When 'I' becomes 'we': The storytelling legacy of Maya Angelou.
- Cayla Grace Sims
- Apr 4
- 3 min read
“Once I got into it I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass—the slave narrative—speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning ‘we.’ And what a responsibility.”
There is power in the first person. Not just in the telling of a story, but in the claiming of it—in the way "I" can carry centuries of silenced voices. Maya Angelou’s brilliance wasn’t just in her words, but in the we behind every I. She understood, better than most, that to narrate one’s life as a Black woman in America is to carry the weight of a collective memory, a shared wound, and a communal dream.
Angelou’s legacy is often reduced to sentiment—quotable affirmations and poetic uplift—but her work was always more subversive than surface-level praise implies. She dared to chronicle Black girlhood not as metaphor, but as truth. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she placed her interior life at the center, rejecting the erasure imposed by both white supremacist narratives and patriarchal expectations. She didn't write for palatability. She wrote for survival. And in doing so, she made room for others to see their lives reflected, not distorted.
But Angelou didn’t merely tell stories—she reclaimed narrative as an act of resistance. Her work sits in direct conversation with the griot tradition, the oral keepers of communal histories in West African cultures. In that lineage, storytelling is not entertainment; it is pedagogy, it is preservation, it is prophecy. Angelou embodied that. She fused lived experience with literary expression, blending autobiography and performance, rhythm and rhetoric. At a time when mainstream narratives tried to reduce Black experience to stereotype or spectacle, Angelou offered a radical alternative: truth. And not a sanitized truth, but a living, breathing one—marbled with joy and grief, rage and healing. Her work stood in proud opposition to the politics of respectability that sought to flatten Black identity. Instead, she wrote from the gut, the soul, and the bones of lived experience. In this way, Angelou wasn’t just preserving culture—she was creating it.
Her words became a kind of sonic armor, particularly for Black women. In Phenomenal Woman, she redefined beauty as something internal, inherited, and infinite. In Still I Rise, she gave us a gospel of defiance and dignity, a mantra that continues to echo in classrooms, protests, poems, and playlists. And in On the Pulse of Morning, delivered at President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, she did what griots have done for centuries—bridged the ancestral with the aspirational, the wound with the witness. Angelou understood the sacred weight of words. She knew language could be both balm and blade. She wrote as a vessel for the ancestors and as a beacon for the future. In this way, her legacy lives on not only in literature, but in lyricism.
And this matters. Especially for young people, young women, navigating a world that often tells them their stories don’t count unless they conform to dominant narratives. Angelou taught us that dignity is not granted—it’s claimed. That literacy is not just reading text, but reading the world. That poetry isn’t soft—it’s strategy. In an age of algorithmic attention spans and curated realities, Angelou reminds us of the power of authenticity. She reminds us that telling your story—your full, complicated, contradictory, sacred story—is an act of resistance. Every young person who dares to speak their truth through a verse, a journal entry, or a classroom essay walks in her shadow. Every educator who asks students to find meaning in their own narratives continues her mission.
So yes, Maya Angelou is gone. But she is also everywhere. In the voices that rise up in classrooms, on stages, behind mics, and in journals. In the courage it takes to say, “This is who I am. And this is who we are.”
Her words still speak. Her rhythm still moves. And still—we rise. - [cayla grace sims, rhyme & reason.]
[about rhyme & reason.]
This is where culture meets literature, where music’s literary roots stay alive. Music has always been a storytelling force, and we’re here to honor that—breaking down lyrics, exploring themes, and keeping the conversation going. Through edutainment, we bring fresh insights, deep dives, and creative connections between bars and books. We keep the legacy thriving—year-round, every rhyme, every reason.
Comments