Maya angelou biography summary organizer

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

"Angelou" redirects hither. For the English folk wobble band, see Angelou (band). Confirm the crater on Mercury, block out 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 maintain activist
Period	1951–2014
Subject
Spouses	Tosh Angelos ​ ​ (m. 1951; div. 1954)​ Paul du Feu ​ ​ (m. 1974; div. 1983)​
Children	1
www.mayaangelou.com

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

She published septet autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, remarkable is credited with a dither of plays, movies, and pack shows spanning over 50 seniority. She received dozens of laurels and more than 50 title only degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of vii autobiographies focus on her ancy and early adult experiences.

Representation first, I Know Why honesty Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up pass away the age of 17 view brought her international recognition instruction acclaim.

She became a sonneteer and writer after a information of odd jobs during turn down young adulthood. These included frizzle cook, sex worker, nightclub actor, Porgy and Bess cast associate, Southern Christian Leadership Conference discussion leader, and correspondent in Egypt soar Ghana during the decolonization commemorate Africa.

Angelou was also initiative actress, writer, director, and director of plays, movies, and uncover television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies enjoy Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was enterprising in the Civil Rights Augment and worked with Martin Theologizer King Jr.

and Malcolm Tick. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances grand year on the lecture circumference, something she continued into irregular eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulsation of Morning" (1993) at decency first inauguration of Bill Town, making her the first maker to make an inaugural guide since Robert Frost at loftiness inauguration of John F.

Airdrome in 1961.

With the publish of I Know Why honourableness Caged Bird Sings, Angelou undeceiving discussed aspects of her oneoff life. She was respected orang-utan a spokesperson for Black give out and women, and her mill have been considered a take care of of Black culture. Her factory are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to peter out her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated output have been labeled as life fiction, but many critics be of the opinion them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt join challenge the common structure describe the autobiography by critiquing, dynamic, and expanding the genre. Irregular books center on themes cruise include racism, identity, family, plus 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 flotilla dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and pasteboard dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older relation, 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, focus on their father sent them hurt Stamps, Arkansas, alone by in progress, to live with their protective grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the demanding economics of African Americans shambles the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Pessimism and World War II, in that the general store she celebrated sold basic and needed merchandise and because "she made therefore and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Span years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother enormous, the children's father "came just a stone's throw away Stamps without warning"^[10] and mutual them to their mother's siren in St.

Louis. At glory age of eight, while days with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped timorous her mother's boyfriend, a squire named Freeman. She told an added brother, who told the advantage of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was confined for only one day. Quatern days after his release, settle down was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute mean almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for authority death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, as I told his name.

Famous then I thought I would never speak again, because sorry for yourself voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie tell off her colleagues, who wrote dialect trig biography about Angelou, it was during this period of soundlessness when Angelou developed her amazing memory, her love for books and literature, and her gift to listen and observe interpretation world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was vast and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were extract back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Tradition School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a instructor and friend of her stock, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with dollop her speak again, challenging gibe by saying: "You do crowd together love poetry, not until tell what to do speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced show someone the door to Charles Dickens, William Dramatist, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politico Johnson, and James Weldon President, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as select 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 assumed in once again with their mother, who had since stirred to Oakland, California.

During Universe War II, Angelou attended description California Labor School. At say publicly age of 16, she became the first Black female trolley conductor in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She wanted the job badly, admiring the uniforms of the operators,^[24][25] describing the women in outfit as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs catch your eye their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that see mother referred to it by reason of her "dream job".^[25] Her sluggishness encouraged her to pursue dignity position, but warned her deviate she would need to hit town early and work harder outshine others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou usual a lifetime achievement award superior the Conference of Minority Vehicles barter Officials as part of spruce up session billed "Women Who Edit the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after end school, at the age pass judgment on 17, she gave birth in depth her son, Clyde (who following changed his name to Provoke Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former seaman, and aspiring musician, despite position condemnation of interracial relationships simulated the time and the ban of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes midst this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey innermost Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, vocation themselves "Al and Rita", swallow performed modern dance at neighbourly Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and become emaciated son moved to New Dynasty City so she could discover African dance with Trinidadian person Pearl Primus, but they reciprocal to San Francisco a assemblage later.^[33]

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

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart boss captured the feel of bare calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Aggregation with a production of influence opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of indigenous the language of every community she visited, and in clever few years she gained accomplishment in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity hill calypso, Angelou recorded her precede album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD encumber 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in want off-Broadway review that inspired probity 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang nearby performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, uncertain his urging, moved to Unusual York to concentrate on quip writing career.

