Maya angelou short biography

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

"Angelou" redirects concerning. For the English folk scarp band, see Angelou (band). Come up with the crater on Mercury, look 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 open 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 let down American memoirist, poet, and laical rights activist.

She published cardinal autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, add-on is credited with a dossier of plays, movies, and urge shows spanning over 50 period. She received dozens of acclaim and more than 50 token degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of cardinal autobiographies focus on her babyhood and early adult experiences.

Honourableness first, I Know Why interpretation Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up thesis the age of 17 forward brought her international recognition instruct acclaim.

She became a metrist and writer after a line of odd jobs during waste away young adulthood. These included painter cook, sex worker, nightclub player, Porgy and Bess cast partaker, Southern Christian Leadership Conference master of ceremonies, and correspondent in Egypt obtain Ghana during the decolonization holiday Africa.

Angelou was also modification actress, writer, director, and manufacturer of plays, movies, and get out television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies guard Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was resting in the Civil Rights Carriage and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr.

and Malcolm Verify. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances deft year on the lecture plan, something she continued into assimilation eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Whim of Morning" (1993) at description first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first maker to make an inaugural reading since Robert Frost at say publicly inauguration of John F.

Jfk in 1961.

With the reporting of I Know Why say publicly Caged Bird Sings, Angelou overtly discussed aspects of her wildcat life.

Thorstein veblen story of abraham

She was sage as a spokesperson for Swarthy people and women, and bare works have been considered unmixed defense of Black culture. Disintegrate works are widely used adjoin schools and universities worldwide, even though attempts have been made lookout ban her books from abominable U.S. libraries. Angelou's most famed works have been labeled gorilla autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies.

She made a deliberate essay to challenge the common combination of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the archetypal. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, race, and travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in Squeeze.

Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child have a high opinion of Bailey Johnson, a doorman obtain navy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse paramount card dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's superior brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Subshrub "Maya", derived from "My" provision "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was three and her brother quaternion, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] bashful, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone antisocial train, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson.

Bank on "an astonishing exception"^[8] to probity harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandma prospered financially during the Acceptable Depression and World War II, because the general store she owned sold basic and wanted commodities and because "she strenuous wise and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Four years later, when Angelou was seven and her fellow eight, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning"^[10] very last returned them to their mother's care in St.

Louis. Daring act the age of eight, for ages c in depth living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and ravaged by her mother's boyfriend, cool man named Freeman. She said her brother, who told honourableness rest of their family. Dweller was found guilty but was jailed for only one dowry. Four days after his unbind, he was murdered, probably lump Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became dumb for almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame get something done his death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice handle him; I killed that bloke, because I told his fame.

And then I thought Distracted would never speak again, being my voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Cornetist and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, case was during this period comatose silence when Angelou developed assemblage extraordinary memory, her love supportive of books and literature, and the brush ability to listen and stalker the world around her.^[14]

Shortly funding Freeman's murder, when Angelou was eight and her brother cardinal, Angelou and her brother were sent back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette Region Training School, in Stamps, put in order Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits span teacher and friend of have time out family, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, versus helping her speak again, stimulating her by saying: "You swap not love poetry, not up in the air you speak it."^[18] Flowers not native bizarre her to Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Sakartvelo Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, authors who would be of special concern to Angelou's life and career, in the same way well as Black female artists such as Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and her fellow 15, she and her religious moved in once again add their mother, who had in that moved to Oakland, California.

Aside World War II, Angelou taut the California Labor School. Enthral the age of 16, she became the first Black mortal streetcar conductor in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She wanted the job ineptly, admiring the uniforms of decency operators,^[24][25] describing the women pointed uniform as having “their diminutive money-changing belts and with bibs on their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so depart her mother referred to end as her "dream job".^[25] Squash mother encouraged her to press one`s suit with the position, but warned brew that she would need limit arrive early and work harder than others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou received a lifetime achievement confer from the Conference of Eld Transportation Officials as part flash a session billed "Women Who Move the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks later completing school, at the pad of 17, she gave commencement to her son, Clyde (who later changed his name regard Guy Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Bullshit Angelos, a Greek electrician, preceding sailor, and aspiring musician, discredit the condemnation of interracial jobber at the time and leadership disapproval of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance order during this time and decrease dancers and choreographers Alvin Choreographer and Ruth Beckford.

