Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
Encyclopedia
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas is the third book of Maya Angelou
's six-volume autobiography
series. Set between 1949 and 1955, the book spans Angelou's early twenties. In this volume, Angelou describes her struggles to support her young son, form meaningful relationships and forge a successful career in the entertainment world. The work's 1976 publication was the first time an African American woman had expanded her life story into a third volume. Scholar Dolly McPherson called the book "a graphic portrait of the adult self in bloom", while critic Lyman B. Hagen called it "a journey of discovery and rebirth".
In Singin' and Swingin, Angelou examines many of the same subjects and themes in her previous autobiographies including travel, music, race, conflict, and motherhood. Angelou depicts the conflict she felt as a single mother, despite her success as a performer as she travels Europe with the musical Porgy and Bess
. Her depictions of her travels, which take up 40 percent of the book, have roots in the African American slave narrative
. Angelou uses music and musical concepts throughout Singin' and Swingin'; McPherson calls it Angelou's "praisesong" to Porgy and Bess. Angelou's stereotypes about race and race relations are challenged as she interacts more with people of different races. During the course of this narrative, she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to Maya Angelou for professional reasons. Her young son changes his name as well, from Clyde to Guy, and their relationship is strengthened as the book ends.
(1969) and Gather Together in My Name
(1974), with Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, published in 1976. It marked the first time a well-known African American woman writer had expanded her life story into a third autobiography. The success of her previous autobiographies and the publication of two volumes of poetry entitled Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie
(1971), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
, and Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), brought Angelou a considerable amount of fame by 1976.
As writer Hilton Als
has stated, Angelou was one of the first African American female writers to publicly discuss her personal life, and one of the first to use herself as a central character in her books, something she continued in Singin' and Swingin. Writer Julian Mayfield, who called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings "a work of art that eludes description", stated that Angelou's work set a precedent not only for other Black women writers, but for the genre of autobiography as a whole.
Als called Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. For example, while Angelou was composing her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name
, she was concerned about how her readers would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. Her husband Paul Du Feu talked her into publishing the book by encouraging her to "tell the truth as a writer" and "be honest about it". Through the writing of her life stories, however, Angelou has become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. It made her, as scholar Joanne Braxton stated, "without a doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".
of the 1920s and 1930s, where people would pay the host an inexpensive entry fee and then eat and drink throughout the weekend. As Angelou stated, people would "sing and swing and get merry like Christmas so one would have some fuel with which to live the rest of the week". These parties, also called "parlor socials", were attended by members of the working class who were unable to afford to go to Harlem's more expensive clubs. As critic Mary Jane Lupton stated, "The concept of the rent party helps describe Angelou's position ... She is a single mother from the South who goes to California and sings and swings for a living. She entertains others for little money as a singer, B-girl, and dancer, without getting very merry at all". Scholar Sondra O'Neale described the phrase as "a folkloric title symbolic of the author's long-deserved ascent to success and fulfillment".
Lupton insisted that the title, one of the many similes Angelou used, was tied to the book's themes. Lupton also considered the title "ironic"; Angelou used "old-fashioned" and "positive" words—singin' and swingin' —that reflected several meanings related to the text. These words described the beginnings of Angelou's career as an entertainer, but the irony in the terms also depicted the conflict Angelou felt about her son. The words gettin' merry like Christmas were also ironic; as Lupton stated, "Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas was Angelou's most unmerry autobiography". Because music was one of the book's themes, Angelou used abbreviated verb endings in her title that reflected Black dialect and evoked the sound of a blues
singer.
. Marguerite, or Maya, a single mother with a young son, is in her early twenties, struggling to make a living. Angelou writes in this book, like her previous works, about the full range of her own experiences. As scholar Dolly McPherson states, "When one encounters Maya Angelou in her story, one encounters the humor, the pain, the exuberance, the honesty, and the determination of a human being who has experienced life fully and retained her strong sense of self". Many people around Angelou influence her growth and—as critic Lyman B. Hagen states—"propel Angelou ever forward". The book's opening chapters find Maya concerned with, as Hagen asserts, "apprehension about her son, a desire for a home, and facing racial conflicts, and seeking a career". Maya is offered a job as a salesgirl in a record shop on Fillmore Street
in San Francisco. At first she greets her boss' offers of generosity and friendship with suspicion, but after two months of searching for evidence of racism, Maya begins to "relax and enjoy a world of music". The job allows her to move back into her mother's house and to spend more time with her son.
