Making Maya Angelou

Making

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Perhaps best known for her seminal autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou is one of the most celebrated literary minds in history, whose poetry and prose has touched generations of readers. But before Caged Bird, Angelou danced and sang on and off Broadway, earned the moniker “Miss Calypso” in the 1950s, called dozens of American cities and African nations home, and even became the first Black woman to work as a cable car conductor in San Francisco. On this episode of Making, host Brandon Pope leads a conversation on Maya Angelou’s early days and what made her who she was. Joining him is Rita Coburn, co-director of the Peabody-Award-winning PBS documentary Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise; Randal Jelks, professor of African and African American studies and American studies at the University of Kansas; and a legend in her own right, Dr. Maxine Mimms, the founder of the Tacoma Campus of Evergreen State College and a longtime friend of Angelou.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A warning before we begin, this week's episode contained a discussion about childhood sexual violence.
0:07.0	You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies.
0:14.0	You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust.
0:19.0	All right.
0:22.0	She's one of the most influential voices of our time.
0:26.0	Human beings are more alike than we are unalike.
0:30.0	It's a voice that's spoken to millions.
0:33.0	An activist and thinker.
0:35.0	People are afraid to be pride-loose from their ignorance,
0:39.0	because they know their ignorance so well, they know it better than they know their body orders.
0:44.0	And a prolific writer, performer and poet.
0:47.0	When you want truth, the same way you wanted that breath of air, you've already got it.
0:57.0	From WBEZ Chicago, this is Making Maya Angelou. I'm Brandon Poe.
1:03.0	Today, Maya Angelou was one of the most famous and celebrated minds of the 20th century.
1:09.0	Her seminal autobiography, I Know Why The Case Bird Sings, is one of the most celebrated American literary works of all time.
1:16.0	Yet, she's a woman who defies category.
1:20.0	It's in the reach of my arms, the span of my hips, the stride of my steps, the curl of my lips, I'm a woman.
1:29.0	And now I'm there.
1:31.0	Joining us is Rita Coburn, Peabody Award-winning documentarian of Maya Angelou and Still I Rise.
1:37.0	Maya Angelou speaks to us even now.
1:42.0	Dr. Randall Jelkes, professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas.
1:48.0	It's about the resiliency she asks all of us to be resilient.
	...

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