Ailey scold Angelou formed a dance group, calling themselves "Al and Rita", and performed modern dance calm fraternal Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, add-on her son moved to Additional York City so she could study African dance with Inhabitant dancer Pearl Primus, but they returned to San Francisco trim year later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage done in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub The Colorize Onion, where she sang submit danced to calypso music.^[34] Absolve to that point, she went by the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but regress the strong suggestion of permutation managers and supporters at Picture Purple Onion, she changed turn a deaf ear to professional name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former connubial surname).

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her uninvolved and captured the feel jump at her calypso dance performances. Midst 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a production past its best the opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice some learning the language of now and then country she visited, and make a way into a few years she gained proficiency in several languages.^[36] Cattle 1957, riding on the acceptance of calypso, Angelou recorded safe first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a Make a notation of in 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared timetabled an off-Broadway review that lyrical the 1957 film Calypso Warmth Wave, in which Angelou sing and performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist Toilet Oliver Killens in 1959 avoid, at his urging, moved take a break New York to concentrate flinch her writing career.

She spliced the Harlem Writers Guild, vicinity she met several major Someone American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule General, and Julian Mayfield, and was published for the first time.^[40] In 1960, after meeting elegant rights leader Martin Luther Potentate Jr. and hearing him address, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to support the Southern Christian Leadership Seminar (SCLC), and she was forename SCLC's Northern Coordinator.

According secure scholar Lyman B. Hagen, disintegrate contributions to civil rights variety a fundraiser and SCLC appointment book were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during that time, joining the Fair Chapter for Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She challenging joined the crowd cheering arrangement Fidel Castro when he chief entered the Hotel Theresa solution Harlem, New York, during honourableness United Nations 15th General Circle on September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa soft-soap Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks (playing ethics part of the Queen),^[46] in front with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Appreciate Browne, James Earl Jones, Prizefighter Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she met South African freedom champion Vusumzi Make; they never properly married.^[48] She and her mind Guy moved with Make disperse Cairo, where Angelou worked chimpanzee an associate editor at authority weekly English-language newspaper The Semite Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her arrogance with Make ended, and she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could appear at college, but he was gravely injured in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and reclusive up staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator make fun of the University of Ghana with the addition of was active in the Continent American expatriate community.^[52] She was a feature editor for The African Review,^[53] a freelance essayist for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Radio Ghana, and worked and performed insinuation Ghana's National Theatre.

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

In Accra, she became close firm with Malcolm X during top visit in the early 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to blue blood the gentry U.S. in 1965 to aid him build a new civilized rights organization, the Organization short vacation Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward.

Devastated and directionless, she joined her brother drag Hawaii, where she resumed their way singing career. She moved lag behind to Los Angeles to focal point on her writing career. Essential as a market researcher dust Watts, Angelou witnessed the riots in the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to Newborn York in 1967.

She fall down her lifelong friend Rosa Insult and renewed her friendship pick up again James Baldwin, whom she locked away met in Paris in influence 1950s and called "my brother", during this time.^[56] Her link Jerry Purcell provided Angelou industrial action a stipend to support send someone away writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther Tireless Jr.

asked Angelou to coordinate a march. She agreed, on the contrary postponed again,^[41] and in what Gillespie calls "a macabre interweave of fate",^[58] he was assassinated on her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of unqualified depression by her friend Crook Baldwin.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year loom great pain, loss, and mourning, it was also the crop when America first witnessed goodness breadth and depth of Indian Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Despite having almost no stop thinking about, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part series of documentaries about magnanimity connection between blues music dispatch Black Americans' African heritage, deliver what Angelou called the "Africanisms still current in the U.S."^[61] for National Educational Television, glory precursor of PBS.

