Maya Angelou on Her Mother: She Said You Can Do 'Anything' (VIDEO)
Maya Angelou shared words about her own mother on Mother's Day in promotion of her newest book, which details the relationship she shared with her mom.
In her most recent novel titled "Mom & Me & Mom," Maya Angelou has recalled the relationship that she once shared with her own mother. The book was released in April, but to commemorate the release, Angelou shared a few stories on Sunday for Mother's Day.
Angelou said that her mother sent her away when she was just three years old. She explains that World War I had just come to an end and that her mother was in love. Even after being sent away, Angelou learned to forgive her mother and the two eventually built a relationship.
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"They fell in something together. I think they like to say it was in love but I don't know about that." Angelou said Sunday while speaking to Face the Nation on CBS. "They were together for about five years when they decided that they didn't like each other at all. So they decided that neither of them wanted the toddlers. I was three and my brother was five. So my grandmother, my father's mother, said send the children to me."
It was not until Angelou was seven that her father picker her up and took her to St. Louis. There, she and her brother lived along with her mother, who also had family there. In that same year, her mother's boyfriend raped Angelou. She would later write about it in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
Angelou didn't speak for five years after that. But years later, as she tried to form her life, Angelou said it was her mother who encouraged her to go after what she wanted.
"I have done a lot of things, and it was Vivian Baxter, my mother, who told me: 'With determination, preparation, and intelligence, you can do anything good.' And so I'm still doing," she told CBS.
