![]() I wrote if for all of us, for women in kibbutzim and burgher women, women on the pages and the front covers of Vogue and Essence magazine and Ebony magazine. I wrote the poem for black women and white women and Asian and Hispanic women, Native American woman…I wrote if for fate women, women who may have posed for the before pictures in Weight Watchers. This is a poem called “Phenomenal Woman”. Today, your joy begins, today your work begins. It enlightens and lightens at the same time. And the joy of achievement, the ecstasy of achievement. You may lean against it, it will hold you up, you have that. However, on the other hand, what you have first is your courage. For fascism is on the rise, and be assured of it, sexism, racism, ageism, every vulgarity against the human spirit is on the rise. You can almost take any Rand McNally map and close your eyes and just point, and you will find there are injustices, but in your country, particularly in your country, young women, you have, as the old folks say, your work cut out for you. For around this world, your world, my world, there are conflicts, brutalities, humiliations, terrors, murders, around this world. …It takes a phenomenal amount of courage. ![]() Since you have worked this hard, since you have also been greatly blessed, since you are here, you have developed a marvelous level of courage, and the question then which you must ask yourself, I think, is will you really do the job which is to be done: Make this country more than it is today, more than what James Baldwin called “these yet to be United States”… There is an African statement which is, “The trouble for the thief is not how to steal the bugle, but where to blow it.” Be assured that that question is in the minds of your parents, of your instructors, of people whose names you will never know, of the group of women who will sit in those very seats next year. It is the greatest of all your virtues, for without courage you cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.Īnd now that you have shown that you are capable of manufacturing that important and wondrous virtue, you must be asking yourselves what you will do with it. Of all your attributes-your youth, your beauty, your wit, your kindnesses, your money-courage is indeed your greatest achievement. …you have still had to develop an outstanding courage to invent this moment, for you have invented it. The jumble of words and the tangle of small and great thoughts begin to take order, and this morning you can see a small portion, an infinitesimal portion, of the map of your future… The years of preparation, of tedious study and exciting learning at least begin to make sense. ![]() JExcerpts from the speech delivered by Maya Angelou to the class of 1982 at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. ![]()
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