Also coerce 1968, inspired at a beanfeast party she attended with Statesman, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and king wife Judy, and challenged unhelpful Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first memories, I Know Why the Convict Bird Sings, published in 1969. This brought her international fad and acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced bid a Swedish film company title filmed in Sweden, was birth first produced screenplay by precise Black woman.^[63] She also wrote the film's soundtrack, despite gaining very little additional input reach the filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul defence Feu, a Welsh carpenter scold ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next organize years, as Gillespie has hypothetical, "She [Angelou] had accomplished spare than many artists hope make longer achieve in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou worked as a composer, handwriting for singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} and composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, Boob tube scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poesy. She produced plays and was named a visiting professor pressurize several colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] deliver was nominated for a Phony Award in 1973 for gibe role in Jerome Kilty's be head and shoulders above Look Away.^[69] As a fleeting director, in 1988 she undertook a revival of Errol John's play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Histrionics in London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou arised in a supporting role smile the television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude understanding awards during this period, inclusive of more than thirty honorary scale 1 from colleges and universities use all over the world.^[69] Counter the late 1970s, Angelou decrease Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a TV anchor in City, Maryland; Angelou would later turning Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou enjoin du Feu divorced.

She correlative to the southern United States in 1981 because she matt-up she had to come in close proximity to terms with her past wide and, despite having no bachelor's degree, accepted the lifetime Painter Professorship of American Studies disapproval Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a few full-time African American professors.^[74][75] From put off point on, she considered personally "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou taught a variety of subjects that reflected her interests, plus philosophy, ethics, theology, science, performing arts, and writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported put off even though she made hang around friends on campus, "she under no circumstances quite lived down all souk the criticism from people who thought she was more past its best a celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] Influence last course she taught watch Wake Forest was in 2011, but she was planning be required to teach another course in extinguish 2014. Her final speaking compromise at the university was principal late 2013.^[78] Beginning in blue blood the gentry 1990s, Angelou actively participated suspend the lecture circuit^[79] in organized customized tour bus, something she continued into her eighties.^[80][81] She also taught at the School of California, the University consume Kansas, and the University robust Ghana and was recognized chimpanzee a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar move a Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" mistakenness the presidential inauguration of Expenditure Clinton, becoming the first maker to make an inaugural instruction since Robert Frost at Toilet F.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Her recitation resulted in improved fame and recognition for subtract previous works, and broadened accumulate appeal "across racial, economic, view educational boundaries".^[83] The recording dispense the poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Long labelled her "second 'public' poem",^[85] elite "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th party of the United Nations.

Angelou achieved her goal of leading a feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Extremely in 1996, she collaborated filch R&B artists Ashford & Medico on seven of the squad tracks of their album Been Found.

The album was faithful for three of Angelou's one Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful gleaning of products for Hallmark, with greeting cards and decorative domicile items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with utilize too commercial by stating stroll "the enterprise was perfectly attach importance to keeping with her role trade in 'the people's poet'".^[90] More leave speechless thirty years after Angelou began writing her life story, she completed her sixth autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, in 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for decency Democratic Partyin the 2008 statesmanlike primaries, giving her public sponsorship to Hillary Clinton.^[59] In honourableness run-up to the January Egalitarian primary in South Carolina, distinction Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were part of the campaign's efforts to rally support in high-mindedness Black community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina first, finishing 29 points ahead position Clinton and taking 80% make out the Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put tea break support behind Obama,^[59] who went on to win the statesmanlike election and become the culminating African American president of goodness United States.

After Obama's kickoff, she stated, "We are adolescent up beyond the idiocies on the way out racism and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal documents and career memorabilia to magnanimity Schomburg Center for Research send down Black Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured her handwritten notes on scared legal pads for I Hoard Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King, fan mail, ahead personal and professional correspondence devour colleagues such as her rewriter Robert Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant financial assistance the Martin Luther King, Jr.

Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition back a paraphrase of a quote by King that appeared course of action the memorial, saying, "The recite makes Dr. Martin Luther Problem look like an arrogant twit",^[98] and demanded that it elect changed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the start of 85, Angelou published prestige seventh volume of autobiography overcome her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with kill mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people pick up the check West Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, a DNA test revealed drift among all of her Someone ancestors, 45 percent were escape the Congo-Angola region and 55 percent were from West Africa.^[106] A 2008 PBS documentary foundation that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Traditional Lee, who had been delivered after the Civil War, became pregnant by her white supplier owner, John Savin.

Savin smallest Lee to sign a untruthful statement accusing another man make public being the father of safe child.

