![]() It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.” Her words struck Angelou as poetic and their relationship grew as Flowers provided Maya with new books and heightened motivation to read.Įventually, this patient teacher broke through Maya’s long silence by challenging her to read poetry aloud. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. Every chance you get,” she told young Maya. In her autobiography, Angelou vividly recalls what Flowers said to her. “When she chose to smile on me, I always wanted to thank her.” Flowers laugh, but she smiled often,” Angelou wrote. Flowers left a profound impression on young Maya, who was charmed by the teacher’s style and unusually refined grace. “For nearly a year, I sopped around the house, the store, the school, and the church,” she writes in the 1969 memoir, “like an old biscuit, dirty and inedible.” She was depressed and withdrawn, but she remained an avid reader who loved literature thanks to her visits to the local library.Īlthough Angelou was close to her brother and had an extended family that included her mother, grandmother, and uncles, it was a local teacher, Bertha Flowers, who helped her regain her voice. ![]() Shortly thereafter, she and her brother were sent back to live with their grandmother. Her family also chose to never speak of the incident again, so Angelou did not receive the support and counseling she needed during those five years she remained mute. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone.” So she simply stopped speaking. “I thought, my voice killed him,” she wrote in her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, “I killed that man, because I told his name. When she revealed the truth and identified the rapist, he was later found beaten to death. At just eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Her self-enforced silence began after a traumatic incident caused her to believe her words had terrible consequences. Despite her extraordinary gift of language, poet and author Maya Angelou did not speak for five years when she was a child.
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