In Gaza, Palestinians know why the caged bird sings

It’s predictable by now. Within hours of their passing, our most famous artists—whose works outlast them precisely because they eschewed the formulaic—are memorialized in too-easy platitudes that are “shared” and “liked” but seldom felt.

As a Palestinian woman, I felt Maya Angelou’s passing. I felt it deeply.

For she and I have known different shades of the same tyranny—that quiet brutality wrought by generations upon the next, by fathers upon their sons, and by cultures upon their daughters. We were weaned from innocence by the taste of escape.

We might have learned no more than that. In the Arab world, especially, we women run to live, to breathe, to dodge the barrel bombs of our audacious existence.

But through her majestic poetry, both lived and lent, Maya taught us the virtues of standing still—and tall.

In Arabic, her name means “princess.”

http://972mag.com/in-gaza-palestinians-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings/91899/