Photos

Gallery of notable American Women. We do not own any photographs or themes. Credit to theme makers and owners. No copyright infringement intended.

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Marilyn Monroe and Bert Stern during a photo shoot, 1962.

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I think this might be my favorite picture of all time

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oh

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(via Maya Angelou: 1957 | Shorpy Historical Photo Archive)

New York, 1957. “Maya Angelou, full length portrait, dressed for her part in the Caribbean Calypso Festival.” New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. View full size.

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Nobody asked her to come but she did. Nobody asked her to leave so she stayed. No one called on her to lead she just did. No one expected her to change the world.

She did that too.

-JMberry

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Maya Angelou, who died yesterday, wrote the poem “When Great Trees Fall” when James Baldwin died, and read the poem at his funeral… "When Great Trees Fall" by Maya Angelou   When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly.  Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed.  They existed. We can be.  Be and be better.  For they existed. (Photo: Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison at James Baldwin’s funeral, December 1987)

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Maya Angelou, Johnnetta B. Cole, and Hillary Clinton in 1992

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Maya Angelou, USA, 1974 -by Wayne Miller

Refusal

Beloved, In what other lives or lands Have I known your lips Your hands Your laughter brave Irreverent. Those sweet excesses that I do adore. What surety is there That we will meet again, On other worlds some Future time undated. I defy my body’s haste. Without the Promise Of one more sweet encounter I will not deign to die.

— Maya Angelou, in And Still I Rise (Random House LLC, 2011)

[see also…]

photo from magnum

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Personal essay: One day with Maya Angelou

I knew Maya Angelou in the way millions of other people knew her. I read her memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and felt as if I knew her with an intimacy to which I shouldn’t have been privy, since I had never met her.  At least at 19, that’s how it felt to me.

Before I went to college at Wittenberg University in 1983, I was not much of a reader of literature. Growing up in Akron, Ohio, in a predominantly African-American, working-class community and attending public schools, I wasn’t expected to be much of a reader. In fact, it wasn’t a skill set that was encouraged, particularly for boys. So I almost never read novels or poetry. I read what boys read if they wanted to be perceived as cool — comics and science books, books that I could get away with reading without looking too studious.

Read more

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Saturday Links: Maya Angelou Forever Edition

Plus Cara Delevingne on drums, #YesAllWomen, and a very special cover of the Arthur theme song.

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