Letter to My Daughter

Television producers contacted Angelou asking to produce an adaptation of one of her short stories. While attending the lunch meeting, Angelou instantly recognized the leader of the group. This woman continuously engaged in “word warfare” with her colleagues and with Angelou herself. Tired of the sarcastic comments, Angelou responded, “You are timidly attacking me” (35). The woman was at first shocked but then said she was only trying to show Angelou that she couldn’t be right all of the time. Angelou said that if that was how they conducted work, then it was not an environment that aligned with her beliefs and work ethic. She denied them permission to adapt her story. Angelou writes that she never condones violence but that one must be ready to “care enough” for themselves—in other words, to practice self-defense.

Angelou writes of her friends who have passed away. She recalls Mrs. Coretta Scott King, whose husband’s death occurred on Angelou’s birthday. Because of this, every year Angelou and Mrs. King sent flowers and good wishes to one another.

Angelou begins to contemplate death. She herself struggles with the phenomena, writing, “I find it very difficult to let a friend or beloved go into that country of no return. I answer the heroic question, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ with ‘It is here in my heart, and my mind, and my memories’” (37). Angelou only feels relief from the question of death when she recognizes she is not obliged to know everything. She states, “I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true” (37). Angelou reflects on the legacies of her friends, each of whom embodied an aspect of a good life. From her late friends she has learned the art of being kind, patient, generous, loving, and honest. She thanks her friends for their love and God for their lives.

The title “Condolences” refers both to comforting those who have lost loved ones and to the comfort that lost loved ones, who now occupy the cosmos, can offer. Angelou writes, “For you were sustaining and being sustained by the arms of your beloved” (38). The dead never truly leave us, and we continue to interact with them through the “sunrays” and the “moonlight” (38). While the days may seem to “stretch before you with the dryness and sameness of desert dunes” (38), your “beloveds” are there beside you. Their “hearts ache to support you” (38). Angelou reminds the reader that they are never alone and certainly never without their loved ones.

Angelou was invited to speak at Wake Forest University. After her lecture, she joined the students in their lounge. As the university was recently desegregated, Angelou stood in front of both white and Black students. A young, white male asked, “‘I am nineteen, I am going to be a man, but strictly speaking, I’m still a boy. But that guy there,’ he pointed to the black student, ‘gets mad if I call him boy and we’re the same age. Why is that?’” (39). Angelou responded, “There he is, why not ask him?” (39). She continued this process throughout the question-and-answer session, encouraging the students to engage in dialogue with one another. She realized that the students were using her as a bridge to facilitate a conversation where they could speak to each other as equals.

The next morning, Angelou and her friend Dolly stopped at a café for breakfast before their flight. They sat unserved for 30 minutes, at which point Angelou realized they were the only Black people in the restaurant. Feeling hostile, Angelou told the waitress that if they did not want to serve them she would call the police. The waitress responded that she couldn’t serve their entire half of the restaurant because the chef had run out of grits. Angelou felt awful and apologized.

Angelou then recounts her marriage to Paul DuFeu, “a master builder, a writer, and a popular cartoonist in England” (40). They lived in bliss for 10 years, but gradually, Angelou’s many “queries” began to annoy him. Paul confessed that he had grown weary of monogamy and the two divorced. Angelou writes, “Divorce like every other rite of passage introduces new landscapes, new rhythms, new faces and places, and sometimes races” (40). The mental toll of her divorce caused a writer’s block, prompting her to travel in search of a place that sat well with her. She ultimately returned to Winston-Salem, where she was offered a Reynolds Professorship with a lifetime appointment. Angelou reflects, “Within three months of teaching, I had an enormous revelation; I realized I was not a writer who teaches, but a teacher who writes” (40). While in North Carolina, she asked her fellow English department teachers why they had tolerated segregation and whether they held or had held racist beliefs, taking part in the same dialogue she had facilitated among the students years ago. Most responded that they hadn’t known what to do, and Angelou found their honesty refreshing.

Over time, Angelou came to like the landscape in North Carolina. She enjoyed Mt. Zion Baptist Church and the local art scene. Of her time spent living in North Carolina, she concludes, “Blithering ignorance can be found wherever you choose to live” (41).