65 pages • 2 hours read
The Heart of a Woman
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Themes
Finding an Authentic Voice
In Chapter 8, as Angelou struggles to choose between Make and Allen, she stares at her reflection in a bathroom mirror. The mirror is small and dusty and, as she tries to decide on the future direction of her life, the reflection remains “vague” (119). Later, after moving to Cairo and seeking employment against her husband’s will, Angelou will remark that “nobody seems to know my name” (224). This sense of personal identity as something elusive can be seen, in part, as a reflection of Angelou’s difficulty in finding her own individual and authentic voice as an author.
As an African American woman writer, Angelou was located at the margins of the white-male-dominated American literary canon. Her use of first-person narrative in her autobiographical works can be seen as an attempt to find an authentic voice in which to document her own experience and that of others like her. Her agenda is at once personal and political, and this is reflected in the shifting focus of The Heart of a Woman, where the narrative focus constantly pans out to broader political events on a national and a global level before focusing back in on Angelou’s emotions and personal relationships. Angelou’s first-person narrative is episodic, focusing on particularly significant emotional or political events rather than following a steady, constant chronology. This structure disrupts the conventional form of the autobiography, creating a literary space within which the Black female author can give voice to her own experiences. During a number of particularly charged episodes, such as the mirror scene in Chapter 8, there is a shift from past-tense first-person narration to free indirect discourse, creating a sense of emotional immediacy and breaking narrative sequence to create a more lyrical effect.
In The Heart of a Woman, Angelou repeatedly refers to other literary texts and cultural artifacts. She does so in an attempt to locate her own literary voice within the complex cultural, literary. and historical context in which she is writing. The book itself takes its name from a poem of the same title by the female Harlem Renaissance poet Georgia Douglas Johnson. Angelou’s repeated references to “Uncle Tom,” an allusion to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly, reflect how African American culture has been misrepresented in the literary canon. Her discussion of Jean Genet’s The Blacks similarly considers to what extent the white literary establishment can fruitfully engage with issues of African American identity. The fact that, from the opening epithet of the introductory section onward, Angelou often cites popular music rather than written texts is illustrative of the strong oral and musical traditions that characterize African American culture.
The quest for a literary voice, then, is an important element of the more general quest for identity depicted in the narrative.
African American Motherhood
Angelou’s role as mother to her growing, African American son is of central importance to the narrative of The Heart of a Woman. Angelou constantly finds herself torn between her duties to her son and her own political and professional commitments. On two occasions—when she first moves to New York and when she travels to Chicago to perform—she discovers that her son has been in danger during her absence. Both instances leave Angelou feeling intensely guilty. while her son is keen to assert his own “manliness” (37, 79) and resilience. Throughout the text, Guy repeatedly refers to himself as a man whenever he feels that his mother is underestimating him or trying to stifle his growth. This leaves Angelou with a constant dilemma: from one point of view, Guy is still a vulnerable teenager, but, from another, it is important that she nurtures his independence without clipping his wings since, as Killens puts it: “Everything in this society is geared towards keeping a black boy from growing to manhood” (79).
The consequences of the societal forces oppressing young Black men repeatedly emerge over the course of the text, reminding Angelou and her readers of the dangers which Guy faces. In Chapter 5, Angelou is able to empathize with the self-destructive violence of the Savages as a consequence of the society in which both they and her son are growing up. When, in Chapter 6, Martin Luther King Jr. sympathizes with Angelou about her brother’s imprisonment, observing that “disappointment drives our young men to some desperate lengths” (93), it is again implied that Guy might meet with the same fate as Bailey. In her lengthy reflection on African American motherhood in Chapter 2, Angelou observes that her role is further complicated by the fact that she too lives in the same society, which is sexist as well as racist, and which may undermine her authority and agency at any moment. As a bright young man, Guy is nonetheless emblematic of future hope. In the introduction, Guy’s youthful enthusiasm temporarily charms Billy Holiday and makes her think of his future, in spite of her generally bleak worldview.
Although she worries that it will compromise his education and put him in danger, Angelou is clearly proud of Guy’s burgeoning political activism, even when he differentiates his own activism from hers by virtue of inter-generational conflict. When he discusses his support for Castro and his involvement in the Nuclear Disarmament movement, Guy individuates the political struggles of his own generation from those of his mother’s. Parenting a member of a new generation of political activists enables Angelou to at least partly reconcile her roles as mother and political campaigner, as indicated by her use of childbirth as a metaphor for the rising movement for racial freedom in Chapter 5:
It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom (71).
As she looks for a suitable partner for herself, Angelou is also searching for an appropriate male role model for her son. In Allen and Make, Angelou is choosing between two potential fathers: one American, the other African. She chooses Make, in part, because in her mind, “there could be no greater future for a black American boy than to have a strong, black, politically aware father” (119).
However, while her political admiration for Make remains intact, as a feminist, she grows increasingly doubtful about the model of gender relations they are providing for her son. As her relationship with Make dissolves, she grows increasingly uncomfortable with Guy’s acceptance of the patriarchal structure of their household. When Make invokes “Guy’s future as an African man” (247), the prospect that Guy might accept that being an African man justifies marital infidelity places the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.
The themes of responsibility, freedom, and intergenerational transition that emerge in Angelou’s relationship with her son are reflected and echoed in her relationship with her own mother. While Angelou seeks to balance political defiance and personal emancipation with maternal responsibility, her mother has tended to sacrifice her maternal role in order to resist the political system and live an emancipated life. In Chapter 1, Angelou recalls her sense of hurt and abandonment when she was separated from her mother between the ages of three and 13. In Chapter 14, when Angelou meets her mother before leaving for Cairo, Angelou notes that an intergenerational passage of maternal authority has taken place: “We reversed roles. Vivian Baxter began to lean on me, to look for support and wisdom, and I, automatically, without thinking about it, started to perform as the shrewd authority, the judicious one, the mother” (210). This sense of maternal duty foreshadows a similar transition in Angelou’s own maternal role. The text ends with Guy leaving home for college and Angelou looking forward to a new chapter in her life.
Pan-Africanism and African American Identity
The extent to which contemporary African Americans should identify with Africa is of central importance to Angelou’s exploration of themes of identity in The Heart of a Woman. The term Pan-Africanism refers to the worldwide movement aiming to unite all people of African origin, whether on the continent or in the diaspora, in the pursuit of a shared destiny. Pan-African ideology gained momentum as the process of decolonization began after the Second World War, and civil rights activists drew inspiration from the success of independence movements and the agency of Black independence leaders in the newly formed United Nations.
The theme of Pan-African sentiment is first introduced in Chapter 3, in which Angelou describes singing the Swahili audience-participation song “Uhuru” at the Apollo theater. Schiffman, the director of the theater, does not believe the audience will be willing to join in. Angelou rejects his advice and observes that Schiffman is out of touch with the rapid cultural changes in Harlem, as African Americans increasingly identify with their African cultural roots.
As evidence of this, Angelou recalls observing African Americans crowding outside the windows of TV shops in Harlem to watch freedom fighters and the leaders of newly decolonized African countries attend the UN. As is frequently the case, Angelou recalls fragments of dialogue by anonymous speakers to reflect the mood of the crowd:
‘That African walk like God himself.’
‘Humph. Ain’t that something.’
The man’s mouth moved and the crowd quieted, as if lip reading. Although it was impossible to understand his message, his look of disdain was not lost on the viewers.
One of the fat women grinned and giggled, ‘I sure wish I knew what that pretty n***** was saying.’
A man near the back of the crowd grunted. ‘Hell. He’s just telling all the crackers in the world to kiss his black ass.’
Laughter burst loudly in the street. Laughter immediate and self-congratulatory (47).
The observers in Harlem are proud of the African politician and see him as a champion, fighting white oppression on their behalf. The huge popularity of “Uhuru” proves Angelou’s point. Significantly, on the last night of performances, when the audience takes up the song without Angelou leading them in, she notes that they are singing a different melody and the song is no longer identifiable with the African original. In this scene, Angelou questions the extent to which African Americans are inspired by the idea of Africa rather than the concrete reality of the continent and its population. This is an issue which will become central in her portrayal of her relationship with Make and her travels in Africa itself.
Make presents his marriage proposal to Angelou as a union of cultures for a shared political end: “With me in his bed he would challenge the loneliness of exile. With my courage added to his own, he would succeed in bringing the ignominious white rule in South Africa to an end” (123). When Angelou tells Make that she has decided to leave him, she sees that his Pan-African activism exists alongside his rhetoric of African patriarchal privilege.
This draws Angelou back toward her Black American identity. It is also why she responds to her sense of isolation at the Ambassador’s party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by seeking the friendship of the Black American cook. At the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference, Angelou is relieved to be introduced to another African American, David Du Bois, and the two pay homage to their shared culture by singing African American spirituals together, reconnecting, not with Africa, but with America: “a connection to a bitter, beautiful past” (220).
When she leaves Make, Angelou does not abandon either Africa or the beliefs and sentiments that attracted her to the continent in the first place. For example, a Pan-African sisterhood emerges in Chapter 10 when Angelou meets with African freedom fighters’ wives in London. Her tears in Chapter 19 as her plane descends over Ghana, mark a recognition of the shared tragic past and hopeful future that unite the African diaspora.
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