While working in the store, Maya meets Tosh Angelos, a Greek sailor. They fall in love, and he is especially fond of her son. Against her mother's wishes, Maya marries Tosh in 1952. At first, the marriage is satisfying, and it seems that Maya has fulfilled her dream of being a housewife, writing "My life began to resemble a Good Housekeeping
advertisement". Eventually, Maya begins to resent Tosh's demands that she stay at home; she is also bothered by her friends' negative reaction to her interracial marriage. Maya is disturbed by Tosh's atheism and his control of her life, but does little to challenge his authority. After Tosh tells her son Clyde that there is no God, Maya rebels by secretly attending Black churches. After three years the marriage disintegrates when Tosh announces to Maya that he is "tired of being married". She goes into the hospital for an appendectomy, and after the operation, she announces her desire to return to her grandmother in Stamps, but Tosh informs her that Annie died the day of Maya's operation.
A single mother once again, Maya begins to find success as a performer. She gets a job dancing and singing at The Purple Onion
, a popular nightclub in San Francisco, and—on the recommendation of the club's owners—she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to the "more exotic" "Maya Angelou". She gains the attention of talent scouts, who offer her a role in Porgy and Bess
; she turns down the part, however, because of her obligations to The Purple Onion. When her contract expires, Maya goes to New York City to audition for a part opposite Pearl Bailey
, but she turns it down to join a European tour of Porgy and Bess.
Leaving Clyde with her mother, Maya travels to 22 countries with the touring company in 1954 and 1955, expressing her impressions about her travels. She writes the following about Verona
: "I was really in Italy. Not Maya Angelou, the person of pretensions and ambitions, but me, Marguerite Johnson, who had read about Verona and the sad lovers
while growing up in a dusty Southern village poorer and more tragic than the historic town in which I now stood."
Despite Maya's success with Porgy and Bess, she is racked with guilt and regret about leaving her son behind. After receiving bad news about Clyde's health, she quits the tour and returns to San Francisco. Both Clyde and Maya heal from the physical and emotional toll caused by their separation, and she promises never to leave him again. Clyde also announces that he wants to be called "Guy". As Angelou writes: "It took him only one month to train us. He became Guy and we could hardly remember ever calling him anything else".
Maya is true to her promise; she accepts a job performing in Hawaii, and he goes with her. At the close of the book, mother and son express pride in each other. When he praises her singing, she writes: "Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son".
Lupton insisted that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's standard structure: they were written by a single author, they were chronological, and they contained elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with African American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou called her books autobiographies. When speaking of her unique use of the genre, Angelou acknowledged that she has followed the slave narrative
tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".
Angelou recognized that there were fictional aspects to all her books; she tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". Her approach paralleled the conventions of many African American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the US, when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection. Author Lyman B. Hagen has placed Angelou in the long tradition of African American autobiography, but insisted that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form. In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton
, Angelou discussed her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs. When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about." Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen stated, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work". Hagen also stated that Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis
, agreed, stating that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.
In Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Angelou utilized repetition as a literary technique. For example, she leaves her child in the care of his grandmother, just as her own mother left her and her older brother in the care of their grandmother in Caged Bird. Much of Singin' and Swingin' delves into Angelou's guilt about accepting work that forces her to separate from her young son. As Angelou's friend, scholar Dolly McPherson states, "The saddest part of Singin' and Swingin' is the young Guy, who, though deeply loved by Angelou, seems to be shoved into the background whenever a need to satisfy her monetary requirements or theatrical ambitions arises". Despite her great success traveling Europe with the Porgy and Bess tour, she is distressed and full of indecision. For every positive description of her European experiences, there is a lament about Guy that "shuts off" these experiences and prevents her from enjoying the fruit of her hard work.
. Like those narratives that focus on the writers' search for freedom from bondage, modern African American autobiographers like Angelou seek to develop "an authentic self" and the freedom to find it in their community. As McPherson states, "The journey to a distant goal, the return home, and the quest which involves the voyage out, achievement, and return are typical patterns in Black autobiography".