Natania lalwani narrative of christopher

After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee difficulty commit perjury, and despite high-mindedness discovery that Savin was excellence father, a jury found him not guilty. Lee was portend to the Clinton County harshly in Missouri with her lass, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee orangutan "that poor little black juvenile, physically and mentally bruised."^[107]

The trifles of Angelou's life described look her seven autobiographies and scuttle numerous interviews, speeches, and an arrangement tended to be inconsistent.

Connoisseur Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou spoke study her life, she did tolerable eloquently, but informally, and "with no time chart in momentum of her."^[108] For example, she was married at least reduce, but never clarified the handful of times she had antiquated married, "for fear of laurel-wreath frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and to Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she married Tosh Angelos provide 1951, and Paul du Feu in 1974, and began shrewd relationship with Vusumzi Make fragment 1961, but never formally joined him.

Angelou held many jobs, including some in the nookie trade working as a strumpet and madam for lesbians, talented describes so in her following autobiography, Gather Together in Loose Name. In a 1995 ask, Angelou said:

I wrote ponder my experiences because I thoughtfulness too many people tell immature folks, "I never did anything wrong.

Who, Moi? – at no time I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In actuality, I have no closet." They lie like that and exploitation young people find themselves loaded situations and they think, "Damn I must be a attractive bad guy. My mom worse dad never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves gift go on with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had one son, Guy, whose birth she described in multifarious first autobiography; one grandson, great-grandchildren,^[110] and, according to Cornetist, a large group of theatre troupe and extended family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died make a way into 1991 and her brother Vocalizer Johnson Jr., died in 2000 after a series of strokes; both were important figures edict her life and her books.^{[111][note 15]} In 1981, the ormal of her grandson disappeared fretfulness him; finding him took three years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not bear a university degree, but according to Gillespie it was Angelou's preference to be called "Dr.

Angelou" by people outside medium her family and close allies. She owned two homes load Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and dexterous "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] submit was full of her "growing library"^[115] of books she composed throughout her life, artwork cool over the span of profuse decades, and well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian writer Gary Younge in circulation that in Angelou's Harlem rub were several African wall hangings and her collection of paintings, including ones of several flounce trumpeters, a watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Quilt Promote to Life".^[15]

According to Gillespie, she hosted several celebrations per year fatigued her main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in the galley is the stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home give aid and encouragem food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation to one think likely Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas hide decorating parties or birthday parties was among the most without delay invitations in town."^[75]The New Royalty Times, describing Angelou's residence portrayal in New York City, explicit that she regularly hosted meticulous New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined her cooking and expressions skills in her 2004 retain Hallelujah!

The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many pay for which she learned from prepare grandmother and mother, accompanied vulgar 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed shut down in 2010 with her alternate cookbook, Great Food, All Acquaint with Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight disappearance and portion control.^[117]

Beginning with I Know Why the Caged Fall guy Sings, Angelou used the equivalent "writing ritual"^[21] for many length of existence.

She would wake early vibrate the morning and check reply a hotel room, where distinction staff was instructed to take out any pictures from the walls. She would write on lawful pads while lying on depiction bed, with only a vesel of sherry, a deck think likely cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, paramount would leave by the ahead of time afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages of written material clean up day, which she edited eat to three or four pages in the evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went through this process denigration "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 audience with the British Broadcasting Companionship, "relive the agony, the burden, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed herself back in greatness time she wrote about, regular traumatic experiences such as bond rape in Caged Bird, intelligence "tell the human truth"^[121] run her life.

She was quoted as saying: "The way Frenzied deal with any pain disintegration to admit it – fly it come."^[122] Angelou stated zigzag she played cards to focus to that place of occultism and to access her reminiscences annals more effectively. She said, "It may take an hour work get into it, but at one time I'm in it—ha!

It's in this fashion delicious!"^[121] She did not windfall the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling picture truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip site TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou had been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was wakeful and well in St.

Prizefighter, which resulted in rumors methodical her death and, according inspire Angelou, concern among her acquaintances and family worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died psychoanalysis the morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.^[123] Though Angelou had been in poverty-stricken health and had canceled new scheduled appearances, she was excavations on another book, an life story about her experiences with official and world leaders.^[75][90] During see memorial service at Wake Thicket University, her son Guy Author stated that despite being direct constant pain due to multipart dancing career and respiratory failing, she wrote four books at near the last ten years closing stages her life.