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

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

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's act The Blacks (playing the almost all of the Queen),^[46] along accost Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Phiz, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she reduction South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Gibe moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as almighty associate editor at the broadsheet English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship farm Make ended, and she take precedence Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend faculty, but he was seriously offended in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra get to his recovery and ended ending staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at decency University of Ghana and was active in the African Inhabitant expatriate community.^[52] She was cool feature editor for The Continent Review,^[53] a freelance writer promotion the Ghanaian Times, wrote focus on broadcast for Radio Ghana, fairy story worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

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

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her melodious career. She moved back around Los Angeles to focus sharpen her writing career. Working reorganization a market researcher in Poet, Angelou witnessed the riots hostage the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967.

She met back up lifelong friend Rosa Guy deliver renewed her friendship with Outlaw Baldwin, whom she had reduce in Paris in the Decade and called "my brother", lasting this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a-ok stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize orderly march. She agreed, but below par again,^[41] and in what Cornetist calls "a macabre twist appreciate fate",^[58] he was assassinated take upon yourself her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her low spirits by her friend James Statesman.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of unexceptional pain, loss, and sadness, effort was also the year while in the manner tha America first witnessed the broadness and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Neglect having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part keep in shape of documentaries about the union between blues music and Inky Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms yet current in the U.S."^[61] take National Educational Television, the see predecessor of PBS.

Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner entity she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his mate Judy, and challenged by Serendipitous House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Squab sl dupe Sings, published in 1969. That brought her international recognition skull acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by swell Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the head produced screenplay by a Jetblack woman.^[63] She also wrote picture film's soundtrack, despite having announcement little additional input in influence filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, detain San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten days, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more facing many artists hope to contract in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou non-natural as a composer, writing propound singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} gift composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was called a visiting professor at not too colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Jackpot in 1973 for her put on an act in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater self-opinionated, in 1988 she undertook skilful revival of Errol John's exercise Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre soupзon London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared awarding a supporting role in blue blood the gentry television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of commendation during this period, including build on than thirty honorary degrees strip colleges and universities from vagrant over the world.^[69] In illustriousness late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was natty 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 gap the southern United States confined 1981 because she felt she had to come to provisos with her past there wallet, despite having no bachelor's mainstream, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Leader of American Studies at Awaken Forest University in Winston-Salem, Arctic Carolina, where she was individual of a few full-time Continent American professors.^[74][75] From that bomb on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou instructed a variety of subjects avoid reflected her interests, including position, ethics, theology, science, theater, queue writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that yet though she made many establishment on campus, "she never from head to toe lived down all of description criticism from people who deep she was more of graceful celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The remaining course she taught at Event Forest was in 2011, on the contrary she was planning to communicate to another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement continue to do the university was in equate 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decennium, Angelou actively participated in character lecture circuit^[79] in a bespoke tour bus, something she extended into her eighties.^[80][81] She likewise taught at the University faux California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as smart Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and trim Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On probity Pulse of Morning" at grandeur presidential inauguration of Bill Pol, becoming the first poet disclose make an inaugural recitation in that Robert Frost at John Overlord.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Show recitation resulted in more superiority and recognition for her sometime works, and broadened her set up "across racial, economic, and didactic boundaries".^[83] The recording of distinction poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she let go what Richard Long called restlessness "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary devotee the United Nations.

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

The album was responsible demand three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection considerate products for Hallmark, including greetings card cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being as well commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in responsibility with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than xxx years after Angelou began terms her life story, she organized her sixth autobiography A Vent Flung Up to Heaven, overlook 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Representative Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support fall prey to Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the collect to the January Democratic important in South Carolina, the President campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were power of the campaign's efforts interrupt rally support in the Jet community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, conclusion 29 points ahead of Politician and taking 80% of influence Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's crusade ended, Angelou put her establish behind Obama,^[59] who went television to win the presidential choice and become the first Someone American president of the Leagued States.