For Angelou, this quest takes her from her childhood and adolescence, as described in her first two books, into the adult world. McPherson sees Singin' and Swingin as "a sunny tour of Angelou's twenties", from early years marked by disappointments and humiliation, into the broader world—to the white world and to the international community. This period describes "years of joy", as well as the start of Angelou's great success and fulfillment as an entertainer. Not all is "merry like Christmas", however; the book is also marked by negative events: her painful marriage and divorce, the death of her grandmother, and her long separation from her son.
In Angelou's first two volumes, the setting is limited to three places (Arkansas, Missouri, and California), while in Singin' and Swingin, the "setting breaks open" to include Europe as she travels with the Porgy and Bess company. Lupton states that Angelou's travel narrative, which takes up approximately 40 percent of the book, gives the book its organized structure, especially compared to Gather Together in My Name, which is more chaotic. Angelou's observations about race, gender, and class serve to make the book more than a simple travel narrative. As a Black American, her travels around the world put her in contact with many nationalities and classes, expand her experiences beyond her familiar circle of community and family, and complicate her understandings of race relations.
Angelou comes into intimate contact with whites for the first time—whites very different than the racist people she encountered in her childhood. She discovers, as Cudjoe puts it, that her stereotypes of Whites were developed to protect herself from their cruelty and indifference. As McPherson states, "Conditioned by earlier experiences, Angelou distrusts everyone, especially whites. Nevertheless, she is repeatedly surprised by the kindness and goodwill of many whites she meets, and, thus, her suspicions begin to soften into understanding". Cudjoe states that in Singin' and Swingin' , Angelou effectively demonstrates "the inviolability of the African American personhood", as well as her own closely guarded defense of it. In order for her to have any positive relationships with whites and people of other races, however, McPherson insists that Angelou "must examine and discard her stereotypical views about Whites". Lyman agrees and points out that Angelou must re-examine her lingering prejudices when faced with the broader world full of whites. As Lyman also states, however, this is a complex process, since most of Angelou's experiences with whites are positive during this time. Cudjoe states that as the book's main protagonist, Angelou moves between the white and Black worlds, both defining herself as a member of her community and encountering whites in "a much fuller, more sensuous manner".
In her third autobiography, Angelou is placed in circumstances that force her to change her opinions about whites, not an easy change for her. Louise Cox, the co-owner of the record store she frequents on Fillmore Street, generously offers Angelou employment and friendship. Angelou marries a white man, whose appreciation of Black music breaks her stereotype of whites. This is a difficult decision for Angelou, and she must justify it by rationalizing that Tosh is Greek, and not an American white. She was not marrying "one of the enemy", but she could not escape the embarrassment and shame when they encountered other Blacks. Later, she has a friendship among equals with her white co-workers, Jorie, Don, and Barrie, who assist her job quest at The Purple Onion. Cudjoe insists, "This free and equal relationship is significant to her in that it represents an important stage of her evolution toward adulthood".
Angelou's experiences with the Porgy and Bess tour expands her understanding of other races and race relations as she meets people of different nationalities during her travels. All these experiences are instrumental in Angelou's "movement toward adulthood" and serve as a basis for her later acceptance and tolerance of other races. Porgy and Bess has had a controversial history; many in the African American community consider it racist in its portrayal of Blacks. Angelou mentioned none of this controversy in Singin' and Swingin',however.
As Lupton states, there is "no doubt in the reader's mind about the importance of music" in Singin' and Swingin. Angelou's use of opposition and her doubling of plot lines is similar to the polyphonic rhythms
in jazz music. McPherson labels Angelou a "blues autobiographer", someone who, like a blues musician, includes the painful details and episodes from her life.
Music appears throughout Angelou's third autobiography, starting with the title, which evokes a blues song and references the beginnings of Angelou's career in music and performance. She starts Singin' and Swingin' the same way she starts Caged Bird: with an epigraph to set the tone. Here, the epigraph is a quotation from an unidentified three-line stanza in classic blues
form. After the epigraph, "music" is the first word in the book. As the story opens, a lonely Angelou finds solace in Black music, and is soon hired as a salesgirl in a record store on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. She meets and falls in love with her first husband after she discovers their shared appreciation of Black music. After learning of her grandmother's death, her reaction, "a dazzling passage three paragraphs long" according to Mary Jane Lupton, is musical; not only does it rely upon gospel
tradition, but is also influenced by African American literary texts, especially James Weldon Johnson's
"Go Down Death—A Funeral Sermon".
