Letter to My Daughter

Bob and Decca were long-time friends of Angelou. After being invited to speak at Stanford, she decided to visit the couple. Bob was a radical lawyer who successfully defended the Black Panthers. Decca was a writer who documented her life growing up as an English aristocrat and becoming a communist.

While the trio was dining at an exclusive local restaurant, the owner approached their table and said that his wife, Marilyn Marshall, was a great friend of Angelou’s. He showed her a picture, but Angelou did not recognize the woman even after speaking to her on the phone. Angelou agreed to a lunch date, curious to uncover the mystery woman’s identity. After meeting, Marilyn cleared the air, stating that she mistook Angelou for a work friend who also happened to be a six-foot tall Black woman who lived in New York and was a writer. Their friendship would blossom, as Marilyn, a psychologist, went on to help Angelou’s brother with his heroin addiction. Despite the awkward encounter and racial profiling, Angelou learned that “a friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face” (28).

Angelou developed an affinity for Celia Cruz: “There are certain artists who belong to all the people, everywhere, all the time” (29). The songs of Cruz “were weighted with sympathy for the human spirit” (29). Despite knowing Spanish, Angelou found Cruz’s songs hard to translate and resolved to study Spanish more diligently.

When Cruz toured New York City, Angelou saw her perform every day. She states, “From her, I learned to bring everything I had onto the stage with me. And now, some forty-plus years later, without music and by simply reading, I am able to read poetry and satisfy audiences” (29). Cruz influenced Angelou’s performative methods, teaching her that the “human heart” is the source all great artists draw upon. Despite the linguistic and cultural barrier, Angelou identified strongly with Cruz’s music. She concludes that people are more alike “than we are unalike” (29). 

Angelou opens with a quote from Fannie Lou Hamer, a member of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party: “[I]s this America, the land of the free and home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?” (30). Angelou writes that it is imperative that we know these words came from the lips of an African American woman and from the heart of an American. Every citizen of America desires to represent a noble and just country, so we should all question our country like Hamer. Yet we raise children who do not question authority, but rather memorize facts. She quotes other activists—including Patrick Henry, George Moses Horton, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass—to illustrate the importance of freedom. 

Samia and Pierre were friends of Angelou who lived in Senegal. The two were members of a “group of intellectuals who drank barrels of cheap wine and who discussed everything and everybody, from Nietzsche to James Baldwin” (32). On a trip to Senegal, Samia invited Angelou to a party. While there, Angelou noticed that not a single guest stepped on the beautiful and expensive rug in the middle of the room. Assuming that Samia had alerted her guests to avoid the rug and believing this to be elitist, Angelou decided to undertake a social experiment. In the guise of observing art, she walked across the rug, receiving many anxious looks from the other guests. Suddenly, a maid appeared, rolled up the rug, and laid down another equally beautiful rug in its place. Then she placed food and silverware on the carpet. Samia emerged and invited the guests to dine. Angelou was hot with embarrassment. She concludes, “[I]n an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovation, no suggestions, or lessons. The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity” (33).