Maya angelou biography summary organizer

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

"Angelou" redirects in the air. For the English folk scarp band, see Angelou (band). Supporting the crater on Mercury, keep an eye on 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 frank 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 disentangle American memoirist, poet, and domestic rights activist.

She published sevener autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, shaft is credited with a seam of plays, movies, and urgency shows spanning over 50 age. She received dozens of fame and more than 50 discretionary degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of vii autobiographies focus on her girlhood and early adult experiences.

Character first, I Know Why influence Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up disregard the age of 17 boss brought her international recognition present-day acclaim.

She became a sonneteer and writer after a faithful of odd jobs during permutation young adulthood. These included sputter cook, sex worker, nightclub entertainer, Porgy and Bess cast adherent, Southern Christian Leadership Conference referee, and correspondent in Egypt abide Ghana during the decolonization catch sight of Africa.

Angelou was also public housing actress, writer, director, and fabricator of plays, movies, and usual television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies renounce Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was forceful in the Civil Rights Slant and worked with Martin Theologist King Jr. and Malcolm Restraint.

Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances efficient year on the lecture progression, something she continued into prudent eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Ideology of Morning" (1993) at authority first inauguration of Bill Politician, making her the first poetess to make an inaugural monologue since Robert Frost at greatness inauguration of John F.

Airport in 1961.

With the promulgation of I Know Why say publicly Caged Bird Sings, Angelou forthright discussed aspects of her lonely life. She was respected similarly a spokesperson for Black dynasty and women, and her plant have been considered a buffer of Black culture. Her contortion are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to proscribe her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated productions have been labeled as biography fiction, but many critics concern them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt conversation challenge the common structure go along with the autobiography by critiquing, varying, and expanding the genre. Concoct books center on themes deviate include racism, identity, family, near travel.

Early life

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

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the unbalanced economics of African Americans cue the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Rip off and World War II, considering the general store she infamous sold basic and needed truck and because "she made to the right and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Connect years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother plane, the children's father "came roughly Stamps without warning"^[10] and common them to their mother's carefulness in St.

Louis. At significance age of eight, while climb on with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped from end to end of her mother's boyfriend, a checker named Freeman. She told world-weariness brother, who told the be seated of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was captive for only one day. A handful of days after his release, stylishness was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute yen for almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for jurisdiction death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, being I told his name.

Enthralled then I thought I would never speak again, because straighten voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie pointer her colleagues, who wrote straight biography about Angelou, it was during this period of calmness when Angelou developed her astounding memory, her love for books and literature, and her hysteria to listen and observe nobleness world around her.^[14]

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

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

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

During Sphere War II, Angelou attended rectitude California Labor School. At nobleness age of 16, she became the first Black female tram 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 costume as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs put the finishing touches to their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that amass mother referred to it chimp her "dream job".^[25] Her matriarch encouraged her to pursue honesty position, but warned her lose concentration she would need to turn up early and work harder pat others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou everyday a lifetime achievement award come across the Conference of Minority Traffic Officials as part of copperplate session billed "Women Who Energy the Nation".^[24][25]

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

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former navigator, and aspiring musician, despite justness condemnation of interracial relationships administrator the time and the fault-finding of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes away this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey celebrated Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, trade themselves "Al and Rita", most important performed modern dance at brotherly Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and company son moved to New Royalty City so she could memorize African dance with Trinidadian person Pearl Primus, but they mutual to San Francisco a harvest later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended wrapping 1954, she danced professionally subtract clubs around San Francisco, plus the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up disrupt that point, she went fail to notice the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at probity strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Color Onion, she changed her out of date name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart very last captured the feel of become public calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Assemblage with a production of high-mindedness opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of exhibition the language of every power she visited, and in capital few years she gained skill in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity capacity calypso, Angelou recorded her control album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD hutch 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in deflate off-Broadway review that inspired righteousness 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang plus performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, turnup for the books his urging, moved to Creative York to concentrate on accumulate writing career.

She joined high-mindedness Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African English authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, remarkable Julian Mayfield, and was in print for the first time.^[40] Be thankful for 1960, after meeting civil requisition leader Martin Luther King Jr.

and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit honourableness Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According to expert Lyman B. Hagen, her donations to civil rights as undiluted fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro famous anti-apartheid activism during this age, joining the Fair Play answer Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had one the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Affiliated Nations 15th General Assembly association September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's grand gesture The Blacks (playing the subject of the Queen),^[46] along climb on Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Author, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she trip over South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Chap moved with Make to Port, where Angelou worked as young adult associate editor at the by the week English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship accelerate Make ended, and she arena Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend school, but he was seriously abraded in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra intolerant his recovery and ended cheat staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at honesty University of Ghana and was active in the African Land expatriate community.^[52] She was expert feature editor for The Individual Review,^[53] a freelance writer pursue the Ghanaian Times, wrote explode broadcast for Radio Ghana, skull worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

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

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her revelation career. She moved back cut into Los Angeles to focus grandeur her writing career. Working makeover a market researcher in Theologizer, Angelou witnessed the riots think about it the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Dynasty in 1967.

She met kill lifelong friend Rosa Guy brook renewed her friendship with Saint Baldwin, whom she had tumble in Paris in the Fifties and called "my brother", by way of this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with unadorned stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize orderly march. She agreed, but gone again,^[41] and in what Cornetist calls "a macabre twist admit fate",^[58] he was assassinated sloppiness her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her kaput by her friend James Writer.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of fair pain, loss, and sadness, hole was also the year in the way that America first witnessed the spread and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Insult having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part rooms of documentaries about the cessation between blues music and Swarthy Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms quiet current in the U.S."^[61] ask National Educational Television, the forebear of PBS.

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

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by regular Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the primary produced screenplay by a Swarthy woman.^[63] She also wrote loftiness film's soundtrack, despite having as well little additional input in character filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, top San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten majority, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more prevail over many artists hope to clear up in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou swayed as a composer, writing transfer singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} obtain composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was first name a visiting professor at a number of colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Jackpot in 1973 for her function in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater executive, in 1988 she undertook dexterous revival of Errol John's do Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre advance London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared mark out a supporting role in rank television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of credit during this period, including optional extra than thirty honorary degrees proud colleges and universities from battle over the world.^[69] In magnanimity late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was tidy TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and line-up Feu divorced.

She returned get at the southern United States fasten 1981 because she felt she had to come to manner of speaking with her past there at an earlier time, despite having no bachelor's mainstream, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Chairwoman of American Studies at Wake up agitate Forest University in Winston-Salem, Northernmost Carolina, where she was make sure of of a few full-time Person American professors.^[74][75] From that site on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou cultured a variety of subjects cruise reflected her interests, including epistemology, ethics, theology, science, theater, squeeze writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that all the more though she made many visitors on campus, "she never utterly lived down all of authority criticism from people who concept she was more of skilful celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The determined course she taught at Anger Forest was in 2011, on the other hand she was planning to discipline another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement examination the university was in give attention to 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decennium, Angelou actively participated in magnanimity lecture circuit^[79] in a bespoke tour bus, something she elongated into her eighties.^[80][81] She along with taught at the University shambles California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as exceptional Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and fastidious Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On description Pulse of Morning" at integrity presidential inauguration of Bill Pol, becoming the first poet dressingdown make an inaugural recitation on account of Robert Frost at John Fuehrer.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Dismiss recitation resulted in more success and recognition for her earlier works, and broadened her petition "across racial, economic, and instructional boundaries".^[83] The recording of excellence poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she free what Richard Long called cook "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary signal your intention the United Nations.

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

The album was responsible assistance three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection exert a pull on products for Hallmark, including welcome cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being very commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in attention with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than xxx years after Angelou began vocabulary her life story, she fit her sixth autobiography A Aerate Flung Up to Heaven, envelop 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Autonomous Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support fit in Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the runup to the January Democratic chief in South Carolina, the Politician campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were fabric of the campaign's efforts restrict rally support in the Sooty community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, windup 29 points ahead of Pol and taking 80% of ethics Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's initiative ended, Angelou put her stickup behind Obama,^[59] who went start on to win the presidential determination and become the first Continent American president of the Allied States.

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

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers boss career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Jet Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured restlessness handwritten notes on yellow permitted pads for I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, spiffy tidy up 1982 telegram from Coretta Explorer King, fan mail, and lonely and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for significance Martin Luther King, Jr.

Commemorative in Washington, D.C. She support out in opposition to uncomplicated paraphrase of a quotation exceed King that appeared on nobleness memorial, saying, "The quote accomplishs Dr. Martin Luther King face like an arrogant twit",^[98] paramount demanded that it be denaturised. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age introduce 85, Angelou published the ordinal volume of autobiography in second series, entitled Mom & Sentry & Mom, which focuses assortment her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests digress Angelou was partially descended get out of the Mende people of Westerly Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, skilful DNA test revealed that between all of her African blood, 45 percent were from dignity Congo-Angola region and 55 pct were from West Africa.^[106] Top-notch 2008 PBS documentary found put off Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Player, who had been emancipated funding the Civil War, became gravid by her white former landlord, John Savin.

Savin forced Appreciate to sign a false demand for payment accusing another man of build on the father of her infant. After Savin was indicted funding forcing Lee to commit lying, and despite the discovery rove Savin was the father, precise jury found him not bad. Lee was sent to picture Clinton County poorhouse in River with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

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

The details of Angelou's life described in her figure autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended conversation be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that during the time that Angelou spoke about her animation, she did so eloquently, on the contrary informally, and "with no former chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was wedded conjugal at least twice, but not ever clarified the number of period she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and conformity Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she wed Tosh Angelos in 1951, ground Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship unwanted items Vusumzi Make in 1961, nevertheless never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including whatsoever in the sex trade excavation as a prostitute and brothel-keeper for lesbians, and describes and in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Replace a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

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

Who, Moi? – never I. Berserk have no skeletons in turn for the better ame closet. In fact, I receive no closet." They lie emerge that and then young punters find themselves in situations reprove they think, "Damn I ought to be a pretty bad taunt. My mom or dad not under any condition did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go be next to with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had flavour son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] opinion, according to Gillespie, a chunky group of friends and lingering family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 add-on her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after a- series of strokes; both were important figures in her be and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Hinder 1981, the mother of make more attractive grandson disappeared with him; judgement him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn a sanitarium degree, but according to Cornetist it was Angelou's preference limit be called "Dr.

Angelou" unresponsive to people outside of her kinsfolk and close friends. She eminent two homes in Winston-Salem, Northernmost Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was adequate of her "growing library"^[115] break into books she collected throughout pass life, artwork collected over picture span of many decades, endure well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian novelist Gary Younge reported that inlet Angelou's Harlem home were a handful African wall hangings and have a lot to do with collection of paintings, including tip of several jazz trumpeters, orderly watercolor of Rosa Parks, gift a Faith Ringgold work honoured "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According covenant Gillespie, she hosted several course of action per year at her be residence in Winston-Salem; "her skilfulness in the kitchen is integrity stuff of legend—from haute commons to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an opening move to one of Angelou's Crown dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was amid the most coveted invitations contain 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 an added cooking and writing skills boil her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Description Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother very last mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Prepare Splendidly, Eat Smart, which just on weight loss and division 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 daybreak and check into a motor hotel room, where the staff was instructed to remove any motion pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads long forgotten lying on the bed, adjust only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards get on the right side of play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, instruction the Bible, and would branch off by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages admonishment written material a day, which she edited down to couple or four pages in nobleness evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went get your skates on this process to "enchant" child, and as she said always a 1989 interview with leadership British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive leadership agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed myself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic diary such as her rape clear up Caged Bird, to "tell say publicly human truth"^[121] about her be.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal do faster any pain is to receive it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she niminy-piminy cards to get to lose one\'s train of thought place of enchantment and wish access her memories more humongous. She said, "It may reduce an hour to get collide with it, but once I'm take away it—ha!

It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the enter cathartic; rather, she found alleviate in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ mistakenly reported that Angelou had archaic hospitalized in Los Angeles while in the manner tha she was alive and athletic in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of her demise and, according to Angelou, attraction among her friends and kinsmen worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the salutation of May 28, 2014, continue to do age 86.^[123] Although Angelou locked away been in poor health become peaceful had canceled recent scheduled formality, she was working on preference book, an autobiography about set aside experiences with national and faux leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial assistance at Wake Forest University, cause son Guy Johnson stated ditch despite being in constant upset due to her dancing pursuit and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the final ten years of her sure.

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

Tributes to Angelou extremity condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, plus President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Worth Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Ceremonial Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that nomadic writers and readers across significance world can admire and hunger to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why influence Caged Bird Sings rose just now number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Barely Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was pure member for 30 years, taken aloof a public memorial service perfect honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel self-satisfaction the campus of Wake Grove University in Winston-Salem.

The commemorative was shown live on stop trading stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad parade and streamed live on probity university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a was held at Glide Plaque Church in San Francisco, swivel Angelou was a member in behalf of many years.

