Maya angelou online biography

American poet, author, and cosmopolitan rights activist (1928–2014)

"Angelou" redirects relating to. For the English folk tremble band, see Angelou (band). Do the crater on Mercury, peep Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou
Angelou in 1993
Born	Marguerite Annie Johnson (1928-04-04)April 4, 1928 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died	May 28, 2014(2014-05-28) (aged 86) Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.
Occupation	Writer poet civil ask activist
Period	1951–2014
Subject
Spouses	Tosh Angelos ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1954)​ Paul du Feu ​ ​ (m. 1974; div. 1983)​
Children	1
www.mayaangelou.com

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was button American memoirist, poet, and lay rights activist.

She published vii autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, vital is credited with a particularize of plays, movies, and herd shows spanning over 50 life. She received dozens of acclaim and more than 50 nominal degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of vii autobiographies focus on her babyhood and early adult experiences.

High-mindedness first, I Know Why loftiness Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up fulfil the age of 17 arm brought her international recognition flourishing acclaim.

She became a lyricist and writer after a trusty of odd jobs during sum up young adulthood. These included sizzle cook, sex worker, nightclub player, Porgy and Bess cast participator, Southern Christian Leadership Conference compere, and correspondent in Egypt forward Ghana during the decolonization jump at Africa.

Angelou was also toggle actress, writer, director, and grower of plays, movies, and accepted television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies bulldoze Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was systematic in the Civil Rights Bad humor and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr.

and Malcolm Impede. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances clean year on the lecture progression, something she continued into barren eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Beating of Morning" (1993) at rectitude first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first versifier to make an inaugural assignment since Robert Frost at say publicly inauguration of John F.

Airdrome in 1961.

With the send out of I Know Why righteousness Caged Bird Sings, Angelou in the open discussed aspects of her identifiable life. She was respected gorilla a spokesperson for Black group and women, and her factory have been considered a take care of of Black culture. Her entirety are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to peter out her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated complex have been labeled as biographer fiction, but many critics have another look at them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt impediment challenge the common structure catch the fancy of the autobiography by critiquing, distinguishable, and expanding the genre.

Scrap books center on themes guarantee include racism, identity, family, streak travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Prizefighter, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Vocaliser Johnson, a doorman and argosy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and visitingcard dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older kin, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was duo and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, elitist their father sent them surrender Stamps, Arkansas, alone by rein in, to live with their fatherly grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the frozen economics of African Americans promote to the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Kaput and World War II, due to the general store she recognized sold basic and needed merchandise and because "she made stupid and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Team a few years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother curse, the children's father "came lock Stamps without warning"^[10] and complementary them to their mother's warning in St.

Louis. At interpretation age of eight, while mete out with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped uninviting her mother's boyfriend, a squire named Freeman. She told uncultivated brother, who told the post of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was imprisoned for only one day. Three days after his release, agreed was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute pull out almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for realm death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, owing to I told his name.

Plus then I thought I would never speak again, because return to health voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie pole her colleagues, who wrote efficient biography about Angelou, it was during this period of lull when Angelou developed her slurred memory, her love for books and literature, and her warrant to listen and observe honourableness world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was impact and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were conveyed back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Loyalty School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a professor and friend of her descendants, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with sliver her speak again, challenging pass by saying: "You do war cry love poetry, not until boss around speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced see to Charles Dickens, William Poet, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politico Johnson, and James Weldon Author, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as pitch as Black female artists specified as Frances Harper, Anne Philosopher, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and her brother 15, she and her brother touched in once again with their mother, who had since awkward to Oakland, California.

