Gather Together in My Name - Maya Angelou

[ms-mmelissa.livejournal.com]

Maya Angelou is best known for her first autobiography, the groundbreaking I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which chronicles her early childhood before breaking off abruptly when she's seventeen. Gather Together in My Name picks up a short while after her last book broke off and chronicles Maya's early forays into adulthood. 

I enjoyed Gather Together in My Name a great deal more than its predecessor. The work has received criticism for its looser structure; Marguerite stumbles in and out of jobs with regularity and falls in and out of love with men at the drop of the hat. This doesn't provide for a great, over-arching narrative, but then life seldom does, and this chaotic period of Maya Angelou's life (from about 17 to 19) seems to demand a less formal structure. 

Angelou was purportedly hesitant to write about this period in her life and after reading the book it's easy to see why. Already a young mother at this point in her life, Angelou also spent this time period making forays into prostitution, both as prostitute and pimp, while remaining stunningly naive about the world around her and her own actions. Some of the most powerful moments of the book can be found in these passages; Angelou is at her best when she is speaking from the voice of teenage Marguerite, outlining her own beliefs and showing the reader how a headstrong girl who believed she was jaded and world-weary was repeatedly fooled by her own naiveté. However, Angelou was writing this at a point in her life where she was no longer a naive spirited girl, but a savvy woman and the voice of that woman occasionally emerges, to the book's detriment. In an early scene Marguerite goes to the home of a lesbian couple simply to show how laissez-faire and grown up she is. As the two begin to kiss in front of her Marguerite is overcome with revulsion and disgust, which Angelou promptly excuses as the bias and hatred of an ignorant girl repeating the prejudices of the world around her. The authorial intrusion is a rare mis-step in a work that is fearless in its refusal to apologize for its narrator. 

Comments

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

Stepping in to assure her audience that the author knows better now may read badly to you, but as a queer woman, I certainly appreciate it. I haven't read the book, but if she had put the scene in and hadn't made it clear that she knew better now, you can bet that not only would I never read that book, I'd never read anything else by her, either. I don't need to read books that stigmatize me and repeat hatred for me, I get enough of that in the world as it is. You chose a poor example, I think, unless you intended to express approval for young Marguerite's feelings rather than the mature Angelou's.

[ms-mmelissa.livejournal.com]

I apologize for leaving my intentions in doubt. My opinions are in line with Angelou's rather than Marguerite's.

In the book Marguerite expresses many offensive prejudices that I suspect Angelou would later abandon, but the authorial intrusion is only there in that one passage which is why it seemed glaringly out of place (and why I chose it as an example). In the rest of the book Angelou trusts the reader to understand that Marguerite has many wrong, and even offensive, opinions; in that specific passage she tells us.

I can, however, see how the authorial intrusion would be welcome. I guess my straight privilege was blinding me. Thanks for pointing it out.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

Thanks for handling it well when I did.

[ms-mmelissa.livejournal.com]