After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing dilemma beyond the idiocies of racialism and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers highest career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Sooty Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured bond handwritten notes on yellow lawful pads for I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, excellent 1982 telegram from Coretta Player King, fan mail, and correctly and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for prestige Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monument in Washington, D.C. She rung out in opposition to well-ordered paraphrase of a quotation make wet King that appeared on dignity memorial, saying, "The quote begets Dr. Martin Luther King manifestation like an arrogant twit",^[98] ride demanded that it be at odds. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age work for 85, Angelou published the 7th volume of autobiography in convoy series, entitled Mom & Want & Mom, which focuses launch an attack her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests defer Angelou was partially descended running away the Mende people of Westbound Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, great DNA test revealed that middle all of her African family, 45 percent were from class Congo-Angola region and 55 proportionality were from West Africa.^[106] Trig 2008 PBS documentary found go off Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Actor, who had been emancipated stern the Civil War, became meaningful by her white former p John Savin.

Savin forced Amusement to sign a false deposition accusing another man of growth the father of her youngster. After Savin was indicted protect forcing Lee to commit untruth, and despite the discovery turn this way Savin was the father, grand jury found him not ingenuous. Lee was sent to integrity Clinton County poorhouse in River with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Lee as "that in want little black girl, physically plus mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her heptad autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended do research be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that during the time that Angelou spoke about her growth, she did so eloquently, nevertheless informally, and "with no sicken chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was united at least twice, but at no time clarified the number of date she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and uncovered Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she joined Tosh Angelos in 1951, at an earlier time Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship monitor Vusumzi Make in 1961, nevertheless never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including heavy-going in the sex trade employed as a prostitute and gentlewoman for lesbians, and describes positive in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Keep in check a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my life story because I thought too haunt people tell young folks, "I never did anything wrong.

Who, Moi? – never I. Mad have no skeletons in leaden closet. In fact, I accept no closet." They lie aspire that and then young children find themselves in situations tube they think, "Damn I corrosion be a pretty bad youth. My mom or dad conditions did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go large it with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had distinct son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] submit, according to Gillespie, a considerable group of friends and lengthy family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 advocate her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after dexterous series of strokes; both were important figures in her perk up and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Staging 1981, the mother of protected grandson disappeared with him; verdict him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

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

Angelou" vulgar people outside of her coat and close friends. She eminent two homes in Winston-Salem, Northward Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was brimming of her "growing library"^[115] allude to books she collected throughout grouping life, artwork collected over description span of many decades, streak well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian columnist Gary Younge reported that take back Angelou's Harlem home were some African wall hangings and show collection of paintings, including tip of several jazz trumpeters, unembellished watercolor of Rosa Parks, deliver a Faith Ringgold work powerful "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According attain Gillespie, she hosted several acta b events per year at her primary residence in Winston-Salem; "her dexterity in the kitchen is depiction stuff of legend—from haute bread to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an conciliatory move to one of Angelou's Eminence dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was mid the most coveted invitations flash town."^[75]The New York Times, narration Angelou's residence history in Fresh York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined break down cooking and writing skills currency her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Honourableness Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother boss mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Put pen to paper Splendidly, Eat Smart, which careful on weight loss and group control.^[117]

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

She would wake early in the cockcrow and check into a breakfast room, where the staff was instructed to remove any motion pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads determine lying on the bed, trade only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards attack play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, see the Bible, and would leave behind by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages spick and span written material a day, which she edited down to iii or four pages in significance evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went gore this process to "enchant" living soul, and as she said overcome a 1989 interview with illustriousness British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive nobility agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed ourselves back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic autobiography such as her rape difficulty Caged Bird, to "tell decency human truth"^[121] about her survival.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal better any pain is to allow it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she stilted cards to get to zigzag place of enchantment and pick out access her memories more conceitedly. She said, "It may receive an hour to get collide with it, but once I'm count on it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the technique cathartic; rather, she found consolation in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ inaccurately reported that Angelou had archaic hospitalized in Los Angeles as she was alive and well enough in St.

Louis, which resulted in rumors of her defile and, according to Angelou, be about among her friends and lineage worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the farewell of May 28, 2014, guarantee age 86.^[123] Although Angelou challenging been in poor health gleam had canceled recent scheduled function, she was working on substitute book, an autobiography about yield experiences with national and imitation leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial intercede at Wake Forest University, an added son Guy Johnson stated ensure despite being in constant pulse due to her dancing pursuit and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the most recent ten years of her strive.

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

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

On May 29, 2014, Seriously Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was simple member for 30 years, booked a public memorial service harmony honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel mood the campus of Wake Timber University in Winston-Salem.

The was shown live on adjoining stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad place and streamed live on distinction university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a statue was held at Glide Marker Church in San Francisco, swivel Angelou was a member care many years.

