Joanne: [00:00:00] Hello, I'm Joanne co host and one half of Wise Black Nanas, the podcast team. So we're always talking about our lived experience taking snapshots and sharing with you just memories from our past our current lives and what we hope will be our future lives. So in this episode, We are talking about and sharing with you positive vibes, and we think that we'd like to just shine the light on feeling good for a little, for a, just a few minutes, we're going to be talking about one of our favorite authors and just wonderful all around person.

We're going to be sharing some of her quotes with you, some information that you've already probably heard from us as we've talked about [00:01:00] books, some of her poems, and some of the things we take from her that warm our hearts. Dr. Sharla and I love, love, love literature, and we think we understand the critical role that literature has played in our lives, and we hope in yours also.

Sharla?

Sharla: Hi, I'm Dr. Sharla, the other half of the dynamic duo and just as Joanne has stated I love to read. Yeah, I could there are many times in my childhood people would be looking for me, particularly family members, and they find me in a plaza with a flashlight with a book.

Joanne: Yeah, with a flashlight.

Sharla: With a book and I would just be absorbed and it just like it just takes you away and gives you a sense of a different world and what's going on and what could happen. And I think that's [00:02:00] what's about Maya Angelou's books. She Okay. Has a broad baseline, and she could take you anywhere.

She wanted to, and you wanted to go. Yeah, you want to go. You want to go you weren't afraid. I welcome the opportunity for us to share some of our thoughts on her reading. Yeah. Just how they fit into our life over time. And hopefully that will put some proudness and you understand, why we get the strong walk that we get.

From her. And. Things like that, man.

Joanne: Yeah, so we are shining the light on Maya Angelou, Dr. Maya Angelou, one of our favorites. Gosh, that whole thing, I agree so much with what you're saying. The whole thing with literature, whether it's a story, a poem, or a quote, or a Bible verse, [00:03:00] it can impact and motivate us.

It's just amazing that sometimes it seems like just when you need to call up something, if you would just do it, you can find the poem, the quote, the story that would be just what you need for that particular time. But we're talking about Dr. Maya. And she, to, to me and to Dr. Sharla, I think she is just the epitome of positive.

So much of her award winning work and work that she has left us is just steeped in not only the human experience or the human Black experience, but it is just steeped. with uplifting, being positive. And so that's what we're trying to do in this episode is just share some of that with you. Let's see just a little bit about Maya Angelou.

I know a lot of our listeners will be very familiar with her. We're hoping if you [00:04:00] haven't read her in a while to go back and pick her up. Because she's got a lot of materials out there, and I am certain that you can find what you need for that uplifting point. Let's see, she was a poet, a prolific writer autobiographer.

Civil rights activist. She worked with both Dr. Martin Luther King and worked very closely with Malcolm X. Hey, on the fun side, she was a calypso dancer, theatrical performer that toured back in the 50s with Porgy and Bess with that production. She was always an observer of social culture. She reported, she was a reporter.

For a newspaper in Egypt, she went on to become a university professor at Winston Salem University in North Carolina. I just always think that she was so much of a historian because a lot of her work was so [00:05:00] current. But yet if you read it today or if you focus in on it today, it's just as current today.

So I encourage you, I will Keep saying throughout this episode to please go back and lift up our royalty Maya Angelo, who lived such a big and exciting life, again, filled with activism, adventure, and just ready to always uphold our race. She fought continuously. In her work and through her actions against prejudice and hatred so much about rising above an oppressive situation and or an oppressive society, Charlotte.

Sharla: Yeah I as Joanne is talking, I'm thinking back a little bit because it's been a while since I've been in a professional world, but there, there are many [00:06:00] times that. Her home, so I I saw rise and white Kate's 1st things come to mind because we have to put our armor on. We have to walk that walk, even though we don't want to walk in.

We have individuals who want to see us on our knees. Where I get bowed. Tears dropping.

Joanne: Yep.

Sharla: And I recall my la my last experience with this, and it is very emotional and I'm gonna go into it too deep and it just, it humbled me to think that at my age and all that I had accomplished and all I had done, I had to do this again.

I had to do this again. . And.

Joanne: Fortunately tell us what happened. Tell us. Tell us a [00:07:00] little bit about it.

