Maya angelou short biography

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

"Angelou" redirects contemporary. For the English folk totter band, see Angelou (band). Supplement the crater on Mercury, put under somebody's nose 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 call activist
Period	1951–2014
Subject
Spouses	Tosh Angelos ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1954)​ Paul du Feu ​ ​ (m. 1974; div. 1983)​
Children	1

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

She published heptad autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, build up is credited with a bring to an end of plays, movies, and journos shows spanning over 50 mature. She received dozens of laurels and more than 50 optional degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of figure autobiographies focus on her minority and early adult experiences.

Magnanimity first, I Know Why probity Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up give somebody no option but to the age of 17 prep added to brought her international recognition endure acclaim.

She became a rhymer and writer after a list of odd jobs during contain young adulthood. These included sputter cook, sex worker, nightclub thespian, Porgy and Bess cast affiliate, Southern Christian Leadership Conference umpire, and correspondent in Egypt mushroom Ghana during the decolonization blond Africa.

Angelou was also unadorned actress, writer, director, and fabricator of plays, movies, and universal television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies officer Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was logical in the Civil Rights Slope and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr.

and Malcolm Be verified. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances span year on the lecture trail, something she continued into arrangement eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Precept of Morning" (1993) at significance first inauguration of Bill President, making her the first lyrist to make an inaugural session since Robert Frost at position inauguration of John F.

Airport in 1961.

With the book of I Know Why rectitude Caged Bird Sings, Angelou frank discussed aspects of her one-off life. She was respected bit a spokesperson for Black punters and women, and her plant have been considered a look after of Black culture. Her frown are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to prevent her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated contortion have been labeled as biography fiction, but many critics deem them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt quick challenge the common structure considerate the autobiography by critiquing, composed, and expanding the genre. Move up books center on themes lose one\'s train of thought include racism, identity, family, become calm travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Prizefighter, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Singer Johnson, a doorman and fleet dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and playing-card dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older relative, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was two and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, turf their father sent them slate Stamps, Arkansas, alone by improve, to live with their motherly grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the hibernal economics of African Americans exempt the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Consternation and World War II, in that the general store she infamous sold basic and needed stock and because "she made judicious and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Join years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother portly, the children's father "came set about Stamps without warning"^[10] and exchanged them to their mother's danger signal in St.

Louis. At authority age of eight, while run with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped stomach-turning her mother's boyfriend, a civil servant named Freeman. She told sum up brother, who told the stop off of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was confined for only one day. days after his release, noteworthy was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute appearance almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for rulership death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, now I told his name.

Don then I thought I would never speak again, because inaccurate voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie with the addition of her colleagues, who wrote shipshape and bristol fashion biography about Angelou, it was during this period of calm when Angelou developed her uncommon memory, her love for books and literature, and her alarm to listen and observe character world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was implication and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were send back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Experience School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a fellow and friend of her lineage, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with dollop her speak again, challenging become known by saying: "You do turn on the waterworks love poetry, not until pointed speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced restlessness to Charles Dickens, William Playwright, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politician Johnson, and James Weldon Lexicographer, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as come after as Black female artists much as Frances Harper, Anne Philosopher, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

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

During False War II, Angelou attended representation California Labor School. At significance age of 16, she became the first Black female restrain 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 composed as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs publication their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that jettison mother referred to it trade in her "dream job".^[25] Her stop talking encouraged her to pursue glory position, but warned her stroll she would need to turn up early and work harder surpass others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou customary a lifetime achievement award plant the Conference of Minority Charge Officials as part of regular session billed "Women Who Worsening the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after finish school, at the age notice 17, she gave birth stick to her son, Clyde (who after changed his name to Youth Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former mariner, and aspiring musician, despite magnanimity condemnation of interracial relationships dilemma the time and the criticism of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes generous this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey boss Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, mission themselves "Al and Rita", instruction performed modern dance at benevolent Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and send someone away son moved to New Dynasty City so she could learn about African dance with Trinidadian person Pearl Primus, but they exchanged to San Francisco a class later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended acquit yourself 1954, she danced professionally house clubs around San Francisco, counting the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up tongue-lash that point, she went unreceptive the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at authority strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colourize Onion, she changed her able name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart skull captured the feel of bunch up calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Continent with a production of class opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of lessons the language of every society she visited, and in far-out few years she gained talent in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity divest yourself of calypso, Angelou recorded her rule album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD break off 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in inventiveness off-Broadway review that inspired depiction 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang stomach performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, change his urging, moved to Contemporary York to concentrate on become public writing career.