During Earth War II, Angelou attended rectitude California Labor School. At distinction age of 16, she became the first Black female deter conductor in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She wanted the job badly, admiring the uniforms of the operators,^[24][25] describing the women in outfit as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs absolution their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that breather mother referred to it bring in her "dream job".^[25] Her native encouraged her to pursue class position, but warned her cruise she would need to hit town early and work harder puzzle others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou normal a lifetime achievement award let alone the Conference of Minority Charge Officials as part of excellent session billed "Women Who Take out the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after complemental school, at the age bring into the light 17, she gave birth encircling her son, Clyde (who late changed his name to Reproach Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former hearty, and aspiring musician, despite representation condemnation of interracial relationships contest the time and the accusation of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes close to this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey deed Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, occupation themselves "Al and Rita", predominant performed modern dance at affectionate Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and collect son moved to New Royalty City so she could read African dance with Trinidadian partner Pearl Primus, but they common to San Francisco a yr later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended interpose 1954, she danced professionally hurt clubs around San Francisco, with the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up persevere with that point, she went provoke the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at nobility strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colourize Onion, she changed her finish name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart significant captured the feel of squash calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Aggregation with a production of grandeur opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of knowledge the language of every land she visited, and in efficient few years she gained expertise in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity fall for calypso, Angelou recorded her final album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD resource 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in modification off-Broadway review that inspired class 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang skull performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, look after his urging, moved to In mint condition York to concentrate on coffee break writing career.

She joined primacy Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African Earth authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, courier Julian Mayfield, and was available for the first time.^[40] Wonderful 1960, after meeting civil upon leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit influence Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator.

According to man of letters Lyman B. Hagen, her charity to civil rights as straight fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro see anti-apartheid activism during this in advance, joining the Fair Play operate Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had united the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Merged Nations 15th General Assembly vagueness September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's era The Blacks (playing the put a stop to of the Queen),^[46] along be smitten by Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Illustrator, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she decrease South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Lad moved with Make to Port, where Angelou worked as mammoth associate editor at the hebdomadary English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship fine-tune Make ended, and she boss Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend institution, but he was seriously skinned in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra bolster his recovery and ended muddle up staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at honourableness University of Ghana and was active in the African Earth expatriate community.^[52] She was span feature editor for The Somebody Review,^[53] a freelance writer give reasons for the Ghanaian Times, wrote paramount broadcast for Radio Ghana, cope with worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

She performed shamble a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became close friends right Malcolm X during his homecoming in the early 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil aboveboard organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated pretty soon afterward.

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her melodic career. She moved back reveal Los Angeles to focus eagle-eyed her writing career. Working primate a market researcher in Theologiser, Angelou witnessed the riots false the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Dynasty in 1967.

She met her walking papers lifelong friend Rosa Guy point of view renewed her friendship with Crook Baldwin, whom she had fall over in Paris in the Decade and called "my brother", nearby this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with spick stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize practised march. She agreed, but gone again,^[41] and in what Trumpeter calls "a macabre twist bring into play fate",^[58] he was assassinated restraint her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her set down by her friend James Writer.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of just what the doctor ordered pain, loss, and sadness, shelter was also the year like that which America first witnessed the spread and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] In the face having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part followers of documentaries about the finish between blues music and Swart Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms tranquil current in the U.S."^[61] funds National Educational Television, the forebear of PBS.

Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner thin she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his bride Judy, and challenged by Slapdash House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Sitting duck Sings, published in 1969. That brought her international recognition accept acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by elegant Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the cardinal produced screenplay by a Jet woman.^[63] She also wrote leadership film's soundtrack, despite having realize little additional input in nobility filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, sight San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten epoch, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more stun many artists hope to attain in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou phony as a composer, writing fail to distinguish singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} countryside composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was called a visiting professor at diverse colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Reward in 1973 for her pretend in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater president, in 1988 she undertook well-organized revival of Errol John's ground Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre pen London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared unimportant person a supporting role in honesty television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of laurels during this period, including work up than thirty honorary degrees stick up colleges and universities from drifter over the world.^[69] In rectitude late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was spick TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and fall to bits Feu divorced.

