Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Author and activist best known for her autobiographical work 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', detailing her childhood in the American South.
On the island
Eight records
How Great Thou ArtFavourite
My grandmother had a wonderful voice. And she sang in church. ... And um the only voice similar to hers that I can remember ... is Mahalia Jackson.
I have remo[ved] back to the south. And I do believe once a southerner, always a southerner.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:02Why is there this wonderful tradition and quality in black singing?
I think there is the ability to submit ... When you submit to feeling, embarrassment is not in it. It doesn't even arise. You admit that you are submitting and feeling lonely or happy and allow, then, that particular or those conflicting emotions to inform the expression.
Presenter asks
5:24What do you remember of the Depression [in Stamps, Arkansas]?
I remember my grandmother owned a store. It was the only black owned store in the town. ... Mamma, however, was a typical West African market woman. ... She would give them tins, so many tins of mackerel in exchange for so many buckets of powdered eggs. Well, it turned out my brother and I were the only kids in the school who were eating powdered eggs.
Presenter asks
7:04When did you first come across directly racial prejudice?
Well, I guess I was about eight. We went to the movies, my brother and I. And there was a girl, a white girl, behind the ... box office who would take the dimes of all the white kids ... by hand. But when my brother put our dimes up, she had a cigar box, and she would tell him rake them into the cigar box. ... And then all the white kids would go right in through the front door, and the black kids would have to go up a very rickety outside staircase. ... It was just terrible. And I cried.
The keepsakes
The book
Sterling Brown and Ulysses Lee
It has poetry from the eighteenth century black American poetry, nineteenth century and twentieth. There are excerpts from plays from the nineteenth century, antislavery propaganda, slave narratives, there are excerpts of WB Du Bois and Marcus Garvey and some of the most beautiful poetry, really, Michael, nineteenth century black lady poetry so I would have that.
The luxury
I could spend a number of years trying to see what the people are doing.
Presenter asks
9:34What were the circumstances of [your becoming mute at the age of about eight]?
When I was seven and a half I was raped by my mother's boyfriend. And the rapist was killed. ... I heard that and somehow, with my seven and a half year old logic, I decided that my voice had killed him. That because I told who did it, that my voice was the culprit. And so I decided that I'd better not talk, because anybody whose name I called or who heard me might die.
Presenter asks
10:52What rescued you from that silence?
Poetry. ... Mrs. Flowers, this lovely lady, had me over to her house. I was about almost twelve. ... She said, You'll never like it until you speak it, until you feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips. You will never love poetry. ... I went under the house. And I tried to speak poetry. And I had a voice. And so I Mrs Flowers and Poetry returned my voice to me.
Presenter asks
20:07Have you ever wished you were six foot white and male?
No, no, no. ... I wouldn't want all that ... unfortunate, unachievable expectations. My expectations are just beyond my reach. And they have to do with me. Not with the world. I hope to become a better human being. A kinder, wiser, funnier, more courageous human being. For me.
“When you submit to feeling, embarrassment is not in it. It doesn't even arise.”
“If the next person who comes along and cares for me and makes me laugh happens to be a four foot tall five hundred pound Japanese sumitomo wrestler, I will marry him and make no apology to anyone.”
“My fantasy is to be six foot tall, black female, American, a writer, successful, who laughs a lot and drinks just enough Dewar's white label scotch ... and goes to church on Sunday and really means it. And loves her mother.”
“I really believe that we are meant to to be better.”