After the divorce, Angelou earns a living for herself and her son with music and dance; this decision marks a turning point in her life. Angelou's new career seems, as Hagen asserts, to be propelled by a series of parties, evoking the title of this book. Hagen also calls her tour with Porgy and Bess "the biggest party by far of the book". McPherson calls Singin' and Swingin "Angelou's praisesong" to the opera. Angelou has "fallen hopelessly in love with the musical", even turning down other job offers to tour with its European company. McPherson also calls Porgy and Bess "an antagonist that enthralls Angelou, beckoning and seducing her away from her responsibilities". As Lupton states, Porgy and Bess is Angelou's "foundation for her later performances in dance, theater, and song".
Angelou's need for security for her young son motivates her choices in Singin' and Swingin', especially her decision to marry Tosh Angelos. She feels a deep sense of guilt and regret when she has to leave her son to tour with Porgy and Bess, which prevents her from fully enjoying the experience. In spite of this, Singin' and Swingin has been called "a love song to Angelou's son". Just as she changes her name as the story progresses, so does Guy, who becomes an intelligent, sensitive boy in the pages of this book. As Guy grows, so does his mother; Hagen stated that this growth moves Angelou's story forward. When Angelou discovers how deeply their separation injures Guy, she leaves the Porgy and Bess tour before it ends, at great personal cost. By the end of the book, their bond is deepened and she promises never to leave him again. As Hagen states, Maya embraces the importance of motherhood, just as she had done at the end of her previous autobiographies.
found the book "a pleasant sequel", one in which Angelou's "religious strength, personal courage, and ... talent" was apparent in its pages.
One negative review was written by Margaret McFadden-Gerber in Magill's Literary Annual, who found the book disappointing and felt that it lacked the power and introspection of Angelou's previous books. At least one reviewer expressed disappointment that Angelou did not use her status to effect any political change in Singin' and Swingin'. Critic Lyman B. Hagen responded to this criticism by stating that Angelou's status during the events she describes in this autobiography did not lend itself to that kind of advocacy, and that as a person, Angelou had not evolved into the advocate that she would become later in her life. Reviewer John McWhorter found many of the events Angelou describes throughout all of her autobiographies incoherent and confusing, and in need of further explanation as to her motives and reasons for her behavior. For example, McWhorter suggested that Angelou does a poor job of explaining her reasons for her marriage to Tosh Angelos, as well as their divorce. "In an autobiography in which a black woman marries outside of her race in the 1950s, we need to know more".
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
's six-volume autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
series. Set between 1949 and 1955, the book spans Angelou's early twenties. In this volume, Angelou describes her struggles to support her young son, form meaningful relationships and forge a successful career in the entertainment world. The work's 1976 publication was the first time an African American woman had expanded her life story into a third volume. Scholar Dolly McPherson called the book "a graphic portrait of the adult self in bloom", while critic Lyman B. Hagen called it "a journey of discovery and rebirth".
In Singin' and Swingin, Angelou examines many of the same subjects and themes in her previous autobiographies including travel, music, race, conflict, and motherhood. Angelou depicts the conflict she felt as a single mother, despite her success as a performer as she travels Europe with the musical Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
. Her depictions of her travels, which take up 40 percent of the book, have roots in the African American slave narrative
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
. Angelou uses music and musical concepts throughout Singin' and Swingin'; McPherson calls it Angelou's "praisesong" to Porgy and Bess. Angelou's stereotypes about race and race relations are challenged as she interacts more with people of different races. During the course of this narrative, she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to Maya Angelou for professional reasons. Her young son changes his name as well, from Clyde to Guy, and their relationship is strengthened as the book ends.
Background
Angelou followed her first two installations of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird SingsI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the 1969 autobiography about the early years of African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a six-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma...
(1969) and Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
(1974), with Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, published in 1976. It marked the first time a well-known African American woman writer had expanded her life story into a third autobiography. The success of her previous autobiographies and the publication of two volumes of poetry entitled Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie is a 1971 anthology of 38 poems by Maya Angelou, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1972...
(1971), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
, and Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), brought Angelou a considerable amount of fame by 1976.
