Angelou tenders tutorials in perspective and wisdom in short essays and poems to her “thousands of daughters.” But you need not be female to be changed by the lessons the American poet, memoirist, civil rights activist and performer learned and under what conditions she learned them. I found solace in grieving my sister from Angelou’s letters (published in 2008, six years before Angelou’s death), especially her chapters “Mrs. Coretta Scott King” and “Condolences.” Now I return most frequently to her introduction, which contains some of her most famous quotes:
“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.”
The chapter “Keep the Faith,” about her grandmother, who survived the Great Depression as a single black woman in the South, is especially apt: “… right there, between the sun and the moon, stands my grandmother, singing a long meter hymn, a song somewhere between a moan and a lullaby and I know faith is the evidence of things unseen.” Her chapter on “National Spirit” should be required reading for all politicians (and voters).