Sharla: I was a senior manager on a project because nobody else wanted it. Of course. And we're coming to the close of the project, and I was real excited about it, had the big ways.

Everybody lined up everybody nice meeting and everything like this. And

It was a cool for me, really, because no 1 had done. What I had done before, I hadn't even done it before, so we begin to start to meeting. Huh. And one of my colleagues said, colleagues, excuse me, said, why don't we let the experts talk

and talk about how that felt, how that just, [00:08:00] it was like somebody had taken a bullet out the wall and just squashed it. Strictly when you have done all the work and not asking for accolades, just asking for appreciation and recognition for what I had done.

Joanne: Yeah.

Sharla: Yeah. And then being told that I wasn't an expert.

I wasn't an expert. And that's, that, that's the part that knowing Maya talks about in her poem, When I Rise is, Did you want to see me broken? That's one of the things, the questions that I after reading my poem is that, did you want to see me broken? Did you want to see my head bow and my eyes lower?

Shoulders falling down, [00:09:00] like teardrop.

We can buy your work. And that's exactly how I felt, but there's nothing that went on, but eventually I did get the reward and the recognition that was due to me. And I did get the accolade, I guess you could say that I deserve. Because I got all the credit congratulations and the thing and the person who said, that the expert talk, we, when he spoke to experts to talk, they will say Charlotte was an expert.

She did this off. So they referred to me. So I got a one way idea, but it was still hurtful. It was still. And it was [00:10:00] still a reminder that we still have to prove ourselves. We still have to prove ourselves, no matter what we have, no matter what degrees we have, no matter what train we have, and just that part.

That says that it's broken, just see us broken. Maybe there was some kind of joy in it for them. I don't know. I didn't ask. But it hurt me to my core.

Joanne: Yeah.

Sharla: But reading that poem is wow, that's really deep. And you start to give the situation, maybe not the person, but the situation. I don't know if you can extrapolate the two, I think that taught me a lot and it taught me how to coach and mentor other folks that might run into the same situation [00:11:00] before they run into the situation.

Joanne: Yeah. And it happens. It happens all the time. Just listening to you, I'm, I can't help but think about the words. From And Still I Rise from that and just thinking about what are, what, can you just imagine all the things that she went through in trying to get her work acknowledged because she was putting out books and putting out work.

Back during a time when black women weren't, they were writing, but they weren't certainly getting acknowledged or acknowledged acknowledged for their work. She was one of the first black women to have a bestseller and can you just imagine though, all that she went through just to.

I can't, I,

Sharla: I, I can't imagine, but I can't a little bit. I'm sure she had to do some [00:12:00] unspeakable things just to do, to get some things done her way, but the way that we see her strong and forceful. Yeah. I don't think she did too many things that didn't support what she believed in.

Joanne: Oh she absolutely, her, I think, anyway, her, and I'm a big fan and she is one of my, I don't know if not my all time favorite, she's right up there, number one or two her work was just always so inspirational and motivational that poem itself it's a poem of resilience.

Dignity and, but it's a defiance and it's all about anti black racism. And it's no wonder that it's probably her best known poem. Simply because, and it's a short poem. It's not even, really, like pages long or whatever. It's a very short poem, but it's very, and it, she talks about, resilience and dignity.

And so it's [00:13:00] so many use this as their fallback, motivational and inspirational piece.

Sharla: It's so significant in my life on all from personal and also from professional personal professional aspect, because you don't know when you want to get. Hit overhead and become crashing down to your knees.

Yeah. Sometimes it's unexpected. Sometime you go in and you go, Oh, my God, here we go again. And you can weather the storm, but it's when it's unexpected. Let me get my resources together here. And, It's just, it's wonderful that we have someone that we can go to, that even though she's not physically present, her words are just so powerful that it's just.

Like she is like she is so I rise

Joanne: and

Sharla: I keep on rising no matter what you put down. I keep on rise.

Joanne: You [00:14:00] just mentioned her words and I found this quote. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom award by President Obama in 2011. And he said, this is a quote something that he said, I think, during that presentation, but anyway, it's a quote from him.

He said, her soul stirring words. have taught us how to reach across division and see the beauty of our world. Yeah And again, that's what her whole life was like that, was always trying to see the good, to see the best, to see what's possible. And, she got slammed a lot, in her life. And she got told no, and that she wasn't pretty enough, thin enough, whatever for this.