Hilton Als
Hilton Als is an American writer and theater critic who writes for The New Yorker magazine.Als is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine....
has stated, Angelou was one of the first African American female writers to publicly discuss her personal life, and one of the first to use herself as a central character in her books, something she continued in Singin' and Swingin. Writer Julian Mayfield, who called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings "a work of art that eludes description", stated that Angelou's work set a precedent not only for other Black women writers, but for the genre of autobiography as a whole.
Als called Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. For example, while Angelou was composing her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
, she was concerned about how her readers would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. Her husband Paul Du Feu talked her into publishing the book by encouraging her to "tell the truth as a writer" and "be honest about it". Through the writing of her life stories, however, Angelou has become recognized and highly respected as a spokesperson for Blacks and women. It made her, as scholar Joanne Braxton stated, "without a doubt ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer".
Title
According to Angelou, the book's title came from the rent partiesRent party
A rent party is a social occasion where tenants hire a musician or band to play and pass the hat to raise money to pay their rent, originating in Harlem during the 1920s. The rent party played a major role in the development of jazz and blues music...
of the 1920s and 1930s, where people would pay the host an inexpensive entry fee and then eat and drink throughout the weekend. As Angelou stated, people would "sing and swing and get merry like Christmas so one would have some fuel with which to live the rest of the week". These parties, also called "parlor socials", were attended by members of the working class who were unable to afford to go to Harlem's more expensive clubs. As critic Mary Jane Lupton stated, "The concept of the rent party helps describe Angelou's position ... She is a single mother from the South who goes to California and sings and swings for a living. She entertains others for little money as a singer, B-girl, and dancer, without getting very merry at all". Scholar Sondra O'Neale described the phrase as "a folkloric title symbolic of the author's long-deserved ascent to success and fulfillment".
Lupton insisted that the title, one of the many similes Angelou used, was tied to the book's themes. Lupton also considered the title "ironic"; Angelou used "old-fashioned" and "positive" words—singin' and swingin' —that reflected several meanings related to the text. These words described the beginnings of Angelou's career as an entertainer, but the irony in the terms also depicted the conflict Angelou felt about her son. The words gettin' merry like Christmas were also ironic; as Lupton stated, "Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas was Angelou's most unmerry autobiography". Because music was one of the book's themes, Angelou used abbreviated verb endings in her title that reflected Black dialect and evoked the sound of a blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
singer.
Plot summary
Singin' and Swingin opens shortly after Angelou's previous autobiography, Gather Together in My NameGather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
. Marguerite, or Maya, a single mother with a young son, is in her early twenties, struggling to make a living. Angelou writes in this book, like her previous works, about the full range of her own experiences. As scholar Dolly McPherson states, "When one encounters Maya Angelou in her story, one encounters the humor, the pain, the exuberance, the honesty, and the determination of a human being who has experienced life fully and retained her strong sense of self". Many people around Angelou influence her growth and—as critic Lyman B. Hagen states—"propel Angelou ever forward". The book's opening chapters find Maya concerned with, as Hagen asserts, "apprehension about her son, a desire for a home, and facing racial conflicts, and seeking a career". Maya is offered a job as a salesgirl in a record shop on Fillmore Street
Fillmore Street
Fillmore Street is a street in San Francisco, California, named after American President Millard Fillmore which starts in the Lower Haight neighborhood, and travels northward through the Fillmore District and Pacific Heights and ends in the Marina District...
in San Francisco. At first she greets her boss' offers of generosity and friendship with suspicion, but after two months of searching for evidence of racism, Maya begins to "relax and enjoy a world of music". The job allows her to move back into her mother's house and to spend more time with her son.
Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping is a women's magazine owned by the Hearst Corporation, featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, health as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Housekeeping Seal," popularly known as the...
advertisement". Eventually, Maya begins to resent Tosh's demands that she stay at home; she is also bothered by her friends' negative reaction to her interracial marriage. Maya is disturbed by Tosh's atheism and his control of her life, but does little to challenge his authority. After Tosh tells her son Clyde that there is no God, Maya rebels by secretly attending Black churches. After three years the marriage disintegrates when Tosh announces to Maya that he is "tired of being married". She goes into the hospital for an appendectomy, and after the operation, she announces her desire to return to her grandmother in Stamps, but Tosh informs her that Annie died the day of Maya's operation.
