Mom Me Mom
Mom Me Mom
Mom Me Mom
RELATIONSHIP
ABSTRACT
Afro American writer, Maya Angelou, a respectable writer of autobiography, once more,
unfolds a documentary- story of her childhood, girlhood and adulthood in her final book in
the series of autobiographies, Mom & Me & Mom. Different from the others, this time she
primarily highlights the unbreakable link between mothers and daughters and it turns into a
moving tale of separation and reunion. Additionally, she deals with her metamorphosis from
of the mother ,Vivian. This paper aims to read and analyze these processes in the light of
Mom & Me & Mom, Maya Angelou's seventh and final book in her series
of autobiographies, records her passage to adulthood ,the memories of her motherhood and
the relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter. Among a number of novels written by
women that question and highlight the mother and daughter relationship, Angelo’s work is
noteworthy in that, it celebrates this bond contrary to others which represent mother-blaming
plots. Through her own narrative voice, she offers a realistic reflection of her own first-hand
daughter. In the first decade of her life, she not only lacks the maternal “confirmation and
approval” but also suffers from absence of maternal “affection and attention” because of her
mother’s inability to take her responsibility. The reunion with mother in her girlhood changes
the course of this negative situation and they establish an everlasting bond and Maya gains her
self esteem which has been wounded as a result of lack of maternal love and mirroring.
Embodied with confidence, spiritual power and determination, this time, she becomes a
mother and raises her own son, Guy, in the light of these achievements.
Angelou speaks as woman about women both to women and men in her work. In this
way, she confirms what Irıgaray defends regarding the necessity of peculiar discourse through
which women may speak with their mothers. Walker, taking into account Irıgaray arguments,
suggests that continuity between daughters and mothers is experienced with the help of
literary domain, women build bridges between themselves and their mothers in writing. She
adds that by speaking of the ambivalence of the mother-daughter relationship, women give
birth to themselves. This ambivalence consists of contradictory experiences: “love and hate,
mutuality and estrangement, anger and desire, unity and separation.” (162). As she points, it is
possible to see co-existence of the contradictions in Angelou’s work. Being exiled from her
mother at the age of three, Maya also oscillates between love and hate, anger and forgiveness,
intimacy and alienation when they are reunited. Once this dilemma is solved and bridges are
constructed, she steps further and discovers her potentials. To begin with, this paper will
relate how Maya and her mother restore their relation between them that is cut years ago, then
it will try to show how Maya develops a true self ,gains her confidence and independence,
next, it will deal with her transition into motherhood and analyze how Maya survives under
is constituted between two sides. It seems as if she has followed the step that Irıgaray
suggested and described in her book “Je Tu Nous” concerning how mothers and daughters
could develop their relationship. First of all, she urges women to form their own discourse, a
I suggest mothers create opportunities to use the femine plural with their
realities they feel and share but for which they lack language. (48)
After long separation process, to be able to find a connection Vivian and Maya do what
Irıgaray points. They create a language. From the very beginning, Vivian calls her as ‘my
baby’, but Maya cannot answer back her as “Mother.” At first, she prefers using ma’am to
address her. Vivian watches and lets her to choose her own expressions for several weeks.
Then, she tries to communicate with her and ‘sit-down-talk to’ sessions start. These sessions
are repeated whenever they become necessary in the rest of her life. When she understands
that Maya has difficulty in addressing her as mother, they decide on a substitute word that is
more reasonable than ‘Ma’am’ and until Maya herself becomes a mother, she calls her as
‘Lady’. She introduces her new name to other members of the family without humiliating her
daughter; she handles the situation with grace saying that “everybody has the right to be
called anything he wants to be called.”(ch.7) .In this fragile period, Vivian conquers her
Along with this agreement on expressions and verbal exchanges, in time they begin to
speak and share everything, which strengthens their relationship. As Irıgaray suggests, “the
mother woman”, Vivian, “speaks to the daughter woman”, Maya,”talks about things that
concern the two of them, talks about herself and asks her daughter to do same.”(1993:50) In
order to make her adapt her new life, home and city, Vivien always guides her daughter with
her advices .the first thing she advices her to smile and Maya appreciates her for this. “That
day, I learned that I could be a giver simply by bringing a smile to another person. The
ensuing years have taught me that a kind word or a vote of support can be charitable
gift.”(ch.3) After Vivien is informed that Maya is pregnant, she arrives home and just talks to
Maya. She tells the family stories about the babies, pregnancies and delivering babies. She
remembers the night when Maya is born and recounts those memories. During the delivery,
she does not leave her daughter but tells jokes and encourages her to bear down. Being an
experienced woman whenever she senses negativity that encloses her daughter, she pushes her
to share it. In another time, she accounts her own problem and asks for Maya’s help. These
mutual conversations, sharing and cooperation intensify their bond that was broken in the
past.
