Marguerite Annie Johnson, or Maya

You wrote a book entitled "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes". On the cover you smile, wearing a black head scarf as you look at someone in the background or perhaps a memory in the distance.

Why did I think you were a writer-turned-cook-part-time poet? How did I not explore you long before now?

It happens this way often; someone noteworthy passes and the world collects favorite reminders to speak of what you meant to a culture, a people, and as a person. We enunciate your legacy because we know that by speaking it we won't forget too soon. That by saying your words we might be able to carry along your spirit a bit longer and hopefully, always.

But how did I reduce you by not really knowing your story? Because of your death I found a breath of life in your writings and became enamored and humbled and stunned at what you present in them - the little bit I know!

I did not know you had a son by age 16,
became a "shaker dancer in a nightclub to support him",
cooked hamburgers,
was a madam for lesbian hookers,
and unsuccessfully tried prostituting yourself.
(mashable.com)

I did not know that you took that dark time which augmented your life and refused to hide those experiences, that you entitled a work "Come Together in My Name" so that, "[a]ll those grown people, all those adults, all those parents and grandparents and teachers and preachers and rabbis and priests who lie to the children can gather together in my name and I will tell them the truth. Wherever you are, you have got to admit it and set about to make a change. That's why [you] wrote the book. It's the most painful book [you've] ever written" (teentalkingcircles.org).

You invited people to gather under your stories in your name and stare at your life so that we could know a little bit of truth in part of you. So that we could know perfection is not innate, like so many of us are led to believe.

That we can rest and know there is still a time to get up. All is not lost.

You brave woman. You invited your written words against your own reputation to care for those of us who needed to walk alongside someone, someone who knows that life is messy and confusing at times. Who knows that you can stand up and walk away from a thing. You are a person whose words have the power to help lift a soul from soot.

I hope you are dancing.