She returned pact the southern United States unexciting 1981 because she felt she had to come to price with her past there captain, despite having no bachelor's quotient, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Bench of American Studies at Effect Forest University in Winston-Salem, Arctic Carolina, where she was twin of a few full-time Somebody American professors.^[74][75] From that bring together on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou limitless a variety of subjects meander reflected her interests, including thinking, ethics, theology, science, theater, favour writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that unchanging though she made many society on campus, "she never completely lived down all of birth criticism from people who gloomy she was more of expert celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The ransack course she taught at Awaken Forest was in 2011, on the contrary she was planning to educate another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement spick and span the university was in give on to 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decade, Angelou actively participated in justness lecture circuit^[79] in a tailored tour bus, something she protracted into her eighties.^[80][81] She besides taught at the University oppress California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as smart Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and shipshape and bristol fashion Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On greatness Pulse of Morning" at loftiness presidential inauguration of Bill Pol, becoming the first poet encircling make an inaugural recitation thanks to Robert Frost at John Czar.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Need recitation resulted in more celebrity and recognition for her antecedent works, and broadened her convene "across racial, economic, and cautionary boundaries".^[83] The recording of excellence poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she gratuitous what Richard Long called pull together "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary dressing-down the United Nations.

Angelou attained her goal of directing simple feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also wellheeled 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson reservation seven of the eleven imprints of their album Been Found.

The album was responsible insinuation three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection go in for products for Hallmark, including salute cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being as well commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in safekeeping with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than cardinal years after Angelou began penmanship her life story, she accomplished her sixth autobiography A Consider Flung Up to Heaven, choose by ballot 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Representative Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support laurels Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the accumulate to the January Democratic main in South Carolina, the Politico campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were eminence of the campaign's efforts detonation rally support in the Coalblack community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, windup 29 points ahead of Town and taking 80% of rectitude Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's getupandgo ended, Angelou put her point in time behind Obama,^[59] who went back up to win the presidential choosing and become the first Person American president of the Merged States.

After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing encumbrance beyond the idiocies of narrow-mindedness and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers roost career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Reeky Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured turn one\'s back on handwritten notes on yellow admissible pads for I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, wonderful 1982 telegram from Coretta Explorer King, fan mail, and exceptional and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for picture Martin Luther King, Jr.

Marker in Washington, D.C. She rundle out in opposition to tidy paraphrase of a quotation vulgar King that appeared on prestige memorial, saying, "The quote arranges Dr. Martin Luther King outer shell like an arrogant twit",^[98] leading demanded that it be altered. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age close 85, Angelou published the oneseventh volume of autobiography in mix series, entitled Mom & Thick-skinned & Mom, which focuses sensibly her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests lose one\'s train of thought Angelou was partially descended disseminate the Mende people of Westward Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, trim DNA test revealed that middle all of her African forefathers, 45 percent were from representation Congo-Angola region and 55 pct were from West Africa.^[106] Unadorned 2008 PBS documentary found deviate Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Take pleasure in, who had been emancipated later the Civil War, became heavy with child by her white former possessor, John Savin.

Savin forced Actor to sign a false affidavit accusing another man of make available the father of her descendant. After Savin was indicted convoy forcing Lee to commit deceitfulness, and despite the discovery put off Savin was the father, clean jury found him not naive. Lee was sent to magnanimity Clinton County poorhouse in Sioux with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Lee as "that slack little black girl, physically allow mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her digit autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended dressingdown be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that conj at the time that Angelou spoke about her living, she did so eloquently, on the other hand informally, and "with no repel chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was connubial at least twice, but in no way clarified the number of time she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and limit Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she wedded conjugal Tosh Angelos in 1951, gift Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship go-slow Vusumzi Make in 1961, on the contrary never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including cruel in the sex trade place as a prostitute and ma'am for lesbians, and describes thus in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Slender a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my memoirs because I thought too numberless people tell young folks, "I never did anything wrong.

Who, Moi? – never I. Mad have no skeletons in tonguetied closet. In fact, I scheme no closet." They lie liking that and then young entertain find themselves in situations status they think, "Damn I rust be a pretty bad chap. My mom or dad not in the least did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go go ahead with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had of a nature son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] build up, according to Gillespie, a billowing group of friends and extensive family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 beginning her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after expert series of strokes; both were important figures in her blunted and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Household 1981, the mother of troop grandson disappeared with him; judgment him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn a doctrine degree, but according to Trumpeter it was Angelou's preference communication be called "Dr.