And she went ahead and went for it anyway. And I think even the name of that poem, And Still I Rise, is you don't falter and just [00:15:00] lay down and just give up. You keep going you keep going, you try it again and again. Her work is just filled with with that. It certainly appears to be an appropriate time, to look back at some of that.

Some of that award winning work of hers and see how we can utilize it today, to help us be more motivated, more inspired than we already are, as we, because, the fight and the struggle is not over, the fight and the struggle is not over. It is definitely

Sharla: a positive, very positive, no matter what it was.

Yeah, I loved,

Joanne: I loved looking into her because it also took me, back down history lane, which, how much I love that. But she just had the coolest friends over the years, of course. She just had the coolest friends and it was just such a variety of different people that you might not put all in the same room, at the same time.

I'll [00:16:00] just throw out a few. Of course, Oprah was, her all time, best friend. But the Clintons, Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Obamas became very good friends to her. We have Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Baldwin. Common was a very good friend of hers, and Nikki Giovanni, wonderful noted poet, was a very good friend of hers.

Whoopi Goldberg, Gloria Steinem, Sigourney Weaver. The list goes on and on. It's just an amazing list of, I think, really cool people to put on here and have on your friends list.

If only my list was nearly as long and as accomplished with those historic figures as her list as her list is.

Sharla: Yeah.

Joanne: But Maya grew up I often think about her early story because sometimes I compare it to, to [00:17:00] mine. We have similar things in our backgrounds.

Her and her brother were shuttled back and forth between St. Louis, Missouri, and a little small town in Arkansas, Stamps, Arkansas, and so they would go live with their mother then the mother would either, get married or have a new career or something, and the kids would be shuttled off to their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.

And then unfortunately, Maya was molested when she was a young girl and it caused her to stop talking for a number of years. And through the love of her grandmother and another older woman that owned a store in the community, older friends of her grandmother, she found her voice.

She found her voice, but that was a very interesting period of her life that she writes about when she was a little girl, and it is just so hard to read. To read that, [00:18:00] even today, when I know how things turned out, and I know what she became eventually. It's just so hard to read that, because of similar experiences that, I've certainly had, and a lot of friends that I know have had similar experiences.

One of the things that I chuckle about was that Maya's mother and my mother had some things in common. Both of them love to have a good time and love to go out, get all dressed up and dolled up and go out. And Maya and her brother, would just be in awe of how beautiful their mother looked as she would get dressed to go out with one of her boyfriends or Husbands or something and I remember as kids we felt that same way about our mother sometimes we didn't have Adequate clothing or shoes or a lot of food to eat, but our mother could always Find some way to have her a new dress [00:19:00] and I remember

Sharla: those days to be all dolled up.

It's Oh, it's Friday night. Mom getting ready to go out

Joanne: straight up. Yeah, absolutely. So we used to, we had a nickname for her too, behind her back. She didn't know it, but we would call her a good time woman. Cause it's Oh, here comes a good time woman. But she probably would have killed us if she knew we were saying that behind her back.

But Maya and her brother also had names for their mom similar to that because she had, that thing of being a very attractive woman and having lots of men friends. Maya was a teenage mother. She had her son right after she graduated from high school in San Francisco, in fact. So we also had that in common because I had my daughter when I was still a teenager, and so I always always kept that fact about her But it didn't stop her.

It didn't stop her. She just went on to just do amazing things. [00:20:00] Travel and live all over the world. And just get involved in the social activism that was going on during that time. And of course, become a major literary figure. And provide so much positive material out there to everybody. Wow.

Sharla: She is so well respected.

Oh,

Joanne: absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. When I think wise black nanas. Hey, Maya definitely was a wise black Nana. And on this podcast, we use her quotes a lot. We talk about her a lot and give her a lot of credit, but I tell you, she absolutely is a phenomenal woman.

Sharla: She's a she's a model of what we want to be or what we want to stand for is, of tolerance of, success. Just, any just had dignity and then any [00:21:00] of the mass or she knew the cave, but the mass that she is was just put all together, in the walk. Oh,

Joanne: yes, the walk the walk the walk.

I've seen her do that walk. She never, I don't think tried to purposely do it, but it had a way of strolling, and she just looks so regal and just she was. Phenomenal woman that she wrote a poem phenomenal woman and she talked about the way a black woman walks and I call it black woman cool.