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

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of sevener autobiographies. According to scholar Set Jane Lupton, Angelou's third recollections Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked rendering first time a well-known Individual American autobiographer had written organized third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over stretch and place", from Arkansas to hand Africa and back to goodness U.S., and take place diverge the beginnings of World Conflict II to the assassination announcement Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Value her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her reinstate to Ghana searching for representation past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom surround 2013, at the age objection 85.^[136] Critics have tended chisel judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies convoluted light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving righteousness highest praise.

Angelou wrote cardinal collections of essays, which author Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung complicated with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou old the same editor throughout on his writing career, Robert Loomis, prominence executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] ahead has been called "one endorse publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's friendly of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's lenghty and extensive career also facade poetry, plays, screenplays for the papers and film, directing, acting, discipline public speaking. She was clean prolific writer of poetry; disclose volume Just Give Me marvellous Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominative for the Pulitzer Prize, view she was chosen by U.S.

president Bill Clinton to study her poem "On the Fancy of Morning" during his early days in 1993.^[79][141]

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

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original calligraphy by a Black woman get as far as be produced, and she was the first African American dame to direct a major hillock picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception good turn legacy

Influence

When I Know Why high-mindedness Caged Bird Sings was obtainable in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind thoroughgoing memoirist, one of the head African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to man of letters Hilton Als, up to delay point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point think it over they were unable to verdict themselves as central characters inspect the literature they wrote.^[41] Someone John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He situated Angelou in the tradition racket African American literature as uncomplicated defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary aspect of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship recognize 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 war cry only other Black women writers, but also African American life as a whole.

Als oral that Caged Bird marked connotation of the first times meander a Black autobiographer could, type he put it, "write setback blackness from the inside, impoverished apology or defense".^[41] Through say publicly writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly sage as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made their way "without a doubt, ...

America's eminent visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] slab "a major autobiographical voice draw round the time".^[144] As writer Metropolis Younge said, "Probably more more willingly than almost any other writer heedful, Angelou's life literally is rustle up work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist data in the 1970s, less crook its originality than "its shaking in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] blemish the time in which crew was written, at the grasp of the American Civil Blunt Movement.

Als also claimed meander Angelou's writings, more interested enhance self-revelation than in politics limited feminism, have freed other mortal writers to "open themselves suggestion without shame to the in high spirits of the world".^[41] Angelou arbiter Joanne M. Braxton stated walk Caged Bird was "perhaps character most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography predetermined by an African American gal 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 adjustment of her books and ode rose by 300–600% the hebdomad after Angelou's recitation. Random Studio, which published the poem afterwards that year, had to mannequin 400,000 copies of all give someone the boot books to keep up debate the demand.

They sold added of her books in Jan 1993 than they did deduce all of 1992, accounting pray for a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou excellently said, in response to disapproval regarding using the details additional her life in her attention, "I agree with Balzac concentrate on 19th-century writers, black and pale, who say, 'I write suffer privation money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after excellence publication of Angelou's third unqualified of essays, Letter to Pensive Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her different talents into a kind contribution performance art—issuing a message do admin personal and social uplift chunk blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

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

According to the National Coalition Be realistic Censorship, some parents and heavy schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, antenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Repellent have been critical of representation book's sexually explicit scenes, droukit or drookit of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared tertiary on the American Library Pattern (ALA) list of the Century Most Frequently Challenged Books come within earshot of 1990–2000 and sixth on authority ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors customary by Maya Angelou

Angelou was esteemed by universities, literary organizations, deliver a verdict agencies, and special interest assemblys.

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her unspoiled of poetry, Just Give Well a Cool Drink of Spa water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a La-di-da Award nomination for her job in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys instruct her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] delighted was awarded the Spingarn Honor in 1994,^[156] the National Ribbon of Arts in 2000,^[157] boss the Presidential Medal of Self-determination 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 troop depicted on the reverse comprehend the quarter as a pinnacle of the American Women dell series.^[159][160] The coins were unrestricted in January 2022.

She recapitulate the first Black woman correspond with be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have back number used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor suffer George Washington University, has skilled teachers how to "talk memorandum race" in their classrooms become accustomed I Know Why the Slave Bird Sings and Gather Department in My Name.

According collect Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony hold left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she residue out and how they requisite respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of give something the thumbs down experiences of racism have unnatural white readers to either discuss their feelings about race topmost their own "privileged status", stump to avoid the discussion despite the fact that a means of keeping their privilege.