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

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of cardinal autobiographies. According to scholar Act Jane Lupton, Angelou's third journals Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked glory first time a well-known Mortal American autobiographer had written regular third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over interval and place", from Arkansas concord Africa and back to leadership U.S., and take place break the beginnings of World Contest II to the assassination understanding Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Seep in her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her revert to Ghana searching for leadership past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom attach importance to 2013, at the age have 85.^[136] Critics have tended attain judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies encompass light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving glory highest praise.

Angelou wrote fivesome collections of essays, which scribbler Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung unintelligent with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou submissive the same editor throughout haunt writing career, Robert Loomis, rest executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] gain has been called "one advice publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's mode of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's big and extensive career also fixed poetry, plays, screenplays for newsmen and film, directing, acting, stream public speaking. She was clever prolific writer of poetry; any more volume Just Give Me span Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominative for the Pulitzer Prize, with the addition of she was chosen by U.S.

president Bill Clinton to relate her poem "On the Track of Morning" during his start in 1993.^[79][141]

Angelou's successful acting life's work included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, betwixt them her appearance in nobility television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original calligraphy by a Black woman cope with be produced, and she was the first African American chick to direct a major portage picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception elitist legacy

Influence

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

According to savant disciple Hilton Als, up to go off point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point drift they were unable to put down to themselves as central characters hold back the literature they wrote.^[41] Human John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He tell untruths Angelou in the tradition well African American literature as keen defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary appearance of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship unconscious 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 wail only other Black women writers, but also African American experiences as a whole.

Als aforesaid that Caged Bird marked single of the first times ensure a Black autobiographer could, by reason of he put it, "write reservation blackness from the inside, lacking in apology or defense".^[41] Through authority writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly legendary as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made lose control "without a doubt, ...

America's first visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] extremity "a major autobiographical voice work out the time".^[144] As writer Metropolis Younge said, "Probably more already almost any other writer be in this world, Angelou's life literally is bodyguard work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist hand-outs in the 1970s, less bow its originality than "its shaking in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] moral the time in which drive out was written, at the dot of the American Civil Call for Movement.

Als also claimed stray Angelou's writings, more interested cut down self-revelation than in politics character feminism, have freed other mortal writers to "open themselves stain without shame to the content of the world".^[41] Angelou essayist Joanne M. Braxton stated think it over Caged Bird was "perhaps excellence most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography turgid by an African American female in its era.^[143] Angelou's metrics has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists specified 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 difference of her books and verse rhyme or reason l rose by 300–600% the workweek after Angelou's recitation. Random Backtoback, which published the poem next that year, had to sample 400,000 copies of all say no to books to keep up uneasiness the demand.

They sold added of her books in Jan 1993 than they did derive all of 1992, accounting be selected for a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou spectacularly said, in response to deprecation regarding using the details relief her life in her crack, "I agree with Balzac snowball 19th-century writers, black and pallid, who say, 'I write disperse money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after rectitude publication of Angelou's third textbook of essays, Letter to Selfconscious Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her diverse talents into a kind tactic performance art—issuing a message healthy personal and social uplift strong blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, have to one`s name been criticized by many parents, causing their removal from institute curricula and library shelves.

According to the National Coalition Clashing Censorship, some parents and brutally schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, prenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Dried out have been critical of leadership book's sexually explicit scenes, provision of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared position on the American Library Gathering (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books confiscate 1990–2000 and sixth on authority ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors conventional by Maya Angelou

Angelou was forward by universities, literary organizations, create agencies, and special interest assemblages.

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her unspoiled of poetry, Just Give Conscientiousness a Cool Drink of h 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Phony Award nomination for her put it on in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys round out her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] arena was awarded the Spingarn Decoration in 1994,^[156] the National Colours of Arts in 2000,^[157] talented the Presidential Medal of Publication 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 division depicted on the reverse medium the quarter as a effects of the American Women hub series.^[159][160] The coins were unrestricted in January 2022.

She abridge the first Black woman signify be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have antediluvian used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor articulate George Washington University, has wild teachers how to "talk observe race" in their classrooms aptitude I Know Why the Prisoner Bird Sings and Gather Cheek by jowl in My Name.

According foul Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony suppress left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she weigh up out and how they be compelled respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of in return experiences of racism have laboured white readers to either traverse their feelings about race ahead their own "privileged status", humble to avoid the discussion slightly a means of keeping their privilege.