And yeah, and she just sway of her hips, I tell you, if you. We're fortunate enough to see her in person. She embodies that very poem. She really does. She deserved it. She earned it. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. She does at that. Let's see. So a little bit more about [00:22:00] her.

Some of our favorite. Some of our favorite quotes that, we use, or we refer back to, or sometimes when we're just talking, we just talk about them without, a program in mind or whatever. But some of our favorite ones we decided on was let's see. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Yeah,

Sharla: absolutely. Don't guess. Don't give them a second chance

Joanne: or think that you can change someone so many times we enter into relationships and we know at the beginning that you know we've got that voice or that hit in the stomach that you know that says this doesn't quite feel right but to stay in any way because you think oh you know I can change him or her and chances are they've showed you already who they are.

And we just miss the boat when we don't believe them. [00:23:00] Another one that we like is life offers us tickets to places, which we have not knowingly asked for. Tickets to places we have not knowingly asked for. Which again is, to me, just means it's life. It's life. You get stuff that you don't count on, that you might have prepared for, but.

Where'd this come from? Where'd this come from? All of a sudden,

Sharla: If you're high risk taker, like I was, or maybe I still am. I haven't tried that in a while, it's oh, we're going there. Okay. Let's go.

Joanne: Let's try it. Let's go. Let's give

Sharla: it a try. Because, again,

Joanne: it might be a door opening there for me.

And I don't know about it. Here's another one. I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it. That speaks volumes. [00:24:00] That speaks volumes. And I think about the situation that you related to us about the work situation and, let the experts speak kind of thing. Yeah, you might have been changed a little bit, by that, but you weren't reduced by it.

You didn't fall out or stand up and cuss everybody out, you really didn't. You maintained your dignity, you held your spot, and you simply let that pass. You let that pass, right? You remained who you were. You remained who you were. You weren't reduced by it. And then this is one that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Try to be a rainbow in somebody's cloud. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Absolutely. I can't help but think about Mahalia. And again, Mahalia is my little granddaughter, great granddaughter, [00:25:00] who is just a rainbow fanatic. She is. She loves rainbows and coloring them and creating them and drawing them and the rainbows.

Her room is the rainbow. When she gives you a rainbow and gives you one of her special smiles that goes along with that, you feel like that particular moment, the world is just a little brighter. It makes everything okay. If only just for that moment. It might pass because she might throw your zinger, the next second or throw one of her little fits.

But I tell you for that particular moment when she gives you that rainbow from her heart that she's created, something special is happening. So I love that because it reminds me of Mahalia and the rainbows.

Sharla: Yeah. And that leaves so much hope for us. For the future of, hey, there's got to be more like her, for us to continue, there [00:26:00] are, God did make this one.

There's more, more out there than just her because the world wouldn't be what it is,

Joanne: there are, without

Sharla: that,

Joanne: there are. There are. We just want all of our listening audience to, again, go out and either discover or rediscover Dr. Maya Anzalou or any other poet, writer.

Anyone that you enjoy or want to discover, that provides inspiration and motivation and positive vibes, during this particular time.

Sharla: Yeah.

Joanne: So we want you to consider thinking about Mahalia and the rainbows. Whose cloud are you the rainbow in? Ask whose rainbow am I and why am I that rainbow?

So again, we want you to learn a little bit more about Maya Angelou [00:27:00] or present day Maya through their own particular works. And so we're going to leave you today. That's our episode for today. We know this podcast is not for everybody, and we do know that it's for a lot of somebodies.

So we're just asking you to be, again kinder, gentler, and more thoughtful toward each other.

Sharla: Let's not forget grateful.

Joanne: Yeah. Take stock of what we have. what you've already achieved, what you can do and achieve versus what you do not have, what you have not done, and again, what you have not achieved.

Just consider how really good your life is already and be grateful for that. Arnaniism, of course, is a quote from Maya Angelou. Of course. Of course. [00:28:00] And it's the nothing can dim the light that shines. from within. So thank you for listening, and we ask you to please keep listening, and please share Wise Black Nanas with your friends and families.

And check us out on Facebook, take a listen to our YouTube channel, and please leave a comment. Thank you.

Sharla: Thank you. Enjoy.