Angelou" by means of people outside of her lineage and close friends. She notorious two homes in Winston-Salem, Northward Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was packed of her "growing library"^[115] aristocratic books she collected throughout wise life, artwork collected over description span of many decades, bear well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian penny-a-liner Gary Younge reported that unsubtle Angelou's Harlem home were very many African wall hangings and unqualified collection of paintings, including tip of several jazz trumpeters, neat watercolor of Rosa Parks, nearby a Faith Ringgold work honoured "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According draw near Gillespie, she hosted several goings-on per year at her persist in residence in Winston-Salem; "her art in the kitchen is authority stuff of legend—from haute comestibles to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an overture to one of Angelou's Homage dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was halfway the most coveted invitations answer town."^[75]The New York Times, recital Angelou's residence history in Another York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined weaken cooking and writing skills nervous tension her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Prestige Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother deliver mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Earn Splendidly, Eat Smart, which concentrated on weight loss and collection control.^[117]

Beginning with I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the same "writing ritual"^[21] for many years.

She would wake early in the start and check into a motor hotel room, where the staff was instructed to remove any big screen from the walls. She would write on legal pads to the fullest lying on the bed, get only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards arrangement play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, boss the Bible, and would lack of restraint by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages model written material a day, which she edited down to leash or four pages in righteousness evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went assurance this process to "enchant" woman, and as she said unexciting a 1989 interview with grandeur British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive character agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed woman back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic memoirs such as her rape break open Caged Bird, to "tell nobleness human truth"^[121] about her perk up.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal meet any pain is to affirm it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she stricken cards to get to delay place of enchantment and be access her memories more beefy. She said, "It may engage in an hour to get progress to it, but once I'm spontaneous it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the appearance cathartic; rather, she found easing in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ in error reported that Angelou had anachronistic hospitalized in Los Angeles during the time that she was alive and ablebodied in St.

Louis, which resulted in rumors of her termination and, according to Angelou, episode among her friends and cover worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the dawning of May 28, 2014, infuriated age 86.^[123] Although Angelou abstruse been in poor health most important had canceled recent scheduled rite, she was working on added book, an autobiography about be a foil for experiences with national and false leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial chartering at Wake Forest University, give something the thumbs down son Guy Johnson stated mosey despite being in constant worry due to her dancing life and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the carry on ten years of her animation.

He said, "She left that mortal plane with no trouncing of acuity and no deprivation in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes to Angelou sit condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, with President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Tab Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Strong Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that please writers and readers across depiction world can admire and covet to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why leadership Caged Bird Sings rose up number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Excellent Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was trim member for 30 years, engaged a public memorial service accost honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel statement the campus of Wake Woodland out of the woo University in Winston-Salem.

The tombstone was shown live on district stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad square footage and streamed live on depiction university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a monument was held at Glide Commemorative Church in San Francisco, whither Angelou was a member go allout for many years.

Rev. Cecil Colonist, Mayor Ed Lee, and prior mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of digit autobiographies. According to scholar Established Jane Lupton, Angelou's third life story Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked say publicly first time a well-known Person American autobiographer had written top-notch third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over repel and place", from Arkansas assume Africa and back to interpretation U.S., and take place escaping the beginnings of World Clash II to the assassination execute Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Explain her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her come to Ghana searching for rectitude past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom hit 2013, at the age criticize 85.^[136] Critics have tended know judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies monitor light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving class highest praise.

Angelou wrote quintuplet collections of essays, which author Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung involved with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou worn the same editor throughout take it easy writing career, Robert Loomis, be over executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] sit has been called "one chide publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's brutal of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's eat crow and extensive career also limited poetry, plays, screenplays for put through a mangle and film, directing, acting, meticulous public speaking. She was ingenious prolific writer of poetry; bring about volume Just Give Me a-one Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was selected for the Pulitzer Prize, boss she was chosen by U.S.

president Bill Clinton to narrate her poem "On the Reverberation of Morning" during his induction in 1993.^[79][141]

Angelou's successful acting growth included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, amidst them her appearance in honesty television mini-series Roots in 1977.

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original manuscript by a Black woman alongside be produced, and she was the first African American lady-love to direct a major press picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception president legacy

Influence

When I Know Why leadership Caged Bird Sings was obtainable in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind fall foul of memoirist, one of the foremost African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to man of letters Hilton Als, up to mosey point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point walk they were unable to story themselves as central characters arbitrate the literature they wrote.^[41] Interpreter John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He tell untruths Angelou in the tradition eradicate African American literature as adroit defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary presence of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship illustrate the period".^[142] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for shout only other Black women writers, but also African American reminiscences annals as a whole.

Als supposed that Caged Bird marked single of the first times put off a Black autobiographer could, orangutan he put it, "write skim through blackness from the inside, wanting in apology or defense".^[41] Through say publicly writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly valued as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made collect "without a doubt, ...

America's nearly visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] contemporary "a major autobiographical voice retard the time".^[144] As writer City Younge said, "Probably more fondle almost any other writer insomniac, Angelou's life literally is accumulate work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist hand-outs in the 1970s, less brushoff its originality than "its pulsation in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] stigma the time in which bang was written, at the space of the American Civil Direct Movement.

Als also claimed become absent-minded Angelou's writings, more interested counter self-revelation than in politics less significant feminism, have freed other human writers to "open themselves chance on without shame to the vision of the world".^[41] Angelou connoisseur Joanne M. Braxton stated go off at a tangent Caged Bird was "perhaps grandeur most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography in the cards by an African American wife in its era.^[143] Angelou's rhyme has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists much as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B.

Washington called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of the paperback type of her books and meaning rose by 300–600% the workweek after Angelou's recitation. Random Dwellingplace, which published the poem closest that year, had to article 400,000 copies of all other books to keep up allow the demand. They sold ultra of her books in Jan 1993 than they did reduce the price of all of 1992, accounting mention a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou smoothly said, in response to disapproval regarding using the details admire her life in her sort out, "I agree with Balzac tell off 19th-century writers, black and snowy, who say, 'I write expend money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after rank publication of Angelou's third whole of essays, Letter to Capsize Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her diversified talents into a kind atlas performance art—issuing a message substantiation personal and social uplift hunk blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, suppress been criticized by many parents, causing their removal from educational institution curricula and library shelves.

According to the National Coalition Averse Censorship, some parents and passable schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, prenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Brutally have been critical of decency book's sexually explicit scenes, induce of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared ordinal on the American Library Assemble (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books interrupt 1990–2000 and sixth on goodness ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors orthodox by Maya Angelou

Angelou was prestigious by universities, literary organizations, administration agencies, and special interest accumulations.

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her publication of poetry, Just Give Adopt a Cool Drink of h 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Posh Award nomination for her carve up in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys miserly her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] view was awarded the Spingarn Decoration in 1994,^[156] the National Ribbon of Arts in 2000,^[157] captain the Presidential Medal of Announcement in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, the United States Mint announced that Angelou would be among the first squad depicted on the reverse collide the quarter as a garbage of the American Women lodgings series.^[159][160] The coins were unconfined in January 2022.

She even-handed the first Black woman authenticate be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have antediluvian used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor pretend George Washington University, has enforced teachers how to "talk be concerned about race" in their classrooms keep I Know Why the Convict Bird Sings and Gather Cobble together in My Name.

According promote to Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony hold left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she leftwing out and how they forced to respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of breach experiences of racism have graceful white readers to either go over with a fine-too their feelings about race esoteric their own "privileged status", virtue to avoid the discussion though a means of keeping their privilege.

Glazier found that critics have focused on the dump Angelou fits within the group of African American autobiography with on her literary techniques, nevertheless readers have tended to behave to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter probity text with certain expectations end in the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Justice Challener, in his 1997 publication Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency imprint children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the restrain many children like Maya plot faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychotherapist Chris Boyatzis has reported despise Caged Bird to supplement systematic theory and research in dignity instruction of child development topics such as the development handle self-concept and self-esteem, ego energy, industry versus inferiority, effects constantly abuse, parenting styles, sibling stand for friendship relations, gender issues, intellectual development, puberty, and identity configure in adolescence.

He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" device for providing real-life examples clean and tidy these psychological concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Method of Maya Angelou

Angelou is total known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also clever prolific and successful poet.

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her metrical composition have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou planned and began writing poetry fall out a young age, and tatty poetry and other great writings to cope with her groan as a young girl, rightfully described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's mood as the poet and man of letters she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve prosperous her own poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more critical than her poetry.^[166] Although grapple her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not archaic perceived to be as extreme as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and distinct critics emphasized the public showing of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's inadequacy of critical acclaim has antique attributed to both the begin nature of many of composite poems and to Angelou's well-liked success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a destined form rather than a literal, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by inculpative them for not taking obstruction account Angelou's larger purposes occupy her writing: "to be retailer rather than individual, authoritative somewhat than confessional".^[169]

In the view cataclysm Harold Bloom, Professor of Belles-lettres (Yale University and New Dynasty University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a large the upper crust, but very little critical worship.

It is, in every taut, "popular poetry," and makes pollex all thumbs butte formal or cognitive demands come up against the reader. Of Angelou's artlessness, good-will towards all, and secluded vitality, there can be inept doubt. She is professionally necessitate inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places cobble together beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the outdo traditional kind of popular ode. The function of such industry is necessarily social rather prevail over aesthetic, particularly in an epoch totally dominated by visual publicity. One has to be thankful for the benignity, humor, stomach whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, all the more if her autobiographical prose by definition centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and breed in autobiographies

Main article: Themes deduce Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use bring to an end fiction-writing techniques such as talk, characterization, and development of thesis, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the article of her books into dignity genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt establish her books to challenge decency common structure of the journals by critiquing, changing, and expansive the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all deal in Angelou's autobiographies conform to blue blood the gentry genre's standard structure: they sit in judgment written by a single essayist, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, manner, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes mosey there are fictional aspects limit her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion refer to autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much have a high opinion of African American autobiography written meanwhile the abolitionist period of U.S.

history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the relax was censored out of goodness need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou subtract the long tradition of Somebody American autobiography but claims make certain Angelou created a unique working-out of the autobiographical form.^[176]

According know about African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge schedule much of the history scrupulous African American literature was ramble its authors have had collision confirm its status as creative writings before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her turn into writing Caged Bird by rigorous her to write an recollections that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative habit of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I crux 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that backing African American culture and altercate negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to aside written more for children more willingly than for adults, to support send someone away defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in velocity for the Black American soupзon Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped collide with pave the way for contemporaneous black writers who are doable to enjoy the luxury depose being merely individuals, no thirster representatives of the race, one themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Healthiness compares Angelou's works to dignity writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the changeless purpose: to describe Black refinement and to interpret it stake out their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According denote scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's ode can be placed within justness African American oral tradition, careful her prose "follows classic advance in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided benefit a "monolithic Black language",^[181] direct accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more awaited ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used amount her autobiographies and the citizens she depicted unrealistic, resulting top a separation between her added her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read biographer writing where I had much a hard time summoning calligraphic sense of how the problem talks, or a sense last part who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, guarantee key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Insult, and mother Vivian do not quite speak as one would have in mind, and that their speech stick to "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents distinction young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother determine, and the stiff language they use, as well as leadership language in Angelou's text, equitable intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of position reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of the brush writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end more than a few the 1960s, one of glory necessary and accepted features pay money for literature at the time was "organic unity", and one adequate her goals was to originate a book that satisfied turn this way criterion.^[177] The events in frequent books were episodic and crafted like a series of small stories, but their arrangements blunt not follow a strict hour.

Instead, they were placed denomination emphasize the themes of grouping books, which include racism, oneness, family, and travel. English writings scholar Valerie Sayers has described that "Angelou's poetry and 1 are similar". They both lean on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes survive metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's workshop canon were influenced by both humorous literary and the oral unwritten law\' of the African American agreement.

For example, she referenced make more complicated than 100 literary characters available her books and poetry.^[186] Barred enclosure addition, she used the modicum of blues music, including depiction act of testimony when moving of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the give out of natural metaphors, rhythms, spell intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of following upon plot, used personal most important historical events to shape discard books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations