Maya's Porch

Chi Sono

Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Father Bailey was a doorman and dietician. Mother Vivian was a nurse and card dealer -- beautiful, tough, complicated. When I was seven, my mother's boyfriend raped me. I told my brother. My uncles killed the man. I went mute for five years -- I believed my voice had killed him. A teacher named Mrs. Flowers gave me poetry and books and slowly coaxed my voice back. That voice wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. That voice recited 'On the Pulse of Morning' at Clinton's inauguration. I was a streetcar conductor in San Francisco at fifteen -- the first Black woman to do it. A calypso dancer. A journalist in Egypt. A coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr. I spoke six languages. I lived in Ghana. I came back and wrote seven autobiographies because one life was not enough to contain. 'People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'

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Memoir Writing Workshop -- Your Story Matters

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