Letter to My Daughter - Maya Angelou [0]
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Letter to My Daughter
1 Home
2 Philanthropy
3 Revelations
4 Giving Birth
5 Accident, Coincident, or Answered Prayer
6 To Tell the Truth
7 Vulgarity
8 Violence
9 Mother’s Long View
10 Morocco
11 Porgy and Bess
12 Bob & Decca
13 Celia Cruz
14 Fannie Lou Hamer
15 Senegal
16 The Eternal Silver Screen
17 In Self-Defense
18 Mrs. Coretta Scott King
19 Condolences
20 In the Valley of Humility
21 National Spirit
22 Reclaiming Southern Roots
23 Surviving
24 Salute to Older Lovers
25 Commencement Address
26 Poetry
27 Mt. Zion
28 Keep the Faith
About the Author
Also by Maya Angelou
Copyright
My thanks to some women who mothered me
through dark and bright days,
Annie Henderson
Vivian Baxter
Frances Williams
Berdis Baldwin
Amisher Glenn
My thanks to one woman who allows me
to be a daughter to her, even today,
Dr. Dorothy Height
My thanks to women not born to me but who allow me
to mother them,
Oprah Winfrey
Rosa Johnson Butler
Lydia Stuckey
Valerie Simpson
Constancia Romilly
LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER
Dear Daughter,
This letter has taken an extraordinary time getting itself together. I have all along known that I wanted to tell you directly of some lessons I have learned and under what conditions I have learned them.
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still. I have only included here events and lessons which I have found useful. I have not told how I have used the solutions, knowing that you are intelligent and creative and resourceful and you will use them as you see fit.
You will find in this book accounts of growing up, unexpected emergencies, a few poems, some light stories to make you laugh and some to make you meditate.
There have been people in my life who meant me well, taught me valuable lessons, and others who have meant me ill and, have given me ample notification that my world is not meant to be all peaches and cream.
I have made many mistakes and no doubt will make more before I die. When I have seen pain, when I have found that my ineptness has caused displeasure, I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologize to anyone injured by my misreckoning. Since I cannot un-live history, and repentance is all I can offer God, I have hopes that my sincere apologies were accepted.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.
I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.
Home
I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but from the age of three I grew up in Stamps, Arkansas, with my paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, and my father’s brother, Uncle Willie, and my only sibling, my brother Bailey.
At thirteen I joined my mother in San Francisco. Later I studied in New York City. Throughout the years I have lived in Paris, Cairo, West Africa, and all over the United States.
Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize, “My name is Johnny Thomas. My address is 220 Center Street.” All facts, which have little to do with the child’s truth.
My real growing up world, in Stamps, was a continual struggle against a condition of surrender. Surrender first to the grown-up human beings who I saw every day, all black and all very, very large. Then submission to the idea that black people were inferior