
DATE: Wednesday, November 12, 1997          TAG: 9711120728

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER 

                                            LENGTH:   60 lines

ESSAYS REVEAL AN OLDER AND WISER MAYA ANGELOU

WHEN SHE WAS 30, Maya Angelou met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was a watershed moment in her life. She did not merely accept his challenge to promote social justice, she excelled at it.

With comedian Godfrey Cambridge, she organized a benefit for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became a champion for black civil rights. Working with luminaries such as Bayard Rustin, she was appointed to succeed him as Northern coordinator of SCLC.

In her position, Angelou soon realized the power of her pen. And inspired by literary mentors, including King and James Baldwin, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild. As she explains in ``Even the Stars Look Lonesome,'' she worked to overcome her ignorance and her dislike of criticism.

``Trying to overcome was Black people's honorable tradition,'' she says in the ironic tone that suffuses the 20 essays comprising her new collection.

The subjects of these essays vary; they describe everything from aging to raging, from sexuality to sensuality. Some cover the power of art and the power of an African heritage. Some discuss learning; some, teaching. Some show how to make a house a home; others show how to become a good mother.

Infusing these subjects is Angelou's concern with African-American issues, which she addresses in the spirit (and often the biblical rhythms) of King, stressing Brotherhood and Christianity. One doesn't see Baldwin's fiery anger. Nor does one see much of Baldwin's genius for specific detail, a genius that Angelou knows well, having mastered it in her autobiographical writings, especially ``I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.''

This isn't to say that these essays do not contain evocative moments. They do. Often those moments focus on Angelou's mother, Vivian Baxter. The subject of several essays, Baxter is ``the dolled-up, pretty yellow woman,'' whose soft eyes belie her passionate, rebellious spirit. There's Baxter, the mother, who ``half proud, half pitying,'' sends Angelou into the world. There's Baxter, the feisty mother, who at the top of her voice, lectures young women about cooking and cleaning. And there's the mother lying in bed, ``hooked by pale blue wires to an oxygen tank, fighting cancer for her life.''

The collection lacks the fierce beauty of ``Caged Bird.'' Instead, it shows an older, wiser Angelou, capable of insight like this: ```(i)t is in the interlude between being in company that we talk to ourselves. In the silence we listen to ourselves. . . . We describe ourselves to ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God.'' MEMO: Diane Scharper, a poet, teaches memoir writing at Towson

University in Maryland. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Maya Angelou

Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``Even the Stars Look Lonesome''

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher: Random House.

145 pp.

Price: $18