Maya Angelou

In Braving The Wilderness, Brené Brown treats Angelou as the touchstone for the book’s central theme of self-belonging. Brown recounts being introduced to Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” in college thirty-two years earlier and having “everything shift” for her. The recurring anchor is Angelou’s line to Bill Moyers — “I belong to myself. I am very proud of that… I like Maya very much” — which Brown reads as the destination of the wilderness journey: getting “to the place where we like ourselves” and refusing to be moved or silenced by others. Brown turns this into the book’s imperative — when you’ve spent your life moving to fit in and Angelou tells you not to be moved, “you learn how to plant your damn feet.”

Context: Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was an American poet and memoirist, best known for the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and the poem “Still I Rise.”

Where this appears

• Braving The Wilderness — recurring figure whose “Still I Rise” and “I belong to myself” lines anchor Brené Brown’s self-belonging theme.