The lately established strong bond is perpetuated owing to an outer private space that
Vivian has created for Maya and her never ending support to her daughter. The idea of space
“It is important for them (mothers and daughters) to have their own outer
Maya’s first private space is her new room prepared for her before she reunites her mother.
Vivien arranges it knowing that it is not just a room but an initial step that implies the
individuation of a person. After she gives birth to her son, Maya extends this spatial
independence by finding a job and moving to a separate place. Her daughter decision makes
Vivian feel proud of her little “baby” who has been transformed into an adult at an early age
and she lets her experience her own singularity. Maya never regrets having left behind all the
amenities provided for her, on the contrary, she is grateful of her liberation and expresses it
openly: “Mother liberated me by letting me know she was on my side I realized that I had
grown close to her and that she had liberated me. She liberated me from a society that would
have had me think of myself as the lower of the low. She liberated me to life.(ch.13)”In
addition to this sense of liberation, it is noticed that Vivian contributes to her daughter‘s
transformation into a powerful, adamant and self-confident woman with her everlasting
support and encouragement. On her return to San Francisco from summer visit of her father ,
Maya works as conductorette until she returns to school. During those months, Vivian gives
her a lift, waits until the daybreak to protect her. Furthermore, she welcomes her grandson as
a “wonderful baby” and never causes Maya to hate herself because of this illegitimate
occurrence. What is more, Maya’s each new attempt for her career is always approved and
she finds her mother on her side whenever she demands her assistance. Thanks to her
reinforcement and aid Maya believes that she is going to become somebody.(ch.14) The more
time passes, the more the solidarity between them gains indestructible dimension.
In Angelou’s transition from anxious child to confident teenager and self sufficient
adult, her grandmother’s guardianship and her brother, Bailey’s existence, who also shares the
Being packed off with her brother to Arkansas where her grandmother lives and the absence
of parental love amplify her sense of loss and emotional displacement .She develops a
negative self image .As psychoanalysts assume, her basic ego development is wounded .This
early separation from her biological mother threatens Maya’s very sense of existence.
Consequently, she cannot develop her “true self” (Chodorow, 1978:60).This is revealed at
their first encounter:“She looked around and saw me. I wanted to sink into ground. I was not
pretty or even cute. That woman looked like a movie star deserved a better looking daughter
than me. I knew it and was sure she would know it as soon as she saw me.”(ch.3).The
Grandmother transmits the values and ensures protection even though she sometimes fails to
sustain sufficient maternal affection of which Maya is in need.“She kissed me. I had not
received on kiss in all the years in Arkansas. Often my grandmother would call me and show
ne off to her visitors. “This is my grandbaby.”She would stroke me and smile. That was the
closest I had come to being kissed.”(ch.3) Her grandmother does her best to provide a positive
model of black female empowerment; she and Bailey create an order out of all this poignant
chaos. Maya’s faith in brother is out of debate. His feeling the responsibility for her rearing
and his protectiveness towards her function like a shelter under which Maya feels secure and
her childhood innocence finds a crack to live. Thanks to this strong bond of her extended
The autobiographical mode permits Angelou to share a pair of selected experiences and
incidents that reveal how she obtains her confidence and determination .The first one of them
is her adventure in San Diego where she has to spend the summer with her father and step-
mother. After a period of time, in effort to improve their relations, her father drives her to
Mexico. In a cantina near the border ,he gets drunk .Though she has never taken driving
lesson, just relying on her previous observation of the working of a manual transmission car,
she drives her drunken father’s car, gets down off the mountain and arrives at home. She is
confronted with the accusations of her step mother and rather than showing tolerance to her
step mother’s assault, she packs her bag and leaves the house. Until she is ready to return San
Francisco, Maya lives in the junkyard, sleeps in a car together with about fifteen kids whom
she does not know before. Without an adult supervisor, among multi racial community who
accepts her, Maya strengthens her ego and develops a racial tolerance. Angelou seems to
stress that especially these two incidents awaken adolescent Maya to notice her capacity and
power. The following incident, the struggle for employment, reinforces her growing
confidence in herself. For two weeks, with her mother urges, she challenges against the
railway company to get the job and her resolution results in the accomplishment of her dream.
Even, her mother is impressed by her insistent and adamant trials. She expresses: “No, you
learned that you have power and determination, I love you and I am proud of you. With those
two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere.”(ch.10). Maya's three empowering life
experiences and the growing self reliance makes her realise that she can stand on her own
Alongside re-established mother and daughter relationship, Angelou portrays her own
experience of motherhood. In a sense, she remembers and rewrites the history of black
mothers. In spite of being a teenage unwed mother, she decides to wrestle with the hardships,
problems and conflicts of life, and enters the circle of working mothers. Thereby, her
divorced but self-contained mother, her ego ideals, she already acquires this tradition of
associated with domesticity and it is positioned in the domestic circle, but for black women it
is inseparable from work. Maya like her ancestors finds herself working in badly-paid menial
jobs to provide for her son. It becomes nearly impossible for her to earn a decent living and
also her son’s health condition deteriorates in time. It is noticed that Maya’s working
conditions are against the assumptions of feminist movements in sixties and seventies which
supported women’s working outside to liberate them from economic dependence on men. She
does not depend on men but shares her responsibility of mothering with her mother .Her son,
Guy, spends at least two days in his grandmother’s house and grows up in extended family
structure as his mother. Now and then, Maya relies on her mother care and help for Guy while
she is after her career ambitions. Because of the cultural expectations that announce a mother
should stay with her child at all time, she is surrendered to the sense of guilty consciousness.
Chodorow underscores this historical reality in her work which analyzes women’s mothering
across the generations. She openly expresses that “for child care women’s mothering is taken
for granted “and “women continue to perform their mothering activities in the family”.(1978:
3- 5). In the presence of this historical determinism, it is not difficult to imagine the
occurrences that Maya has to endure and why she is drifted into marriage institution.
In spite of absence paternal authority figure in the past, she still believes that marriage
may bring stability and normality into her life which is rising and falling in her twenties but it
proves the opposite. Maya's fantasy of marriage and the actual experience juxtapose with each
other. She fantasizes that she can be a good housewife who lives in a separate house that
belongs to the family, cooks meals and meets married couples to socialize. Moreover, she
expects that her spouse may be a male role model for Guy, too. At the beginning, she fulfils
all of these obligations and feels satisfied with her dream like life. She “fits into married life
as a foot fits into a well-worn shoe”. (ch 17).Tosh, her husband, and her son make good
friends, she experiments on fancy dishes and they meet some racially mixed couples on
Saturdays. Unfortunately, in metaphorical sense, when Tosh takes this “marriage carriage” in
hand and decides where to drive on his own, her romanticism comes to end. She
describes:“The light in my marriage waned as the sun sets in the western sky. At first the
dimness is hardly noticeable ,then noticeable but not alarming. Then with a rush, the light is
The more she compromises a lot of herself, the more she surrenders to Tosh’s demands.
When she begins to lose her marital interests, she can evaluate her marriage in an objective
way. Her marriage in which she seeks for a father figure for his son and a protection for her
proves that it is nothing more than a imprisonment. First of all, she is barred from her current
job, her interests and her friends respectively. Then, As a woman who is sent to domestic
sphere from public sphere by her husband, she is just expected to be satisfied with what the
dominant side provides for her. The male income provider, the husband, persists his
“phallocratic" power over her and does not allow it to be denied. Persistence of male authority
unveil sexual abuses and psychical violence that she is exposed to. These occasions objectify
like a commodity. In This Sex which is not One, Irıgaray asserts that women undergo an
oppression, exploitation of their body and denial of their desire; They are abused either
sexually or economically.(164) These social reality echoes itself in Maya’s miseries. At the
age of seven, Maya is raped by one of her mother’s boyfriend who accepts himself superior to
woman and her body as an object which is expected to subordinate to the desires of his
masculine power. Her second sexual experience is not very different from the first one. Her
partner disregards her body’s wishes and just focuses on his pleasure. Maya accounts this
experience as “without kissing, foreplay coddling or whispering.”(ch.13) .They just get their
pants down and sex. Over and above this disappointment, she is exposed to psychical violence
by her following boyfriend whom she has confidence in his affection and sincerity. He beats
her to the death claiming that she deceives him and intends to kill her so as not to leave her
for some other Negro to have her. (ch.15). The masculine imaginary that society has formed
entitles him to beat and even kill her. These bitter incidents become the voice of all women
who suffer from ongoing violence or abuse of men and reflect destructive nature of masculine
power.
In conclusion, Mom & Me & Mom , as the title suggests, discusses Maya Angelou and
her mother, Vivian, relationship from her childhood until her mother death. Her sense of
estrangement towards her mother and her inability respond to her mother emotionally that
emerge as a result of maternal deprivation vanish over time after reunion with her mother and
they construct a strong bond. The more this bond hardens, the more Maya discovers her
potentials and turns into self reliant and self confident woman. In spite of negative
experiences of her sexuality and marital life, she manages to survive thanks to praise worthy
REFERENCES
Angelou, M. (2013). Mom & Me & Mom. Random House, New York
Irıgaray, L. (1993). Je ,Tu, Nous ,( Trans: A. Martin), Routledge, London and New York.
Irıgaray, L . (1985). This Sex Which Is Not One, ( Trans: C. Porter and C. Burke), Cornell
Walker, M. B. (1998). Philosophy and The Maternal Body. Routledge, London and New
York.