Thank you, Maya. Love, Monique

I have been meaning to write about how literature, particularly how literature written by Black women has impacted my life and healing. The first book that I read that featured a theme of child sexual abuse was Maya Angelou’s “I know why the Cage Bird Sings”. 

Up until that moment, I did not have a language for what I was experiencing. And though I don’t recall her “naming” what happened to her, Maya Angelou’s thick description of the violation of her body and spirit gave me a language to frame my trauma/pain. Somehow reading about her childhood sexual abuse in a book made what was happening to me more real, more valid. I pulled strength from that book, Maya’s journey and testimony. My memory is fuzzy but I think I recall reading it as a freshman—not sure if it was assigned or if my friends and I were taking it on. I worked at the Providence Public Library after school with a bunch of friends and school mates. During our break we would hang out in the stacks and read books. (sidebar: Yeah, kids from the hood read books for fun) I recall reading it during this time period. But as I am typing, I also recall reading Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple as a young teen.

I picked it up off the table at one of my friend’s house. Was is 7th? 8th? Or 9th grade!? I do remember it was her mother’s and while I occasionally had a penchant for 5 fingering stuff when I was younger, I do recall returning it when I was done. Struck by its power, I think I needed some physical distance between its heaviness and me. In that book too, Walker included Celie’s survival from child sexual abuse as a central theme.

Now, I am sitting here wracking my brain trying to reorder my contact with these two life altering books and authors. But together they built the foundation of my journey towards fighting back and reclaiming my life. I am unsure if they helped me “heal”, but they gave me language and a mode of resistance, which for me was powerful. I then knew that Black women talked about and against what was happening to them. I also learned from those turned pages that they documented sexual trauma in fictional and in nonfictional forms. Walker and Angelou’s narratives also located trauma with a larger counter-narrative of survival. Both authors wrote in a way that propelled their readers (and me) forward. They gave me as a reader something to hold on to…to hang on to.

So it is was a heavy-light heart that I say farewell to one of my angels on earth, Dr. Maya Angelou. For today she has journeyed on to the spirit world. May you rest in power!!!

I dedicate this JOY post to her (along with other brazen Black women writers) and thank her eternally for giving me and countless others the momentary escape from our realities through her beautiful and prophetic gift of writing and for giving us the language to name our trauma in our struggle for survival.