When Maya Angelou’s twelve-year-old son, Guy, once interrupted her singing to ask, “What’s a pastoral scene, Miss Holiday?” “her face became cruel” and “her voice was scornful.” “It means when the crackers are killing the niggers.” Holiday said with a “thrust of rage,” repelling the boy and stunning her. “It means when they take a little nigger like you and snatch off his nuts and shove them down his goddam throat. That’s what it means.”
