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玛娅·安杰洛，1928年4月4日生于密苏里州的圣路易斯城，是美国文坛最耀眼的黑人女作家和诗人。玛娅多才多艺，她不仅是畅销书作家，出版过10部畅销书；她还是美国有名的演员、导演、制片人和影视剧作家，是好莱坞第一位黑人女导演；她又是社会活动家，曾接受美国民权领袖马丁·路德·金、总统杰拉尔德·鲁道夫·福特和总统杰米·卡特的任命。1993年，她应总统比尔·克林顿的邀请，在其就职仪式上朗诵献诗《清晨的脉搏》（On the Pulse of the Morning），成为美国历史上继罗伯特·弗罗斯特之后的官方诗人。她会法语、西班牙语、意大利语、阿拉伯语和西非芳蒂语等多种语言，执教过多所大学，现在是北卡罗来纳州的韦克福里斯特大学的终身教授。
玛娅的创作与她的生活密不可分，具有强烈的自传色彩。代表作有自传体小说——《我知道笼中鸟为何歌唱》（I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1970），诗集《我将奋起》（And Still I Rise, 1978）等等。玛娅的自传和诗歌已在非洲裔美国人心中引起广泛共鸣。
2008年，80岁高龄的玛娅·安杰洛出版了《致女儿的信》。顾名思义，这是玛娅写给女儿的信。但实际上，玛娅只生过一个儿子。书中的“女儿”实际上泛指玛娅关心的广大人民。她将自己的人生智慧集结成册，与自己的“广大儿女”分享了那些她人生中所经历的与所学到的事情。她讲述了出生、生活和死亡；她谈到了人与人之间如何产生误解和争斗……她将自己对于人生的理解都凝聚在这字里行间。
If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
Never 1)whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.
I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black, and White, Jewish, and Muslim, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American, and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and 2)unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.
如果你无法改变现状，那么改变你的思考方式。你或许会发现新的解决方法。
切莫哀诉。哀诉会让粗暴的人知道一个受害者就在附近。
确保在自己走到生命尽头的时候，自己的人生并不是碌碌无为、对人类毫无贡献。
我生育了一个孩子，是个儿子，但是我有成千上万的女儿。你们当中有黑种人也有白种人，有犹太人也有穆斯林，有亚洲人，也有讲西班牙语的，有印第安人也有阿留申人。你们当中有胖的和瘦的，有漂亮的和相貌平平的，有同性恋者和异性恋者，也有受过教育的和未受教育的，而我正和你们所有人讲话。这就是我所能够给予你们的。
1 Home
I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but from the age of three I grew up in Stamps, Arkansas, with my paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, and my father’s brother, Uncle Willie, and my only sibling, my brother, Bailey.
At thirteen I joined my mother in San Francisco. Later I studied in New York City. Throughout the years I have lived in Paris, Cairo, West Africa, and all over the United States.
1 家
我出生在密苏里州的圣路易斯，但是从三岁起便在阿肯色州的斯坦普斯长大。我和祖母安妮·亨德森、我父亲的兄弟——威利叔叔，还有我唯一的一个兄弟——哥哥贝利，住在一起。
十三岁的时候，我搬到旧金山与母亲同住。后来我在纽约读书。我的一生曾在巴黎、开罗、西非以及美国各个地方生活过。
Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize, “My name is Johnny Thomas. My address is 220 Center Street.” All facts, which have little to do with the child’s truth.
My real growing up world, in Stamps, was a continual struggle against a condition of surrender. Surrender first to the grown up human beings who I saw every day, all black and all very, very large. Then submission to the idea that black people were inferior to white people, who I saw rarely. Without knowing why exactly, I did not believe I was inferior to anyone except maybe my brother. I knew I was smart, but I also knew that Bailey was smarter, maybe because he reminded me often and even suggested that maybe he was the smartest person in the world. He came to that decision when he was nine years old.
The South, in general, and Stamps, Arkansas, in particular, had had hundreds of years’ experience in 3)demoting even large adult blacks to psychological dwarfs. Poor white children had the license to address 4)lauded and older blacks by their first names or by any names they could create.
Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the 5)gristle of the earlobe.