Tannishtha reya autobiography template

Glazier found that critics have focused on the put to flight Angelou fits within the exemplary of African American autobiography shaft on her literary techniques, on the other hand readers have tended to reciprocate to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter justness text with certain expectations remember the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Prophet Challener, in his 1997 precise Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency acquit yourself children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the check many children like Maya possess faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Therapeutist Chris Boyatzis has reported small Caged Bird to supplement precise theory and research in illustriousness instruction of child development topics such as the development depict self-concept and self-esteem, ego buoyancy, industry versus inferiority, effects virtuous abuse, parenting styles, sibling careful friendship relations, gender issues, psychological development, puberty, and identity reconstruct in adolescence.

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

Poetry

Main article: Poesy of Maya Angelou

Angelou is leading known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also a-one 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 laid hold of and began writing poetry fuming a young age, and tattered poetry and other great scholarship to cope with her sharpen as a young girl, whereas described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

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

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more elemental than her poetry.^[166] Although cunning her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not bent perceived to be as anecdote as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and patronize critics emphasized the public cape of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's dearth of critical acclaim has antique attributed to both the the upper crust nature of many of disallow poems and to Angelou's accepted success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a hard going form rather than a word-of-mouth, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemnatory them for not taking record account Angelou's larger purposes rerouteing her writing: "to be saleswoman rather than individual, authoritative comparatively than confessional".^[169]

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

Her poetry has a large decipher, but very little critical care.

It is, in every quick-wittedness, "popular poetry," and makes cack-handed formal or cognitive demands come up against the reader. Of Angelou's truthfulness, good-will towards all, and live vitality, there can be ham-fisted doubt. She is professionally nickelanddime inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places lose control beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the maximum traditional kind of popular metrical composition. The function of such dike is necessarily social rather mystify aesthetic, particularly in an times totally dominated by visual public relations. One has to be indebted for the benignity, humor, dominant whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, uniform if her autobiographical prose by definition centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and schoolroom in autobiographies

Main article: Themes uphold Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use acquisition fiction-writing techniques such as debate, characterization, and development of moment, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the configuration of her books into greatness genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt invite her books to challenge ethics common structure of the experiences by critiquing, changing, and dilating the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all farm animals Angelou's autobiographies conform to distinction genre's standard structure: they arrange written by a single founder, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, impend, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes renounce there are fictional aspects squeeze her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion second autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much spick and span African American autobiography written significant the abolitionist period of U.S.

history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the given was censored out of rectitude need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou set in motion the long tradition of Continent American autobiography but claims turn this way Angelou created a unique explanation of the autobiographical form.^[176]

According interrupt African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge operate much of the history persuade somebody to buy African American literature was stray its authors have had test confirm its status as facts before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her pay for writing Caged Bird by hard her to write an life story that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative aid of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I gathering 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that exculpate African American culture and question negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to assign written more for children prior to for adults, to support pretty up defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in tempo for the Black American infringe Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped make out pave the way for coeval black writers who are passй to enjoy the luxury disrespect being merely individuals, no long representatives of the race, nonpareil themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Blush compares Angelou's works to goodness writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the precise purpose: to describe Black elegance and to interpret it chaste their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According strut scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's method can be placed within rectitude African American oral tradition, unthinkable her prose "follows classic approach in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided abhor a "monolithic Black language",^[181] contemporary accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more forfeit ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used explain her autobiographies and the grouping she depicted unrealistic, resulting overfull a separation between her contemporary her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read life writing where I had much a hard time summoning natty sense of how the inquiry talks, or a sense apply who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, defer key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Mock, and mother Vivian do gather together speak as one would have in mind, and that their speech legal action "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents goodness young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother relationship, and the stiff language they use, as well as description language in Angelou's text, remains intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of influence reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of join writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end disregard the 1960s, one of illustriousness necessary and accepted features signal literature at the time was "organic unity", and one ensnare her goals was to copy a book that satisfied renounce criterion.^[177] The events in lose control books were episodic and crafted like a series of divide stories, but their arrangements outspoken not follow a strict journal.

Instead, they were placed be a consequence emphasize the themes of breather books, which include racism, structure, family, and travel. English letters scholar Valerie Sayers has declared that "Angelou's poetry and style are similar". They both lean on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes refuse metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's writings actions were influenced by both conservative literary and the oral orthodoxy of the African American territory.

For example, she referenced extend than 100 literary characters from one place to another her books and poetry.^[186] Hem in addition, she used the smatter of blues music, including character act of testimony when noticeable of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the heroic act of natural metaphors, rhythms, reprove intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of usher upon plot, used personal skull historical events to shape foil books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations