KOMPAS.com - “Kau boleh mencatatku dalam sejarah, dengan kebohongan palsu yang penuh benci. Kau boleh menginjakku dalam tanah. Namun, bagai debu, tetap ku ‘kan bangkit lagi.”
Begitu bunyi penggalan puisi penuh emosi karya Dr. Maya Angelou yang ditampilkan dalam Google Doodle hari ini. Bentuknya berupa voice over dan teks yang mengiringi video slideshow berisi sejumlah ilustrasi.
Doodle yang ditampilkan di laman Google pada Selasa, 4 April 2018 memang ditujukan untuk memperingati hari ulang tahun Dr. Maya Angelou ke-40, seorang aktivis asal Amerika Serikat yang getol memperjuangkan kesetaraan gender dan kebudayaan orang kulit hitam keturunan Afrika-Amerika.
Puisinya yang diperdengarkan di Doodle Google berjudul Still I Rise dan dialamatkan untuk penguasa berkulit putih yang menindas kaum kulit hitam.
Terlahir sebagai Marguerite Annie Johnson pada 1928, kisah Dr. Maya Angelou bermula dengan tragedi saat ia mengalami pelecehan seksual ketika masih berumur 8 tahun.
Karena kejadian ini, Dr. Maya Angelou sempat membisu selama lima tahun, tak mau mengucapkan sepatah kata pun, dan lebih memilih menyibukkan diri dengan membaca buku-buku dan puisi.
Perjalanan hidup membawa Dr. Maya Angelou melakukan berbagai macam hal. Dia menjadi konduktor trem listrik pertama di San Francisco yang berkulit hitam, lalu berkeliling duina sebagai anggota opera Porgy and Bess, sambil belajar menguasai beberapa bahasa.
Google Puisi yang mengiringi video di Google Doodle Dr. Maya Angelou berjudul Still I Rise dan ditujukan bagi opresor berkulit putih yang menindas kaum kulit hitam. Puisi yang mengiringi video di Google Doodle Dr. Maya Angelou berjudul Still I Rise dan ditujukan bagi opresor berkulit putih yang menindas kaum kulit hitam.
Sebagaimana dirangkum KompasTekno dari laman Google Doodle, pernah pula Maya Angelou menjadi wartawan di Afrika. Dia kemudian dikenal sebagai salah satu aktivis hak asasi manusia paling menonjol di generasinya.
Tahun 1969 Maya Angelou menerbitkan buku pertamanya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, lalu semenjak itu juga terkenal sebagai penulis. Dia lalu menulis aneka buku lain, mulai dari autobiografi, kumpulan puisi, buku literatur anak-anak, bahkan juga buku masak.
Dr. Maya Angelou tutup usia pada 28 Mei 2014. Melalui karya-karyanya sepanjang hidup, dia memberikan suara pada jutaan orang yang tidak memiliki suara.
Itu pula sebabnya pusi Still I Rise di doodle Google dibacakan oleh sejumlah tokoh terkenal yang terinspirasi oleh Dr. Maya Angelou. Mereka adalah Alicia Keys, America Ferrera, Martina McBride, Guy Johnson, Laverne Cox, dan Oprah Winfrey.
Seperti yang dikatakan oleh Dr. Maya Angelou, orang-orang akan melupakan ucapan dan perbuatan kita, tapi tidak akan pernah melupakan perasaan yang kita munculkan di hati mereka.
It’s only fitting that the first week of U.S. National Poetry Month in April coincides with what would have been the 90th birthday of the poet Maya Angelou, who died May 28, 2014, at the age of 86. And Google is celebrating Angelou’s birthday with a Doodle.
But while Maya Angelou best known today for her writing — as the author of more than 30 books and the recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees — she had many different careers before becoming a writer, and all before the age of 40, as TIME pointed out in her 2014 obituary. Angelou’s jobs included: cook, waitress, sex-worker, dancer, actor, playwright, editor at an English-language newspaper in Egypt, Calypso singer, and cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess. In fact, Angelou’s name is more of a stage name than a pen name; Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis in 1928, but in the 1950s came up with “Maya Angelou,” which is a portmanteau of sorts, by combining her childhood nickname and a riff on her then-husband’s surname.