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious 6)apparitions, who come and go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only 7)enfranchised citizen.
Geography, as such, has little meaning to the child observer. If one grows up in the Southwest, the desert and open skies are natural. New York, with the elevators and subway rumble and millions of people, and Southeast Florida with its palm trees and sun and beaches are to the children of those regions, the ways the outer world is, has been, and will always be.
那些都是事实，但是，事实对于一个孩子，仅仅是可记忆的语言，“我的名字叫约翰尼·托马斯。我的住址是中央大街220号。”所有的这些事实，都与这个孩子真正的一面鲜有关联。
我在斯坦普斯成长的真实环境，是一场对抗屈服的长期斗争。首先是屈服于我每天见到的成人们，他们都是黑人，非常高大；然后是屈服于黑人比白人低一等的这种想法，尽管我很少见到白人。
虽然不知道确切的原因，但是除了我哥哥，我不认为我低人一等。我知道我聪明，但是我也知道贝利比我聪明得多，或许是因为他经常这样提醒我，他甚至暗示我，他也许就是世界上最聪明的人。他在九岁的时候得出了这个结论。
总的来说，在南部地区，成年黑人（即使是身材高大的黑人）在心理上被贬低成侏儒已有数百年的历史，而在阿肯色州的斯坦普斯尤为如此。贫穷的白人小孩有权利直呼受人赞赏的、年长的黑种人的名字或者任何他们所能够捏造出来的名字。
托马斯·沃尔夫通过他所著的美国伟大小说的书名告诫我们：“人不可能重返家园。”我喜欢这本书，但是我从不赞同其书名所述。我认为人永远无法离开家园。我相信在外表之下，在眼睛的最角落，甚至在耳垂的软骨上，一个人背负着家的影子、梦想、恐惧，以及守卫家园的力量。
家是青春的疆土，孩子是那里唯一真正的居住者。父母、兄弟姐妹和邻居都是神秘的幻影，他们来了又去，在孩子们——这方疆土上唯一自由的公民——的周边做着奇妙、令人捉摸不透的事情。
地理位置，就其本身而言，对于孩子这样的观察者来说毫无意义。如果一个人在西南部地区成长，沙漠和开阔的天空便是自然而然的事。而对于生活在那些地区的孩子们，充斥着电梯、地铁的轰隆声和数百万人的纽约，有着棕榈树、太阳和海滩的佛罗里达州东南部始终是外面的世界，现在是，过去是，将来也一直会是。
玛娅的创作与她的生活密不可分，具有强烈的自传色彩。代表作有自传体小说——《我知道笼中鸟为何歌唱》（I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1970），诗集《我将奋起》（And Still I Rise, 1978）等等。玛娅的自传和诗歌已在非洲裔美国人心中引起广泛共鸣。
2008年，80岁高龄的玛娅·安杰洛出版了《致女儿的信》。顾名思义，这是玛娅写给女儿的信。但实际上，玛娅只生过一个儿子。书中的“女儿”实际上泛指玛娅关心的广大人民。她将自己的人生智慧集结成册，与自己的“广大儿女”分享了那些她人生中所经历的与所学到的事情。她讲述了出生、生活和死亡；她谈到了人与人之间如何产生误解和争斗……她将自己对于人生的理解都凝聚在这字里行间。
If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
Never 1)whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.
I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black, and White, Jewish, and Muslim, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American, and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and 2)unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.
如果你无法改变现状，那么改变你的思考方式。你或许会发现新的解决方法。
切莫哀诉。哀诉会让粗暴的人知道一个受害者就在附近。
确保在自己走到生命尽头的时候，自己的人生并不是碌碌无为、对人类毫无贡献。
我生育了一个孩子，是个儿子，但是我有成千上万的女儿。你们当中有黑种人也有白种人，有犹太人也有穆斯林，有亚洲人，也有讲西班牙语的，有印第安人也有阿留申人。你们当中有胖的和瘦的，有漂亮的和相貌平平的，有同性恋者和异性恋者，也有受过教育的和未受教育的，而我正和你们所有人讲话。这就是我所能够给予你们的。
1 Home
I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but from the age of three I grew up in Stamps, Arkansas, with my paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, and my father’s brother, Uncle Willie, and my only sibling, my brother, Bailey.
