"We Are More Alike My Friends...Than We Are Unalike."
Thoughts from Maya Angelou. In this moment in U.S. History.
Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, essayist, poet, and civil rights activist.
She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning fifty years.
Against the indescribable horrors we see inflicted on us in America in this moment- some important thoughts from this other-worldly artist:
Human Family
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I’ve sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I’ve seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I’ve not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England’s moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we’re the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
-Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
Project 2026:
“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise!”
- Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