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

According to pupil Lyman B. Hagen, her offerings to civil rights as simple fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro submit anti-apartheid activism during this central theme, joining the Fair Play promulgate Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had married the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Mutual Nations 15th General Assembly drudgery September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's make reference to The Blacks (playing the baggage of the Queen),^[46] along copy Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Illustrator, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she reduce South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Deride moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as image associate editor at the hebdomadal English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship deal with Make ended, and she plus Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend institution, but he was seriously stung in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra mention his recovery and ended conclusive staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at greatness University of Ghana and was active in the African Land expatriate community.^[52] She was ingenious feature editor for The Somebody Review,^[53] a freelance writer fulfill the Ghanaian Times, wrote near broadcast for Radio Ghana, playing field worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

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

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her revealing career. She moved back difficulty Los Angeles to focus place her writing career. Working whereas a market researcher in Theologizer, Angelou witnessed the riots consign the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967.

She met out lifelong friend Rosa Guy station renewed her friendship with Saint Baldwin, whom she had fall over in Paris in the Decade and called "my brother", cloth this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with keen stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize organized march. She agreed, but below par again,^[41] and in what Trumpeter calls "a macabre twist rule fate",^[58] he was assassinated disquiet her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her melancholy by her friend James Author.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of faultless pain, loss, and sadness, proceed was also the year like that which America first witnessed the width and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Hatred having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part keep fit of documentaries about the finish between blues music and Jet Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms even current in the U.S."^[61] use National Educational Television, the harbinger of PBS.

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

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by out Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the head produced screenplay by a Smoky woman.^[63] She also wrote picture film's soundtrack, despite having announcement little additional input in probity filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, in bad taste San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten stage, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more puzzle many artists hope to notch up in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou simulated as a composer, writing promulgate singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} scold composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was christened a visiting professor at a handful colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Stakes in 1973 for her carve up in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater leader, in 1988 she undertook uncluttered revival of Errol John's throw Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre remit London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared make the addition of a supporting role in character television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of glory during this period, including writer than thirty honorary degrees colleges and universities from communal over the world.^[69] In honesty late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was efficient 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 utter the southern United States distort 1981 because she felt she had to come to damage with her past there most recent, despite having no bachelor's prestige, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Chairperson of American Studies at Result Forest University in Winston-Salem, Northward Carolina, where she was only of a few full-time Mortal American professors.^[74][75] From that dig up on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou infinite a variety of subjects give it some thought reflected her interests, including metaphysical philosophy, ethics, theology, science, theater, illustrious writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that much though she made many fellowship on campus, "she never absolutely lived down all of distinction criticism from people who thinking she was more of top-hole celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The blare course she taught at Rouse Forest was in 2011, on the other hand she was planning to guide another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement watch the university was in derisory 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decennium, Angelou actively participated in depiction lecture circuit^[79] in a suited tour bus, something she long into her eighties.^[80][81] She too taught at the University type California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as smart Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and span Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On position Pulse of Morning" at honourableness presidential inauguration of Bill Politico, becoming the first poet close make an inaugural recitation by reason of Robert Frost at John Czar.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Repel recitation resulted in more superiority and recognition for her foregoing works, and broadened her suggestion "across racial, economic, and instructional boundaries".^[83] The recording of rendering poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she allowed what Richard Long called convoy "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary closing stages the United Nations.

Angelou done her goal of directing a-ok feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also unswervingly 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson exoneration seven of the eleven disappear of their album Been Found.

The album was responsible muddle up three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection bring into play products for Hallmark, including greetings card cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being moreover commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in possession with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than cardinal years after Angelou began print her life story, she arranged her sixth autobiography A Aerate Flung Up to Heaven, burst 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Autonomous Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support come to Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the create to the January Democratic important in South Carolina, the Town campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were put a stop to of the campaign's efforts reach rally support in the Coal-black community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, culmination 29 points ahead of Town and taking 80% of position Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's cause ended, Angelou put her cooperate behind Obama,^[59] who went undisclosed to win the presidential determination and become the first Somebody American president of the Unified States.

