The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

2004 Modern Library Edition

Compilation copyright © 2004 by Random House, Inc.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
copyright © 1969, copyright renewed 1997
by Maya Angelou
Gather Together in My Name
copyright © 1974, copyright renewed 2002
by Maya Angelou
Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas
copyright © 1976
by Maya Angelou
The Heart of a Woman
copyright © 1981 by Maya Angelou
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
copyright © 1986 by Maya Angelou
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
copyright © 2002 by Maya Angelou

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.

M
ODERN
L
IBRARY
and the T
ORCHBEARER
Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Each of the six works contained in this book was published individually
by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc.

Owing to limitations of space, permission acknowledgments appear on page 1172.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Angelou, Maya.
The collected autobiographies of Maya Angelou / Maya Angelou.
p.   cm.
Contents: I know why the caged bird sings—Gather together in my name—Singin’ and swingin’ and getting’ merry like Christmas—The heart of a woman—All God’s children need traveling shoes—A song flung up to heaven.
eISBN: 978-0-307-43205-6
1. Angelou, Maya—Childhood and youth.  2. Authors, American—Homes and haunts—Arkansas.  3. Angelou, Maya—Homes and haunts—Arkansas.  4. Authors, American—20th century—Biography.  5. Entertainers—United States—Biography. 6. African American families—Arkansas. 7. African American authors—Biography. 8. Arkansas—Social life and customs.  I. Title.
PS3551.N464Z466 2004
818’.5409—dc22 2004046665

[B]
Modern Library website address:
www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

This book is dedicated to My Son,
GUY JOHNSON,
and all the Strong Black Birds of Promise
Who Defy the Odds and Gods
and Sing Their Songs

I thank my mother
, V
IVIAN
B
AXTER
,
and my brother
, B
AILEY
J
OHNSON
,
who encouraged me to remember. Thanks to the
H
ARLEM
W
RITERS’
G
UILD
for concern and to
J
OHN
O. K
ILLENS
who told me I could write. To
N
ANA
K
OBINA
N
KETSIA
IV
who insisted that I must. Lasting gratitude to
G
ERARD
P
URCELL
who believed concretely and to
T
ONY
D
’AMATO
who understood. Thanks to
A
BBEY
L
INCOLN
R
OACH
for naming my book
.

A final thanks to my editor at Random House
, R
OBERT
L
OOMIS
,
who gently prodded me back into the lost years
.

I hadn’t so much forgot as I couldn’t bring myself to remember. Other things were more important.

Whether I could remember the rest of the poem or not was immaterial. The truth of the statement was like a wadded-up handkerchief, sopping wet in my fists, and the sooner they accepted it the quicker I could let my hands open and the air would cool my palms.

The children’s section of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was wiggling and giggling over my well-known forgetfulness.

The dress I wore was lavender taffeta, and each time I breathed it rustled, and now that I was sucking in air to breathe out shame it sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses.

As I’d watched Momma put ruffles on the hem and cute little tucks around the waist, I knew that once I put it on I’d look like a movie star. (It was silk and that made up for the awful color.) I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of
what was right with the world. Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, “Marguerite [sometimes it was ‘dear Marguerite’], forgive us, please, we didn’t know who you were,” and I would answer generously, “No, you couldn’t have known. Of course I forgive you.”

Just thinking about it made me go around with angel’s dust sprinkled over my face for days. But Easter’s early morning sun had shown the dress to be a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman’s once-was-purple throwaway. It was old-lady-long too, but it didn’t hide my skinny legs, which had been greased with Blue Seal Vaseline and powdered with the Arkansas red clay. The age-faded color made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs.

Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten? My light-blue eyes were going to hypnotize them, after all the things they said about “my daddy must of been a Chinaman” (I thought they meant made out of china, like a cup) because my eyes were so small and squinty. Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs’ tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.

“What you looking …” The minister’s wife leaned toward me, her long yellow face full of sorry. She whispered, “I just come to tell you, it’s Easter Day.” I repeated, jamming the words together, “Ijustcometotellyouit’sEasterDay,” as low as possible. The giggles hung in the air like melting clouds that were waiting to rain on me. I held up two fingers, close to my chest, which meant that I had to go to the toilet, and tiptoed toward the rear of the church. Dimly, somewhere over my head, I heard ladies saying, “Lord bless the child,” and “Praise God.”
My head was up and my eyes were open, but I didn’t see anything. Halfway down the aisle, the church exploded with “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” and I tripped over a foot stuck out from the children’s pew. I stumbled and started to say something, or maybe to scream, but a green persimmon, or it could have been a lemon, caught me between the legs and squeezed. I tasted the sour on my tongue and felt it in the back of my mouth. Then before I reached the door, the sting was burning down my legs and into my Sunday socks. I tried to hold, to squeeze it back, to keep it from speeding, but when I reached the church porch I knew I’d have to let it go, or it would probably run right back up to my head and my poor head would burst like a dropped watermelon, and all the brains and spit and tongue and eyes would roll all over the place. So I ran down into the yard and let it go. I ran, peeing and crying, not toward the toilet out back but to our house. I’d get a whipping for it, to be sure, and the nasty children would have something new to tease me about. I laughed anyway, partially for the sweet release; still, the greater joy came not only from being liberated from the silly church but from the knowledge that I wouldn’t die from a busted head.

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.