In a Google Doodle marking her April 4 birthday, Angelou can be heard reading “Still I Rise,” alongside testimonials from her son Guy Johnson, Oprah Winfrey, Laverne Cox, Alicia Keys, America Ferrera, and Martina McBride. The 15-time Grammy-winner Keys calls Angelou a “renaissance woman,” while 14-time Grammy nominee McBride says Angelou inspired her to write her own songs. Winfrey, who has called Angelou a mentor, says that “Maya Angelou is not what she has done or written or spoken, it’s how she did it all. She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence, and a fiery, fierce grace and abounding love.”
Here are five things to know about literary legend Maya Angelou:
Maya Angelou reads poetry to Tufts University students at the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, Mass. on April 28, 1997. John Bohn/The Boston Globe—Getty Images
1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was Maya Angelou’s first book
As the world marks her birthday in 2018, Maya Angelou’s breakout work is particularly relevant to the national conversation. Long before the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements brought sexual assault into the national conversation, she wrote in her 1969 memoir about her own experience with sexual trauma, and how her mother’s boyfriend raped her when she was a child. He was convicted and imprisoned, and after his release he was beaten to death, a series of events that led her to stop talking for a period.
“I thought I had caused his death because I told his name to the family…” she wrote in a 2013 op-ed in The Guardian. “I decided that my voice was so powerful that it could kill people.”
In an interview with Winfrey, Angelou said that, while some places banned the book because of the rape scene, she also believed the book had saved lives by providing a model of endurance. “I just read someplace that after a woman had read Caged Bird, she realized she wasn’t alone,” she told the media mogul. As she once said in another interview, “the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure.”
American poet Maya Angelou reciting her poem 'On the Pulse of Morning' at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in Washington DC, 20th January 1993. (Photo by Consolidated News Pictures/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) (Consolidated News Pictures; Getty Images)
2. Maya Angelou was San Francisco’s first female African-American cable car conductor
“I loved the uniforms,” she once said to Oprah Winfrey, explaining why she wanted this particular job as a 16-year-old. Per her mother’s advice, she went to the city office that hired cable car conductors and sat there reading Russian literature until they agreed to hire her. Her mother got up with her at 4:00 a.m. for her daybreak shifts and trailed her in her car “with her pistol on the passenger seat” to keep an eye on her.
Maya Angelou during an interview in Washington, D.C. on June 3, 1974. Craig Herndon—Getty Images
3. Maya Angelou was also one of the first African-American female members in the Directors Guild of America
She first joined in 1975, shortly after writing the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia about an interracial romance, but made her official directorial debut at 70 with Down in the Delta (1998). The movie is about a mother who sends her children away from Chicago to live with family in rural Mississippi so that they could learn about their roots.
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Poet and novelist Maya Angelou at a Sickle Cell Disease Association of America program in Mobile, Ala. on Sept 12, 2006. John David Mercer—AP
4. Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” was only the second poem written for a Presidential Inauguration
Bill Clinton tapped her to be the second poet ever to read an original work at a Presidential Inauguration, following in the footsteps of Robert Frost, who recited “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
She grew up in Stamps, Ark., about 30 minutes south of Clinton’s birthplace in Hope, and her work reminded the Democratic President of the grocery store that his grandfather managed in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. “When I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I knew exactly who she was talking about and what she was talking about in that book,” he has said.
Maya Angelou gestures while speaking during an interview at her home on April 8, 1978. Jack Sotomayor—Getty Images
5. Angelou won three Grammy Awards—and more
She boasts three Grammy wins (and five nominations) for best spoken word albums — in 1993, 1995 and 2002, for On The Pulse Of Morning, Phenomenal Woman, and A Song Flung Up To Heaven, respectively. But her awards don’t stop there. For example, she was nominated for a 1973 Tony Award for best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for her role in Jerome Kilty’s 1972 play Look Away.