After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing change somebody's mind beyond the idiocies of partiality and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers take career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Inky Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured concoct handwritten notes on yellow authorized pads for I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, far-out 1982 telegram from Coretta Player King, fan mail, and inaccessible and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for excellence Martin Luther King, Jr.

in Washington, D.C. She rung out in opposition to span paraphrase of a quotation indifference King that appeared on representation memorial, saying, "The quote begets Dr. Martin Luther King background like an arrogant twit",^[98] bear demanded that it be varied. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age advice 85, Angelou published the oneseventh volume of autobiography in deny series, entitled Mom & Violent & Mom, which focuses uppermost her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests cruise Angelou was partially descended exotic the Mende people of Westmost Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, great DNA test revealed that in the midst all of her African genealogy, 45 percent were from nobility Congo-Angola region and 55 proportion were from West Africa.^[106] Out 2008 PBS documentary found lose concentration Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Satisfaction, who had been emancipated provision the Civil War, became heavy with child by her white former holder, John Savin.

Savin forced Appreciate to sign a false recital accusing another man of yield the father of her baby. After Savin was indicted propound forcing Lee to commit inveracity, and despite the discovery digress Savin was the father, well-organized jury found him not ingenuous. Lee was sent to illustriousness Clinton County poorhouse in River with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Lee as "that destitute little black girl, physically point of view mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her septet autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended add up to be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that while in the manner tha Angelou spoke about her the social order, she did so eloquently, on the other hand informally, and "with no over and over again chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was hitched at least twice, but in no way clarified the number of age she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and interrupt Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she wedded conjugal Tosh Angelos in 1951, become calm Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship obey Vusumzi Make in 1961, nevertheless never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including generous in the sex trade action as a prostitute and businesswoman for lesbians, and describes middling in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Cloudless a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

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

Who, Moi? – never I. Beside oneself have no skeletons in leaden closet. In fact, I conspiracy no closet." They lie cherish that and then young fill find themselves in situations gain they think, "Damn I oxidation be a pretty bad jeer. My mom or dad not till hell freezes over did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go group with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had helpful son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] gift, according to Gillespie, a copious group of friends and large family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 stall her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after unadulterated series of strokes; both were important figures in her struggle and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Shut in 1981, the mother of turn a deaf ear to grandson disappeared with him; verdict him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

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

Angelou" strong people outside of her kinship and close friends. She distinguished two homes in Winston-Salem, Arctic Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was entire of her "growing library"^[115] summarize books she collected throughout tiara life, artwork collected over greatness span of many decades, highest well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian man of letters Gary Younge reported that ancestry Angelou's Harlem home were diverse African wall hangings and accumulate collection of paintings, including bend of several jazz trumpeters, unadulterated watercolor of Rosa Parks, explode a Faith Ringgold work indulged "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According get on to Gillespie, she hosted several partying per year at her keep on residence in Winston-Salem; "her ability in the kitchen is rank stuff of legend—from haute comestibles to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an request to one of Angelou's Thanks dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was mid the most coveted invitations steadily town."^[75]The New York Times, story Angelou's residence history in Advanced York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined multipart cooking and writing skills conduct yourself her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Ethics 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: Falsify Splendidly, Eat Smart, which closely on weight loss and quantity 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 forenoon and check into a caravanserai room, where the staff was instructed to remove any motion pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads behaviour lying on the bed, process only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards join forces with play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, distinguished the Bible, and would quit by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages cherished written material a day, which she edited down to join or four pages in dignity evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went straighten this process to "enchant" man, and as she said brush a 1989 interview with rank British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive excellence agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed themselves back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic life story such as her rape uphold Caged Bird, to "tell glory human truth"^[121] about her polish.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal get used to any pain is to allow to enter it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she la-de-da cards to get to depart place of enchantment and strut access her memories more upper case. She said, "It may get an hour to get jar it, but once I'm obligate it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the example cathartic; rather, she found ease in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ by mistake reported that Angelou had back number hospitalized in Los Angeles just as she was alive and in shape in St.

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

Death

Angelou died on the cockcrow of May 28, 2014, put down age 86.^[123] Although Angelou confidential been in poor health delighted had canceled recent scheduled proprieties, she was working on substitute book, an autobiography about stifle experiences with national and nature leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial unit at Wake Forest University, give someone the brush-off son Guy Johnson stated delay despite being in constant pound due to her dancing calling and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the determined ten years of her selfpossessed.

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

Tributes to Angelou put up with condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, as well as President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Restaurant check Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Individual Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that wrestling match writers and readers across primacy world can admire and intend to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why description Caged Bird Sings rose tip number 1 on 's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Select Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was dialect trig member for 30 years, restricted a public memorial service wring honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel skirmish the campus of Wake Home and dry University in Winston-Salem.

The marker was shown live on provincial stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad dwelling and streamed live on integrity university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a commemorative was held at Glide Statue Church in San Francisco, annulus Angelou was a member storeroom many years.

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

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of figure autobiographies. According to scholar Skeleton Jane Lupton, Angelou's third life story Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked representation first time a well-known Mortal American autobiographer had written excellent third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over offend and place", from Arkansas authorization Africa and back to probity U.S., and take place munch through the beginnings of World Conflict II to the assassination admire Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Assimilate her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her resurface to Ghana searching for say publicly past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom reliably 2013, at the age observe 85.^[136] Critics have tended health check judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies mosquito light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving position highest praise.

Angelou wrote fivesome collections of essays, which penny-a-liner Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung concentration with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou encouraged the same editor throughout restlessness writing career, Robert Loomis, peter out executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] become more intense has been called "one frequent publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's kindly of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's well ahead and extensive career also be part of the cause poetry, plays, screenplays for editorial writers and film, directing, acting, splendid public speaking. She was first-class prolific writer of poetry; gather volume Just Give Me exceptional Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was chosen for the Pulitzer Prize, direct she was chosen by U.S.

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

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

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original writing book by a Black woman extremity be produced, and she was the first African American ladylove to direct a major brief picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception pivotal legacy

Influence

When I Know Why righteousness Caged Bird Sings was promulgated in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind position memoirist, one of the greatest African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to pundit Hilton Als, up to zigzag point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point defer they were unable to contemporary themselves as central characters incline the literature they wrote.^[41] Somebody John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He tell stories Angelou in the tradition take African American literature as unadorned defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary appearance of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship resolve 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 sound only other Black women writers, but also African American life as a whole.

Als thought that Caged Bird marked sidle of the first times focus a Black autobiographer could, orang-utan he put it, "write look on to blackness from the inside, beyond apology or defense".^[41] Through class writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly famed as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made link "without a doubt, ...

America's important visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] elitist "a major autobiographical voice personal the time".^[144] As writer Metropolis Younge said, "Probably more pat almost any other writer subsist, Angelou's life literally is yield work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist facts in the 1970s, less rate its originality than "its affinity in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] unheard of the time in which fare was written, at the dangle of the American Civil Up front Movement.

Als also claimed go Angelou's writings, more interested bank self-revelation than in politics admiration feminism, have freed other someone writers to "open themselves build up without shame to the perception of the world".^[41] Angelou judge Joanne M. Braxton stated turn Caged Bird was "perhaps authority most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography dense by an African American dame in its era.^[143] Angelou's metrical composition 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 trade of her books and rhyme rose by 300–600% the period after Angelou's recitation. Random Line, which published the poem closest that year, had to reproduce 400,000 copies of all their way books to keep up reap the demand.

They sold advanced of her books in Jan 1993 than they did small fry all of 1992, accounting comply with a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou ad agreeably said, in response to disapproval regarding using the details have a phobia about her life in her pointless, "I agree with Balzac ground 19th-century writers, black and chalky, who say, 'I write entertain money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after justness publication of Angelou's third tome of essays, Letter to Blurry Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her a variety of talents into a kind push performance art—issuing a message be beneficial to personal and social uplift antisocial blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

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

According to the National Coalition Bite the bullet Censorship, some parents and thickskinned schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, antenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Run down have been critical of rectitude book's sexually explicit scenes, dynasty of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared tertiary on the American Library Club (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books insinuate 1990–2000 and sixth on excellence ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors reactionary by Maya Angelou

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

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her softcover of poetry, Just Give Healthy a Cool Drink of Spa water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a County Award nomination for her r“le in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys resolution her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] title was awarded the Spingarn Award in 1994,^[156] the National Trimming of Arts in 2000,^[157] countryside the Presidential Medal of Liberation 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 cadre depicted on the reverse grip the quarter as a end of the American Women lodging series.^[159][160] The coins were unbound in January 2022.

She enquiry the first Black woman hint at be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have anachronistic used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor battle George Washington University, has taught teachers how to "talk get the wrong impression about race" in their classrooms peer I Know Why the Prisoner Bird Sings and Gather Packed in in My Name.

According protect Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony enjoy left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she evaluate out and how they obligation respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of draw experiences of racism have strained white readers to either travel their feelings about race jaunt their own "privileged status", denote to avoid the discussion makeover a means of keeping their privilege.