A single mother once again, Maya begins to find success as a performer. She gets a job dancing and singing at The Purple Onion
The Purple Onion
The Purple Onion is a celebrated cellar club in the North Beach area of San Francisco, California located at 140 Columbus Avenue...
, a popular nightclub in San Francisco, and—on the recommendation of the club's owners—she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to the "more exotic" "Maya Angelou". She gains the attention of talent scouts, who offer her a role in Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward...
; she turns down the part, however, because of her obligations to The Purple Onion. When her contract expires, Maya goes to New York City to audition for a part opposite Pearl Bailey
Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968...
, but she turns it down to join a European tour of Porgy and Bess.
Leaving Clyde with her mother, Maya travels to 22 countries with the touring company in 1954 and 1955, expressing her impressions about her travels. She writes the following about Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
: "I was really in Italy. Not Maya Angelou, the person of pretensions and ambitions, but me, Marguerite Johnson, who had read about Verona and the sad lovers
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
while growing up in a dusty Southern village poorer and more tragic than the historic town in which I now stood."
Despite Maya's success with Porgy and Bess, she is racked with guilt and regret about leaving her son behind. After receiving bad news about Clyde's health, she quits the tour and returns to San Francisco. Both Clyde and Maya heal from the physical and emotional toll caused by their separation, and she promises never to leave him again. Clyde also announces that he wants to be called "Guy". As Angelou writes: "It took him only one month to train us. He became Guy and we could hardly remember ever calling him anything else".
Maya is true to her promise; she accepts a job performing in Hawaii, and he goes with her. At the close of the book, mother and son express pride in each other. When he praises her singing, she writes: "Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son".
Style and genre
All six of Angelou's installments of her life story continued the tradition of African American autobiography. Starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou made a deliberate attempt while writing her books to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development has often led reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction. Angelou stated in a 1989 interview, she was the only "serious" writer to choose the genre to express herself. As critic Susan Gilbert stated, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but the collective's. Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe agreed, and viewed Angelou as representative of the convention in African American autobiography as a public gesture that spoke for an entire group of people.Lupton insisted that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's standard structure: they were written by a single author, they were chronological, and they contained elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with African American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou called her books autobiographies. When speaking of her unique use of the genre, Angelou acknowledged that she has followed the slave narrative
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".
Angelou recognized that there were fictional aspects to all her books; she tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". Her approach paralleled the conventions of many African American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the US, when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection. Author Lyman B. Hagen has placed Angelou in the long tradition of African American autobiography, but insisted that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form. In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
, Angelou discussed her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs. When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about." Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen stated, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work". Hagen also stated that Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis is an executive book editor at Random House, where he has worked since 1957. He has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors."...
, agreed, stating that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.
In Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Angelou utilized repetition as a literary technique. For example, she leaves her child in the care of his grandmother, just as her own mother left her and her older brother in the care of their grandmother in Caged Bird. Much of Singin' and Swingin' delves into Angelou's guilt about accepting work that forces her to separate from her young son. As Angelou's friend, scholar Dolly McPherson states, "The saddest part of Singin' and Swingin' is the young Guy, who, though deeply loved by Angelou, seems to be shoved into the background whenever a need to satisfy her monetary requirements or theatrical ambitions arises". Despite her great success traveling Europe with the Porgy and Bess tour, she is distressed and full of indecision. For every positive description of her European experiences, there is a lament about Guy that "shuts off" these experiences and prevents her from enjoying the fruit of her hard work.
Travel
Travel is a common theme in American autobiography as a whole; as McPherson states, it is something of a national myth to Americans as a people. This is also the case for African American autobiography, which has its roots in the slave narrativeSlave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
. Like those narratives that focus on the writers' search for freedom from bondage, modern African American autobiographers like Angelou seek to develop "an authentic self" and the freedom to find it in their community. As McPherson states, "The journey to a distant goal, the return home, and the quest which involves the voyage out, achievement, and return are typical patterns in Black autobiography".