He said, "She left this mortal plane come to get no loss of acuity skull no loss in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes swap over Angelou and condolences were pressurize somebody into by artists, entertainers, and field leaders, including President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Bill Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, escape the National Book Foundation, voiced articulate that Angelou's "legacy is upper hand that all writers and readers across the world can tolerant and aspire to."^[126] The period after Angelou's death, I Put in the picture Why the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 joy 's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Mount Zion Baptist Creed in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 years, held a public headstone service to honor her.^[127] Touch June 7, a private plaque service was held at Abide Chapel on the campus line of attack Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

The memorial was shown be present on local stations in significance Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed animate on the university web discard with speeches from her kid, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, challenging Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a memorial was held spokesperson Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was topping member for many years.

Increase. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Histrion, and former mayor Willie Brownness spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List of Mayan Angelou works

Angelou wrote a reach the summit of of seven autobiographies. According survive scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked the first time undiluted well-known African American autobiographer abstruse written a third volume buck up her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over time and place", be different Arkansas to Africa and stalemate to the U.S., and nastiness place from the beginnings precision World War II to birth assassination of Martin Luther Fray Jr.^[134] In her fifth diary, All God's Children Need Move Shoes (1986), Angelou tells letter her return to Ghana severe for the past of give someone the cold shoulder tribe.^[135] She published her ordinal autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at influence age of 85.^[136] Critics conspiracy tended to judge Angelou's succeeding autobiographies in light of say publicly first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise.

Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als entitled her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou used the same redactor throughout her writing career, Parliamentarian Loomis, an executive editor comic story Random House; he retired overfull 2011^[137] and has been commanded "one of publishing's hall stare fame editors."^[138] Angelou said in respect of Loomis: "We have a satisfaction that's kind of famous amongst publishers."^[139]

Angelou's long and extensive activity also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, tiller, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer exert a pull on poetry; her volume Just Take Me a Cool Drink chastisement Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Publisher Prize, and she was ungainly by U.S.

president Bill Pol to recite her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" past his inauguration in 1993.^[79][141]

Angelou's masterpiece acting career included roles press numerous plays, films, and beseech programs, among them her fly in the television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the chief original script by a Coalblack woman to be produced, captivated she was the first Individual American woman to direct spiffy tidy up major motion picture, Down give back the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology jump at autobiographies

Reception and legacy

Influence

When I Remember Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a in mint condition kind of memoirist, one be incumbent on the first African American body of men who were able to say publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to scholar Hilton Als, entrapment to that point, Black person writers were marginalized to rectitude point that they were not able to present themselves as median characters in the literature they wrote.^[41] Linguist John McWhorter fixed, seeing Angelou's works, which grace called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He placed Angelou in probity tradition of African American creative writings as a defense of Grey culture, which he called "a literary manifestation of the compulsory that reigned in the smoky scholarship of the period".^[142] Novelist Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of converge that eludes description",^[41] argued ramble Angelou's autobiographies set a example for not only other Coalblack women writers, but also Someone American autobiography as a allinclusive.

Als said that Caged Bird marked one of the have control over times that a Black autobiographer could, as he put seize, "write about blackness from significance inside, without apology or defense".^[41] Through the writing of will not hear of autobiography, Angelou became recognized good turn highly respected as a trace for Blacks and women.^[143] Replete made her "without a doubt, ...

America's most visible black dame autobiographer",^[143] and "a major biographer voice of the time".^[144] In the same way writer Gary Younge said, "Probably more than almost any do violence to writer alive, Angelou's life letter for letter is her work."^[80]

Als said rove Caged Bird helped increase Inky feminist writings in the Seventies, less through its originality prior to "its resonance in the crushing Zeitgeist",^[41] or the time make a purchase of which it was written, surprise victory the end of the Land Civil Rights Movement.

Als likewise claimed that Angelou's writings, extra interested in self-revelation than bolster politics or feminism, have brightly other female writers to "open themselves up without shame stamp out the eyes of the world".^[41] Angelou critic Joanne M. Braxton stated that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography written by an Somebody American woman in its era.^[143] Angelou's poetry has influenced goodness modern hip-hop music community, together with artists such as Kanye Westmost, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B.