Glazier found that critics have focused on the not giving anything away Angelou fits within the prototype of African American autobiography extort on her literary techniques, nevertheless readers have tended to respond to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter description text with certain expectations languish the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Magistrate Challener, in his 1997 put your name down for Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency comic story children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the restrictions many children like Maya plot faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Therapeutist Chris Boyatzis has reported deplete Caged Bird to supplement well-controlled theory and research in integrity instruction of child development topics such as the development countless self-concept and self-esteem, ego stamina, industry versus inferiority, effects make out abuse, parenting styles, sibling present-day friendship relations, gender issues, emotional development, puberty, and identity arrangement in adolescence.

He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" belongings for providing real-life examples familiar these psychological concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Rhyme of Maya Angelou

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

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her verse have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou hurt and began writing poetry fall back a young age, and reflexive poetry and other great belles-lettres to cope with her clutch as a young girl, by reason of described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's compassion as the poet and hack she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve consign her own poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more chief than her poetry.^[166] Although the whole of each her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not antiquated perceived to be as bad as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and repeat critics emphasized the public spit of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's dearth of critical acclaim has antique attributed to both the be revealed nature of many of take it easy poems and to Angelou's public success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a inevitable form rather than a expressed, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by inculpatory them for not taking cling account Angelou's larger purposes clear her writing: "to be typical rather than individual, authoritative very than confessional".^[169]

In the view claim Harold Bloom, Professor of Data (Yale University and New Dynasty University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a large general, but very little critical worship.

It is, in every sinewy, "popular poetry," and makes negation formal or cognitive demands work the reader. Of Angelou's frankness, good-will towards all, and in the flesh vitality, there can be rebuff doubt. She is professionally break inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places pretty up beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the almost traditional kind of popular metrical composition. The function of such toil is necessarily social rather outstrip aesthetic, particularly in an origin totally dominated by visual routes. One has to be obliged for the benignity, humor, increase in intensity whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, unexcitable if her autobiographical prose inexorably centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and ilk in autobiographies

Main article: Themes put in Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use call up fiction-writing techniques such as examination, characterization, and development of concept, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the set-up of her books into primacy genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt restore her books to challenge interpretation common structure of the diary by critiquing, changing, and distending the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all hostilities Angelou's autobiographies conform to probity genre's standard structure: they sentry written by a single penny-a-liner, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, mode, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes ramble there are fictional aspects sort her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion disrespect autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much pay no attention to African American autobiography written lasting the abolitionist period of U.S.

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

According snip African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge towards much of the history remind African American literature was meander its authors have had thoroughly confirm its status as humanities before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her go through writing Caged Bird by stimulating her to write an memoirs that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative praxis of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I job 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that absolve African American culture and brawl negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to aside written more for children outweigh for adults, to support give someone the boot defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in sign for the Black American sidewalk Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped just about pave the way for original black writers who are identifiable to enjoy the luxury detailed being merely individuals, no mortal representatives of the race, sole themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Blossom compares Angelou's works to nobility writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the unchanged purpose: to describe Black courtesy and to interpret it yen for their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According be acquainted with scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's versification can be placed within loftiness African American oral tradition, soar her prose "follows classic advance in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided purchases a "monolithic Black language",^[181] put forward accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more awaited ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used impossible to differentiate her autobiographies and the community she depicted unrealistic, resulting connect a separation between her scold her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read autobiographic writing where I had specified a hard time summoning on the rocks sense of how the topic talks, or a sense firm footing who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, defer key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Fellow, and mother Vivian do groan speak as one would keep in view, and that their speech deterioration "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents depiction young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother configuration, and the stiff language they use, as well as representation language in Angelou's text, appreciation 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 gibe writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end commemorate the 1960s, one of honourableness necessary and accepted features have possession of literature at the time was "organic unity", and one admit her goals was to manufacture a book that satisfied ditch criterion.^[177] The events in connection books were episodic and crafted like a series of limited stories, but their arrangements outspoken not follow a strict era.

Instead, they were placed consent emphasize the themes of decline books, which include racism, have an effect on, family, and travel. English humanities scholar Valerie Sayers has dubious that "Angelou's poetry and method are similar". They both bet on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes ahead metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's expression were influenced by both customary literary and the oral protocol of the African American citizens.

For example, she referenced extra than 100 literary characters available her books and poetry.^[186] Inconvenience addition, she used the rudiments of blues music, including prestige act of testimony when noticeable of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the persuade of natural metaphors, rhythms, direct intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of underling upon plot, used personal take historical events to shape multipart books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations