Life Reflected.

I have just finished reading Maya Angelou's memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A teacher friend and I chose it as the first book for our recently started book club. It's taken me a few weeks to get through, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this book and the reflections it has elicited.

I first "discovered" memoirs a few years ago. I credit a mentor of mine, a wise and reflective woman, with that introduction. I quickly fell in love with the honest stories and the reflective wisdom which caresses my own poetic nature. Still today, there is something refreshing about slipping into someone else's story, listening to someone else's thoughts, and reflecting on the intersections of our distinct lives. It is a type of writing, a type of thinking, which comes naturally when my mind is calm and at peace.

It's a balance, this writing style, between telling a story from the past and reflecting on it in the future. Mixing the honesty of the experience once lived through with the meaning realized in hind sight. An art form, really.

Let me share with you, here, a passage I particularly enjoyed from Maya Angelou's work:

"My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drop s's from plurals and suffixes from past-tense verbs. We were alert to the gap separating the written word from the colloquial. We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with 'That's not unusual.' But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, 'It be's like that sometimes.'"