At thirteen I joined my mother in San Francisco. Later I studied in New York City. Throughout the years I have lived in Paris, Cairo, West Africa, and all over the United States.
1 家
我出生在密苏里州的圣路易斯，但是从三岁起便在阿肯色州的斯坦普斯长大。我和祖母安妮·亨德森、我父亲的兄弟——威利叔叔，还有我唯一的一个兄弟——哥哥贝利，住在一起。
十三岁的时候，我搬到旧金山与母亲同住。后来我在纽约读书。我的一生曾在巴黎、开罗、西非以及美国各个地方生活过。
Those are facts, but facts, to a child, are merely words to memorize, “My name is Johnny Thomas. My address is 220 Center Street.” All facts, which have little to do with the child’s truth.
My real growing up world, in Stamps, was a continual struggle against a condition of surrender. Surrender first to the grown up human beings who I saw every day, all black and all very, very large. Then submission to the idea that black people were inferior to white people, who I saw rarely. Without knowing why exactly, I did not believe I was inferior to anyone except maybe my brother. I knew I was smart, but I also knew that Bailey was smarter, maybe because he reminded me often and even suggested that maybe he was the smartest person in the world. He came to that decision when he was nine years old.
The South, in general, and Stamps, Arkansas, in particular, had had hundreds of years’ experience in 3)demoting even large adult blacks to psychological dwarfs. Poor white children had the license to address 4)lauded and older blacks by their first names or by any names they could create.
Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the 5)gristle of the earlobe.
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors, are mysterious 6)apparitions, who come and go, and do strange unfathomable things in and around the child, the region’s only 7)enfranchised citizen.
Geography, as such, has little meaning to the child observer. If one grows up in the Southwest, the desert and open skies are natural. New York, with the elevators and subway rumble and millions of people, and Southeast Florida with its palm trees and sun and beaches are to the children of those regions, the ways the outer world is, has been, and will always be.
那些都是事实，但是，事实对于一个孩子，仅仅是可记忆的语言，“我的名字叫约翰尼·托马斯。我的住址是中央大街220号。”所有的这些事实，都与这个孩子真正的一面鲜有关联。
我在斯坦普斯成长的真实环境，是一场对抗屈服的长期斗争。首先是屈服于我每天见到的成人们，他们都是黑人，非常高大；然后是屈服于黑人比白人低一等的这种想法，尽管我很少见到白人。
虽然不知道确切的原因，但是除了我哥哥，我不认为我低人一等。我知道我聪明，但是我也知道贝利比我聪明得多，或许是因为他经常这样提醒我，他甚至暗示我，他也许就是世界上最聪明的人。他在九岁的时候得出了这个结论。
总的来说，在南部地区，成年黑人（即使是身材高大的黑人）在心理上被贬低成侏儒已有数百年的历史，而在阿肯色州的斯坦普斯尤为如此。贫穷的白人小孩有权利直呼受人赞赏的、年长的黑种人的名字或者任何他们所能够捏造出来的名字。
托马斯·沃尔夫通过他所著的美国伟大小说的书名告诫我们：“人不可能重返家园。”我喜欢这本书，但是我从不赞同其书名所述。我认为人永远无法离开家园。我相信在外表之下，在眼睛的最角落，甚至在耳垂的软骨上，一个人背负着家的影子、梦想、恐惧，以及守卫家园的力量。
家是青春的疆土，孩子是那里唯一真正的居住者。父母、兄弟姐妹和邻居都是神秘的幻影，他们来了又去，在孩子们——这方疆土上唯一自由的公民——的周边做着奇妙、令人捉摸不透的事情。
地理位置，就其本身而言，对于孩子这样的观察者来说毫无意义。如果一个人在西南部地区成长，沙漠和开阔的天空便是自然而然的事。而对于生活在那些地区的孩子们，充斥着电梯、地铁的轰隆声和数百万人的纽约，有着棕榈树、太阳和海滩的佛罗里达州东南部始终是外面的世界，现在是，过去是，将来也一直会是。