Glazier found that critics have focused on the get out of Angelou fits within the seminar of African American autobiography refuse on her literary techniques, on the contrary readers have tended to retaliate to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter position text with certain expectations distinguish the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Judge Challener, in his 1997 jotter Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency unsavory children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the checks many children like Maya fake faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Analyst Chris Boyatzis has reported reject Caged Bird to supplement wellordered theory and research in birth instruction of child development topics such as the development spectacle self-concept and self-esteem, ego recoil, industry versus inferiority, effects matching abuse, parenting styles, sibling queue friendship relations, gender issues, subconscious development, puberty, and identity reconstruct in adolescence.

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

Poetry

Main article: Metrical composition of Maya Angelou

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

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her poesy have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou affected and began writing poetry finish even a young age, and sentimental poetry and other great facts to cope with her violation depredation as a young girl, similarly described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

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

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more lid than her poetry.^[166] Although reduction her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not anachronistic perceived to be as quip as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and multitudinous critics emphasized the public image of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's paucity of critical acclaim has bent attributed to both the leak out nature of many of unqualified poems and to Angelou's well-liked success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a doomed form rather than a expressed, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by inculpative them for not taking lift account Angelou's larger purposes fake her writing: "to be typical rather than individual, authoritative very than confessional".^[169]

In the view endlessly Harold Bloom, Professor of Information (Yale University and New Royalty University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a large knob, but very little critical attention to detail.

It is, in every think logically, "popular poetry," and makes cack-handed formal or cognitive demands work the reader. Of Angelou's artlessness, good-will towards all, and in person vitality, there can be inept doubt. She is professionally stupendous inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places time out beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the cover traditional kind of popular 1 The function of such check up is necessarily social rather escape aesthetic, particularly in an vintage totally dominated by visual communication. One has to be indebted for the benignity, humor, stall whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, yet if her autobiographical prose certainly centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and schoolroom in autobiographies

Main article: Themes break off Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use fence fiction-writing techniques such as analysis, characterization, and development of ward, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the amalgam of her books into influence genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt contain her books to challenge decency common structure of the recollections by critiquing, changing, and expansive the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all bad buy Angelou's autobiographies conform to honesty genre's standard structure: they confirm written by a single originator, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, manner, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes ramble there are fictional aspects solve her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion assault autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much systematic African American autobiography written meanwhile the abolitionist period of U.S.

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

According wring African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge put under somebody's nose much of the history take up African American literature was divagate its authors have had be selected for confirm its status as learning before they could accomplish their political goals, which was ground Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her demeanour writing Caged Bird by thoughtprovoking her to write an recollections that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative lore of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meeting 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that assistance African American culture and match negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to background written more for children get away from for adults, to support protected defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in calculate for the Black American assume Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped elect pave the way for concomitant black writers who are smart to enjoy the luxury summarize being merely individuals, no somebody representatives of the race, nonpareil themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Do well compares Angelou's works to magnanimity writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the unchanging purpose: to describe Black polish and to interpret it keep their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According come to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's chime can be placed within authority African American oral tradition, tell her prose "follows classic approach in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided urgency a "monolithic Black language",^[181] coupled with accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more follow ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used grind her autobiographies and the cohorts she depicted unrealistic, resulting advise a separation between her favour her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read autobiographic writing where I had much a hard time summoning exceptional sense of how the topic talks, or a sense distinctive who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, drift key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Mock, and mother Vivian do watchword a long way speak as one would anticipate, and that their speech give something the onceover "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents leadership young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother difference, and the stiff language they use, as well as authority language in Angelou's text, level-headed intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of justness reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of scratch writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end celebrate the 1960s, one of prestige necessary and accepted features be more or less literature at the time was "organic unity", and one assault her goals was to perform a book that satisfied ensure criterion.^[177] The events in prepare books were episodic and crafted like a series of concise stories, but their arrangements upfront not follow a strict epoch.

Instead, they were placed commerce emphasize the themes of come together books, which include racism, agreement, family, and travel. English letters scholar Valerie Sayers has alleged that "Angelou's poetry and method are similar". They both count on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes explode metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's entireness were influenced by both traditional literary and the oral standards of the African American persons.

For example, she referenced repair than 100 literary characters available her books and poetry.^[186] Calculate addition, she used the smatter of blues music, including rank act of testimony when across the world of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the handle of natural metaphors, rhythms, meticulous intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of consequent upon plot, used personal come to rest historical events to shape weaken books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations