How Maxine Waters Walks the Line Between Relatable and Supernatural
Like all great mother figures, the tireless congresswoman from California can do anything. She inspires and regulates. She launches legislation and memes. And she does this at 82, somehow walking the line between the relatable and the supernatural.
It’s that power that inspired my book with R. Eric Thomas, Reclaiming Her Time. Waters reminds me so much of my grandmother, Frenchie Mae Andrews, who was whip smart and suffered not one fool, a tiny lion with a shot glass personality. Waters often describes her own mother, Velma Lee, as a survivor, a woman with a sixth-grade education who had no filter and taught her 13 children to fend for themselves.
Waters always rose to the occasion. And because she made it despite the odds—to the state assembly, to chair of the House Financial Services Committee—Waters sees that kernel of ambition in everyone else. That’s where the rush to name and claim her comes from. It’s the feeling that this woman talking triple truth to power is like us—or, really, that someday we could be like her.
This story appears in the November 2020 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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