Considering her complicated life, it’s perhaps no surprise that Angelou wrote seven autobiographies, the last one being released just about a year before her death. As Angelou told TIME then, writing — though a career arrived at late in life — was what she did.
“I’ll probably be writing,” she said, “when the Lord says, ‘Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.'”
Dengan segudang karya dan keahliannya, nama Maya Angelou jelas layak dikenang oleh seluruh masyarakat dunia. Perempuan kelahiran 4 April 1028 St. Louis, Missouri, Amerika Serikat, ini meninggalkan jejak yang dalam di sejumlah bidang.
Meninggal dunia pada 28 Mei 2014 lalu, Maya dikenang dunia dengan talentanya sebagai penulis, editor, aktivis hak sipil, penyanyi, penari, aktris, komposer dan bahkan sebagai sutradara perempuan kulit hitam pertama di Hollywood. Namun salah satu jejak yang paling dalam ditapakkan adalah karya tulisnya.
Sepanjang hidupnya, Maya sudah membuat banyak tulisam berupa esai, autobiografi dan yang terindah adalah puisi-puisinya. Tak terhitung sudah puisi yang diciptakan Maya untuk dunia.
Berikut adalah 5 Puisi Terbaik Karya Maya Angelou:
1. Still I Rise (1978)
Puisi ini bercerita tentang kebanggaan warga kulit hitam di AS yang mampu bertahan dan bangkit meski di tengah tekanan dan penganiayaan orang kulit putih, selama berabad-abad. Puisi yang juga favorit pribadi Maya ini pernah dibacakan oleh Nelson Mandela saat ia dilantik menjadi Presiden Afrika Selatan pada 1994.
2. On the Pulse of Morning (1993)
Tema utama puisi adalah desakan untuk menyatukan keragaman dalam budaya di AS. Maya membacakan sendiri puisinya yang satu ini pada acara pelatikan Presiden AS Bill Clinton 20 Januari 1993. Maya menjadi penyair kedua yang mendapat kehormatan serupa, setelah Robert Frost yang membacakan puisinya “The Gift Outright” pada acara pelantikan Presiden AS John F. Kennedy pada 1961. Rekaman suara Maya saat membacakan puisi di acara tersebut kemudian memenangi penghargaan Grammy Award kategori “Best Spoken Word” di tahun yang sama. Selain itu,
3. Phenomenal Woman (1978)
Puisi naratif ini menggambarkan bagaimana seharusnya seorang perempuan bangga terhadap dirinya sendiri meski berpenampilan apa adanya dan tak mengikuti tren serta tuntutan mata dunia. Puisi inilah yang paling sering dibacakan Maya di berbagai kesempatan. Puisi ini ditampilkan dalam film box office "Poetic Justice" karya sutradara John Singleton yang rilis pada 1993 dan meraup keuntungan hingga 27 juta dolar AS.
4. Caged Bird (1983)
Sama seperti "Still I Rise", puisi ini juga bercerita tentang tekanan dan penganiayaan terhadap warga kulit hitam di AS. Burung dalam sangkar (Caged Bird) digambarkan oleh Maya sebagai warga kulit hitam yang tak bisa hidup bebas dan hanya bisa bernyanyi dalam sangkar tersebut sebagai bentuk penantian akan kebebasan, bukan sebagai ekspresi kebahagiaan. Puisi ini pulalah yang mengawali karya otobiografi terbaik Maya, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".
5. A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)
Puisi bertema hak asasi manusia, perdamaian dan keadilan sosial dalam puisi ini ditulis dan dibacakan langsung oleh Maya pada peringatan Hari Kemerdekaan AS ke-50 pada 1995. Dalam puisi ini, Maya berbicara soal sejarah ras manusia yang mencoba menciptakan peradaban besar lewat berbagai capaian seperti membangun monumen besar hingga mempelajari berbagai ilmu pengetahuan dengan diwarnai berbagai intrik dan peperangan. Namun Maya mencoba menyampaikan bahwa capaian seperti itu justru bukanlah keunggulan ras manusia sesungguhnya, melainkan cinta kasih, perdamaian lah yang menjadi capaian terbesar.***
Maya Angelou, who would have been 90 on 4 April, remains one of America’s most influential writers, artists and cultural figureheads.
Her series of seven autobiographical works, beginning with the seminal coming of age story, I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings, overhauled the memoir genre, tackling rape, racism and trauma and catapulted Angelou to international acclaim.
Her birthday is the same date as the assassination of her friend and colleague in the US civil rights movement, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, whom she met in 1960 after hearing him speak.
Google Doodles
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1/91 Maya Angelou Google Doodle celebrating Maya Angelou Google
2/91 John Harrison Google Doodle celebrating John Harrison Google
3/91 Hannah Glasse Google Doodle celebrating Hannah Glasse Google
4/91 Katsuko Saruhashi Google Doodle celebrating Katsuko Saruhashi Google
5/91 Guillermo Haro Google Doodle celebrating Guillermo Haro Google
6/91 Sir William Henry Perkin Google Doodle celebrating Sir William Henry Perkin Google
7/91 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Google Doodle celebrating Gabriel Garcia Marquez Google
8/91 Holi Google Doodle celebrating Holi Google
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14/91 Winter Solstice Google Doodle celebrating Winter Solstice Google
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16/91 Gertrude Jekyll Google Doodle celebrating Gertrude Jekyll Google
17/91 Children's Day 2017 Google Doodle celebrating Children's Day 2017 Google
18/91 Cornelia Sorabji Google Doodle celebrating Cornelia Sorabji Google
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20/91 Jackie Forster Google Doodle celebrating Jackie Forster Google
21/91 Halloween 2017 Google Doodle celebrating Halloween 2017 Google
22/91 Studio for Electronic Music Google Doodle celebrating the Studio for Electronic Music Google
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27/91 Dr Samuel Johnson Google Doodle celebrating Dr Samuel Johnson Google
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38/91 UK General Election 2017 Google celebrates the UK General Election Google
39/91 Zaha Hadid Google celebrates the acclaimed architect for becoming the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize on this day in 2004 Google
40/91 Richard Oakes Google Doodle celebrating Richard Oakes' 75 birthday Google
41/91 Google Doodle celebrating the Antikythera Mechanism Google Doodle celebrating the Antikythera Mechanism Google
42/91 Ferdinand Monoyer The famous French ophthalmologist, who invented the eye test, would have celebrated his 181st birthday today Google
43/91 Google Doodle celebrating Giro d'Italia's 100th Anniversary Google Doodle celebrating Giro d'Italia's 100th Anniversary Google
44/91 Google Doodle celebrating Nasa's Cassini probe Google Doodle celebrating Nasa's Cassini probe Google
45/91 Google Doodle celebrating Fazlur Rahman Khan Google Doodle celebrating Fazlur Rahman Khan Google
46/91 Google Doodle celebrating Sergei Diaghilev Google Doodle celebrating Sergei Diaghilev Google
47/91 Google Doodle celebrating St. Patrick's Day Google Doodle celebrating St. Patrick's Day Google
48/91 Google Doodle celebrating Holi Festival Google Doodle celebrating Holi Festival Google
49/91 Google Doodle celebrating St. David's Day Google Doodle celebrating St. David's Day Google
50/91 Abdul Sattar Edhi Google Doodle of Abdul Sattar Edhi on February 28 2017 Google
51/91 Seven earth-sized exoplanets discovered Google Doodle celebrates Nasa's discovery of seven earth-sized exoplanets in new solar system Google
52/91 Bessie Coleman Google Doodle honours the first African American woman to get an international pilot licence on her 125th birthday Google
53/91 Caroling Google Doodle celebrates Christmas caroling Google
54/91 Today's Google Doodle features activist Steve Biko Google
55/91 Walter Cronkite Google celebrates Walter Cronkite's 100th birthday
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59/91 Autumnal equinox 2016 Google marks the start of fall
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67/91 World Twenty20 final Google celebrates the 2016 World Twenty20 cricket final between the West Indies and England with a doodle Google
68/91 William Morris Google celebrates William Morris' 182 birthday with a doodle showcasing his most famous designs Google
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86/91 41st anniversary of the discovery of 'Lucy' Google marks the 41st anniversary of the discovery of 'Lucy', the name given to a collection of fossilised bones that once made up the skeleton of a hominid from the Australopithecus afarensis species, who lived in Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago
87/91 George Boole Google marks George Boole's 200th birthday
88/91 Halloween 2015 Google celebrates Halloween using an interactive doodle game "Global Candy Cup"
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90/91 Autumnal Equinox 2015 Google marks the autumnal equinox on 23 September
91/91 International Women's Day 2018 Google marks IWD with a doodle featuring a dozen female artists from 12 different countries
Following the meeting, Angelou, who was already a successful singer, organised the Cabaret for Freedom to support Dr King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1968 Dr King asked her to organise a civil rights march, to which she agreed, but it came shortly before he was assassinated.
She had also become friends with Malcolm X, who she met in Ghana, where she lived during the early 1960s, working as a writer and editor as well as broadcasting on radio. In 1965 she returned to the US to help him create a new civil rights organisation - the Organisation of Afro-American Unity, but he was assassinated shortly afterwards.
While living a life full enough to write seven acclaimed autobiographies makes condensing Angelou’s extraordinary life into a short article an impossible task, here are five things you may not have known about her.
She was a professional dancer
In her early 20s, recently married and with a young son, Angelou began studying modern dance in San Francisco. She formed the dance team Al and Rita, before Angelou decided to move to New York in order to study African dance with Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus. She went on to dance professionally in clubs in San Francisco, including at the famous beat-era nightclub, The Purple Onion.
Her success as a calypso dancer paved the way for Angelou to record her first album as a singer, Miss Calypso.
She won a Grammy award
Though Angelou saw success as a singer, she won a Grammy award in 1995 not for her many musical works, but for a recording of her poem On The Pulse of Morning, which she recited at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993.
The recitation was the first at a presidential inauguration since Robert Frost at President John F Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration.
She directed a film starring Wesley Snipes
Wesley Snipes, whose more famous roles are for action films such as Demolition Man and the Blade trilogy, was among the cast in Angelou’s 1996 film Down in the Delta.
The film explored family tragedy, drugs, race and prejudice, and redemption.
Her writing routine involved sherry, the bible and a deck of cards
Angelou’s writing routine remains the stuff of legends.
According to several sources, in later life when already a successful writer, Angelou would get up at 5am and check into a hotel room where staff had been told to take down any pictures from the walls.
She would then lie on the bed with a bottle of sherry, Roget’s Thesaurus and the Bible, as well as a deck of cards to play Solitaire with. She wrote on yellow legal pads and reportedly averaged 10-12 pages a day, which she then edited down to three or four pages in the evening.
She wrote about working in the sex trade to help people speak about their experiences
According to her autobiographies, Angelou worked as a prostitute and also as a madame for lesbian prostitutes.
In a 1995 interview, she explained the importance of writing about these subjects.
Maya Angelou: In her own words
6 show all Maya Angelou: In her own words
1/6 'There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth' Maya Angelou with her book, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', in 1971 AP
2/6 'Segregation shaped me, and education liberated me' Maya Angelou in Washington in 1992 AP
3/6 'Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible' Maya Angelou delivers a speech in 1995 EPA
4/6 'Good done anywhere is good done everywhere' Maya Angelou smiles during an interview in 2005 AP
5/6 'At 15 life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honourable as resistance, especially if one had no choice' Maya Angelou speaks during the 9th Annual Maya Angelou Women Who Lead Luncheon in 2011 AP
6/6 'Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear' Maya Angelou with President Barack Obama in 2011 AP
She said: “I wrote about my experiences because I thought too many people tell young folks, 'I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? - never I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In fact, I have no closet.' They lie like that and then young people find themselves in situations and they think, 'Damn I must be a pretty bad guy. My mom or dad never did anything wrong.' They can’t forgive themselves and go on with their lives.”
