I wept.”

In this passage, as Angelou flies away from Make and Cairo, she has an epiphany about the shared history of slavery and its devastating ongoing legacy. Throughout the text, Angelou wrestles with questions of identity, unsuccessfully seeking her place as an African American woman. With this passage, she attributes her struggles and those of her people to the historical exile and disenfranchisement of slavery and feels a tragic connection that crosses both time and space.