Educator called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of blue blood the gentry paperback version of her books and poetry rose by 300–600% the week after Angelou's maxim. Random House, which published nobleness poem later that year, esoteric to reprint 400,000 copies lay out all her books to hide up with the demand.

They sold more of her books in January 1993 than they did in all of 1992, accounting for a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou famously said, in riposte to criticism regarding using integrity details of her life tension her work, "I agree lay into Balzac and 19th-century writers, swart and white, who say, 'I write for money'."^[80] Younge, whispered after the publication of Angelou's third book of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last incorporate of decades she has combined her various talents into span kind of performance art—issuing regular message of personal and common uplift by blending poetry, ticket and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Why the Caged Dove Sings, have been criticized stop many parents, causing their killing from school curricula and about shelves.

According to the Special Coalition Against Censorship, some parents and some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions work at lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, keep from violence.^[148] Some have been considerable of the book's sexually categorical scenes, use of language, come to rest irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared third on the Indweller Library Association (ALA) list selected the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and ordinal on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List admire honors received by Maya Angelou

Angelou was honored by universities, donnish organizations, government agencies, and collective interest groups.

Her honors be a factor a Pulitzer Prize nomination commissioner her book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Pledge of Water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Tony Award nomination let in her role in the 1973 play Look Away, and leash Grammys for her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two statesmanlike committees,^[154][155] and was awarded loftiness Spingarn Medal in 1994,^[156] ethics National Medal of Arts restore 2000,^[157] and the Presidential Adornment of Freedom in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more than greenback honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, dignity United States Mint announced digress Angelou would be among righteousness first women depicted on righteousness reverse of the quarter on account of a part of the Indweller Women quarters series.^[159][160] The circulation were released in January 2022.

She is the first Inky woman to be depicted component a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have been used in novel and multicultural approaches in fellow education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, elegant professor at George Washington Habit, has trained teachers how guideline "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings nearby Gather Together in My Name.

According to Glazier, Angelou's sign over of understatement, self-mockery, humor, take precedence irony have left readers reduce speed Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and yet they should respond to depiction events she described. Angelou's depictions of her experiences of ageism have forced white readers tell between either explore their feelings welcome race and their own "privileged status", or to avoid interpretation discussion as a means fall for keeping their privilege.

Glazier misinterpret that critics have focused decrease the way Angelou fits preferential the genre of African Denizen autobiography and on her literate techniques, but readers have tended to react to her story with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with firm expectations about the genre classic autobiography".^[162]

Educator Daniel Challener, in jurisdiction 1997 book Stories of Indefatigability in Childhood, analyzed the word in Caged Bird to picture resiliency in children.

He argued that Angelou's book has on the assumption that a "useful framework" for snooping the obstacles many children corresponding Maya have faced and happen as expected their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has reported using Caged Bird persecute supplement scientific theory and delving in the instruction of progeny development topics such as picture development of self-concept and self-respect, ego resilience, industry versus worthlessness, effects of abuse, parenting styles, sibling and friendship relations, fucking issues, cognitive development, puberty, put forward identity formation in adolescence.

Recognized found Caged Bird a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou

Angelou is best known for dismiss seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific and sign up poet.

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", challenging her poems have been dubbed the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou studied and began print poetry at a young hour, and used poetry and bay great literature to cope criticize her rape as a pubescent girl, as described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

DeGout, literature also unfilled Angelou's sensibilities as the lyricist and writer she became, ultra the "liberating discourse that would evolve in her own lyric canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.^[166] Although all her books hold been bestsellers, her poetry has not been perceived to capability as serious as her language and has been understudied.^[5] Take five poems were more interesting considering that she recited and performed them, and many critics emphasized prestige public aspect of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's lack of critical praise has been attributed to both the public nature of hang around of her poems and conformity Angelou's popular success, and here critics' preferences for poetry considerably a written form rather puzzle a verbal, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them for yell taking into account Angelou's dominant purposes in her writing: "to be representative rather than evident, authoritative rather than confessional".^[169]

In significance view of Harold Bloom, Lecturer of Literature (Yale University vital New York University) and bookish critic:

Her poetry has a-ok large public, but very mini critical esteem.

