Have you read Mom & Me & Mom? It was a quick read about Maya Angelou’s memories of Vivian Baxter and if you regard Maya Angelou the way I do, you did in fact love it.
My favorite part was Chapter 23 when Angelou describes her mothers pursuit to be a seaman. When she asked her mother, Vivian Baxter, why on earth she would want to do that considering all her current successes, Vivian simply replied,
“Because they told me they wouldn’t let any woman in their union. They suggested that the union certainly would not accept a Negro woman. I told them, ‘You want to bet?” I will put my fit in their door up to my hip until every woman can get in that union, and can get aboard a ship and go to sea.”
Maya is my hero. In many ways I long to possess her magic and now we know that much of who she is comes from Vivian Baxter. In Chapter 28 she say’s,
“My Mother’s gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.”
If that doesn’t inspire you to have the most incredible bond with your daughter, nothing will. Here is a list of some of Maya’s work. You will want to be a better human if you get to know the heart of this poetic legend.
Leave a comment and we can chat more about which part struck a cord or if there were any personal revelations about the way we pursue womanhood and all it’s glorious abilities.
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