In Angelou's first two volumes, the setting is limited to three places (Arkansas, Missouri, and California), while in Singin' and Swingin, the "setting breaks open" to include Europe as she travels with the Porgy and Bess company. Lupton states that Angelou's travel narrative, which takes up approximately 40 percent of the book, gives the book its organized structure, especially compared to Gather Together in My Name, which is more chaotic. Angelou's observations about race, gender, and class serve to make the book more than a simple travel narrative. As a Black American, her travels around the world put her in contact with many nationalities and classes, expand her experiences beyond her familiar circle of community and family, and complicate her understandings of race relations.
Race
In Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Angelou continues an examination of her experiences with discrimination, begun in her first two volumes. Critic Selwyn R. Cudjoe refers to "the major problem of her works: what it means to be Black and female in America". Cudjoe divides Singin' and Swingin' into two parts; in the first part, Angelou works out her relationships with the white world, and in the second part, she evaluates her interactions with fellow Black cast members in Porgy and Bess, as well as her encounters with Europe and Africa.Angelou comes into intimate contact with whites for the first time—whites very different than the racist people she encountered in her childhood. She discovers, as Cudjoe puts it, that her stereotypes of Whites were developed to protect herself from their cruelty and indifference. As McPherson states, "Conditioned by earlier experiences, Angelou distrusts everyone, especially whites. Nevertheless, she is repeatedly surprised by the kindness and goodwill of many whites she meets, and, thus, her suspicions begin to soften into understanding". Cudjoe states that in Singin' and Swingin' , Angelou effectively demonstrates "the inviolability of the African American personhood", as well as her own closely guarded defense of it. In order for her to have any positive relationships with whites and people of other races, however, McPherson insists that Angelou "must examine and discard her stereotypical views about Whites". Lyman agrees and points out that Angelou must re-examine her lingering prejudices when faced with the broader world full of whites. As Lyman also states, however, this is a complex process, since most of Angelou's experiences with whites are positive during this time. Cudjoe states that as the book's main protagonist, Angelou moves between the white and Black worlds, both defining herself as a member of her community and encountering whites in "a much fuller, more sensuous manner".
In her third autobiography, Angelou is placed in circumstances that force her to change her opinions about whites, not an easy change for her. Louise Cox, the co-owner of the record store she frequents on Fillmore Street, generously offers Angelou employment and friendship. Angelou marries a white man, whose appreciation of Black music breaks her stereotype of whites. This is a difficult decision for Angelou, and she must justify it by rationalizing that Tosh is Greek, and not an American white. She was not marrying "one of the enemy", but she could not escape the embarrassment and shame when they encountered other Blacks. Later, she has a friendship among equals with her white co-workers, Jorie, Don, and Barrie, who assist her job quest at The Purple Onion. Cudjoe insists, "This free and equal relationship is significant to her in that it represents an important stage of her evolution toward adulthood".
Angelou's experiences with the Porgy and Bess tour expands her understanding of other races and race relations as she meets people of different nationalities during her travels. All these experiences are instrumental in Angelou's "movement toward adulthood" and serve as a basis for her later acceptance and tolerance of other races. Porgy and Bess has had a controversial history; many in the African American community consider it racist in its portrayal of Blacks. Angelou mentioned none of this controversy in Singin' and Swingin',however.
Music
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
in jazz music. McPherson labels Angelou a "blues autobiographer", someone who, like a blues musician, includes the painful details and episodes from her life.
Music appears throughout Angelou's third autobiography, starting with the title, which evokes a blues song and references the beginnings of Angelou's career in music and performance. She starts Singin' and Swingin' the same way she starts Caged Bird: with an epigraph to set the tone. Here, the epigraph is a quotation from an unidentified three-line stanza in classic blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
form. After the epigraph, "music" is the first word in the book. As the story opens, a lonely Angelou finds solace in Black music, and is soon hired as a salesgirl in a record store on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. She meets and falls in love with her first husband after she discovers their shared appreciation of Black music. After learning of her grandmother's death, her reaction, "a dazzling passage three paragraphs long" according to Mary Jane Lupton, is musical; not only does it rely upon gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
tradition, but is also influenced by African American literary texts, especially James Weldon Johnson's
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...
"Go Down Death—A Funeral Sermon".
After the divorce, Angelou earns a living for herself and her son with music and dance; this decision marks a turning point in her life. Angelou's new career seems, as Hagen asserts, to be propelled by a series of parties, evoking the title of this book. Hagen also calls her tour with Porgy and Bess "the biggest party by far of the book". McPherson calls Singin' and Swingin "Angelou's praisesong" to the opera. Angelou has "fallen hopelessly in love with the musical", even turning down other job offers to tour with its European company. McPherson also calls Porgy and Bess "an antagonist that enthralls Angelou, beckoning and seducing her away from her responsibilities". As Lupton states, Porgy and Bess is Angelou's "foundation for her later performances in dance, theater, and song".
Conflict
Conflict, or Angelou's presentation of opposites, is another theme in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. As Lupton states, Angelou constructs a plot by mixing opposing incidences and attitudes. Lupton calls this Angelou's "dialectical method". The book is full of conflicts: in Angelou's marriage, her feelings between being a good mother and a successful performer, the stereotypes about other races and her new experiences with whites. Lupton believes this presentation of conflict is what makes Angelou's writing "brilliant"; she finds that the strength of Singin' and Swingin' comes, in part, from Angelou's duplication of conflicts underlying the plot, characters, and thought patterns in the book. Lupton adds, "Not many other contemporary autobiographers have been able to capture, either in a single volume or in a series, the opposition of desires that is found in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas and, to a lesser extent, in Angelou's other volumes". Even the closing sentence of the book ("Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son") demonstrates Angelou's dialectical construction, sums up the contradictions of Angelou's character, and alludes to mother/son patterns in her later books.Motherhood
As Lupton states, motherhood is a "prevailing theme" throughout Angelou's autobiographies. Lupton continues: "Angelou presents a rare kind of literary model, the working mother". Beginning in Caged Bird, when she gives birth to her son, the emphasis Angelou places on this theme increases in importance. Angelou finds herself in a situation "very familiar to mothers with careers", and is forced to choose between being a loving mother or a "fully realized person". As scholar Sondra O'Neale puts it, in this book Angelou sheds the image of "unwed mother" with "a dead-end destiny" that had followed her throughout her previous autobiography.Angelou's need for security for her young son motivates her choices in Singin' and Swingin', especially her decision to marry Tosh Angelos. She feels a deep sense of guilt and regret when she has to leave her son to tour with Porgy and Bess, which prevents her from fully enjoying the experience. In spite of this, Singin' and Swingin has been called "a love song to Angelou's son". Just as she changes her name as the story progresses, so does Guy, who becomes an intelligent, sensitive boy in the pages of this book. As Guy grows, so does his mother; Hagen stated that this growth moves Angelou's story forward. When Angelou discovers how deeply their separation injures Guy, she leaves the Porgy and Bess tour before it ends, at great personal cost. By the end of the book, their bond is deepened and she promises never to leave him again. As Hagen states, Maya embraces the importance of motherhood, just as she had done at the end of her previous autobiographies.
Critical reception
Like Angelou's two previous autobiographies, Singin' and Swingin' received mostly positive reviews. Kathryn Robinson of the School Library Journal predicted that the book would be as enthusiastically received as the earlier installments in Angelou's series, and that the author had succeeded in "sharing her vitality" with the audience. Linda Kuehl of the Saturday Review, although she preferred the rhythm of Caged Bird, found Singin' and Swingin "very professional, even-toned, and ... quite engaging". Kuehl also found that Angelou's story translated smoothly to the printed page. R.E. Almeida of the Library JournalLibrary Journal
Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
found the book "a pleasant sequel", one in which Angelou's "religious strength, personal courage, and ... talent" was apparent in its pages.
One negative review was written by Margaret McFadden-Gerber in Magill's Literary Annual, who found the book disappointing and felt that it lacked the power and introspection of Angelou's previous books. At least one reviewer expressed disappointment that Angelou did not use her status to effect any political change in Singin' and Swingin'. Critic Lyman B. Hagen responded to this criticism by stating that Angelou's status during the events she describes in this autobiography did not lend itself to that kind of advocacy, and that as a person, Angelou had not evolved into the advocate that she would become later in her life. Reviewer John McWhorter found many of the events Angelou describes throughout all of her autobiographies incoherent and confusing, and in need of further explanation as to her motives and reasons for her behavior. For example, McWhorter suggested that Angelou does a poor job of explaining her reasons for her marriage to Tosh Angelos, as well as their divorce. "In an autobiography in which a black woman marries outside of her race in the 1950s, we need to know more".