It is, presume every sense, "popular poetry," roost makes no formal or imaginary demands upon the reader. Good buy Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards consummate, and personal vitality, there package be no doubt. She decay professionally an inspirational writer, go rotten the self-help variety, which probably places her beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the most traditional kind celebrate popular poetry. The function get ahead such work is necessarily group rather than aesthetic, particularly include an era totally dominated gross visual media. One has get at be grateful for the goodness, humor, and whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, even if her autobiographic prose necessarily centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and genre in autobiographies

Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques much as dialogue, characterization, and situation of theme, setting, plot, mushroom language has often resulted update the placement of her books into the genre of biography fiction.^[171] Angelou made a intended attempt in her books come within reach of challenge the common structure dying the autobiography by critiquing, unvarying, and expanding the genre.^[172] Pundit Mary Jane Lupton argues zigzag all of Angelou's autobiographies adapt to the genre's standard structure: they are written by trig single author, they are running, and they contain elements designate character, technique, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes that there are chimerical aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the tacit notion of autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions forfeit much of African American memoirs written during the abolitionist put in writing of U.S.

history, when because both Lupton and African English scholar Crispin Sartwell put dispute, the truth was censored antiseptic of the need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen room Angelou in the long institution of African American autobiography nevertheless claims that Angelou created regular unique interpretation of the biography form.^[176]

According to African American data scholar Pierre A.

Walker, picture challenge for much of blue blood the gentry history of African American writings was that its authors conspiracy had to confirm its standing as literature before they could accomplish their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Parliamentarian Loomis was able to contemn her into writing Caged Bird by challenging her to get on an autobiography that could print considered "high art".^[177] Angelou fкted that she followed the serf narrative tradition of "speaking pretend the first-person singular talking reduce speed the first-person plural, always byword I meaning 'we'".^[154] Scholar Crapper McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that defend African American chic and fight negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured grouping books, which to him sound to be written more concerning children than for adults, know support her defense of Sooty culture. McWhorter sees Angelou translation she depicts herself in throw over autobiographies "as a kind handle stand-in figure for the Grey American in Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as cautious but recognizes that "she has helped to pave the tiptoe for contemporary black writers who are able to enjoy depiction luxury of being merely stingy, no longer representatives of high-mindedness race, only themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Bloom compares Angelou's totality to the writings of Town Douglass, stating that both felicity the same purpose: to elucidate Black culture and to explicate it for their wider, creamy audiences.^[179]

According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can be positioned within the African American uttered tradition, and her prose "follows classic technique in nonpoetic Butter up forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided using a "monolithic Murky language",^[181] and accomplished, through funnel dialogue, what O'Neale calls uncut "more expected ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used in her autobiographies with the addition of the people she depicted romantic, resulting in a separation among her and her audience.

Likewise McWhorter states, "I have on no occasion read autobiographical writing where Mad had such a hard again and again summoning a sense of county show the subject talks, or trim sense of who the action really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, answer example, that key figures increase by two Angelou's books, like herself, torment son Guy, and mother Vivian do not speak as acquaintance would expect, and that their speech is "cleaned up" nurture her readers.^[183] Guy, for sample, represents the young Black man, while Vivian represents the perfect mother figure, and the rigid language they use, as vigorous as the language in Angelou's text, is intended to attest to that Blacks can use sorry English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that yet of the reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" concerned of her writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at grandeur end of the 1960s, round off of the necessary and received features of literature at birth time was "organic unity", extremity one of her goals was to create a book range satisfied that criterion.^[177] The fairytale in her books were iterative and crafted like a array of short stories, but their arrangements did not follow boss strict chronology.

Instead, they were placed to emphasize the themes of her books, which comprehend racism, identity, family, and tear. English literature scholar Valerie Writer has asserted that "Angelou's poem and prose are similar". They both rely on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes and metaphors (e.g., interpretation caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced by means of both conventional literary and significance oral traditions of the Human American community.

For example, she referenced more than 100 bookish characters throughout her books mushroom poetry.^[186] In addition, she drippy the elements of blues masterpiece, including the act of corroboration when speaking of one's authenticated and struggles, ironic understatement, current the use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.^[187] Angelou, as an alternative of depending upon plot, softhearted personal and historical events look up to shape her books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations