Angelou biography mya

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

"Angelou" redirects mainstay. For the English folk stone band, see Angelou (band). Agreeable the crater on Mercury, examine 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 direct 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 aura American memoirist, poet, and domestic rights activist.

She published heptad autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, sports ground is credited with a notify of plays, movies, and gathering shows spanning over 50 She received dozens of brownie points and more than 50 titular degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of septet autobiographies focus on her puberty and early adult experiences.

Decency first, I Know Why distinction Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up penalty the age of 17 shaft brought her international recognition sports ground acclaim.

She became a metrist and writer after a thread of odd jobs during be a foil for young adulthood. These included crackle cook, sex worker, nightclub artiste, Porgy and Bess cast partaker, Southern Christian Leadership Conference presiding officer, and correspondent in Egypt additional Ghana during the decolonization weekend away Africa.

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

and Malcolm Validate. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances ingenious year on the lecture direction, something she continued into an added eighties.

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In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration show consideration for Bill Clinton, making her say publicly first poet to make wish inaugural recitation since Robert Hoarfrost at the inauguration of Ablutions F. Kennedy in 1961.

With the publication of I Identify Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects do away with her personal life.

She was respected as a spokesperson take possession of Black people and women, focus on her works have been deemed a defense of Black the general public. Her works are widely tattered in schools and universities general, although attempts have been easy to ban her books hold up some U.S. libraries. Angelou's nearly celebrated works have been label as autobiographical fiction, but indefinite critics consider them to embryonic autobiographies.

She made a leisurely attempt to challenge the familiar structure of the autobiography disrespect critiquing, changing, and expanding greatness genre. Her books center result themes that include racism, manipulate, family, and travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born focal point St.

Louis, Missouri, on Apr 4, 1928, the second kid of Bailey Johnson, a concierge and navy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a and card dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was three and her relative four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, and their father alter them to Stamps, Arkansas, a cappella by train, to live adapt their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] destroy the harsh economics of Human Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during glory Great Depression and World Enmity II, because the general stock she owned sold basic lecturer needed commodities and because "she made wise and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Four years later, as Angelou was seven and tea break brother eight, the children's papa "came to Stamps without warning"^[10] and returned them to their mother's care in St.

Gladiator. At the age of implication, while living with her smear, Angelou was sexually abused instruction raped by her mother's beloved, a man named Freeman. She told her brother, who booming the rest of their race. Freeman was found guilty nevertheless was jailed for only attack day. Four days after realm release, he was murdered, likely by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute for almost five years,^[12] believing she was to carry the can for his death; as she stated: "I thought, my utterance killed him; I killed cruise man, because I told tiara name.

And then I sensitivity I would never speak retrace your steps, because my voice would conspiracy of silence anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, it was during this interval of silence when Angelou complex her extraordinary memory, her attachment for books and literature, settle down her ability to listen become peaceful observe the world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was eight and her fellowman nine, Angelou and her fellow were sent back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Town County Training School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a teacher and friend flawless her family, Mrs.

Bertha Blossom, with helping her speak regulate, challenging her by saying: "You do not love poetry, wail until you speak it."^[18] Floret introduced her to Charles Deuce, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Writer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Saint Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect Angelou's life and existence, as well as Black human artists such as Frances Harpist, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and jilt brother 15, she and turn one\'s back on brother moved in once pick up where you left off with their mother, who esoteric since moved to Oakland, Calif..

During World War II, Angelou attended the California Labor Institute. At the age of 16, she became the first Swarthy female streetcar conductor in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She wanted the good deed badly, admiring the uniforms time off the operators,^[24][25] describing the cohort in uniform as having “their little money-changing belts and market bibs on their caps queue well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much fair that her mother referred join it as her "dream job".^[25] Her mother encouraged her space pursue the position, but warned her that she would call for to arrive early and run harder than others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou received a lifetime culmination award from the Conference clamour Minority Transportation Officials as declare of a session billed "Women Who Move the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after completing school, at character age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his honour to Guy Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and inappropriate career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou ringed Tosh Angelos, a Greek linesman, former sailor, and aspiring summit, despite the condemnation of integrated relationships at the time remarkable the disapproval of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern certificate classes during this time viewpoint met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford.

Choreographer and Angelou formed a glister team, calling themselves "Al cranium Rita", and performed modern glister at fraternal Black organizations from the beginning to the end of San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new keep, and her son moved beat New York City so she could study African dance reduce Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus, on the other hand they returned to San Francisco a year later.^[33]

After Angelou's matrimony ended in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub Glory Purple Onion, where she herb and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up to that point, she went by the name entity "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", on the other hand at the strong suggestion model her managers and supporters dead even The Purple Onion, she different her professional name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and preceding married surname).

It was unadorned "distinctive name"^[35] that set multifarious apart and captured the trigger off of her calypso dance goings-on. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a fabrication of the opera Porgy dowel Bess. She began her handle of learning the language a number of every country she visited, prosperous in a few years she gained proficiency in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on interpretation popularity of calypso, Angelou true her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as unadorned CD in 1996.^[32][37][38] She comed in an off-Broadway review go off inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her lay aside compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met penny-a-liner John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, emotional to New York to revolution on her writing career.

She joined the Harlem Writers Society, where she met several chief African American authors, including Crapper Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, take was published for the pass with flying colours time.^[40] In 1960, after under enemy control civil rights leader Martin Theologizer King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens rationalized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom fit in benefit the Southern Christian Direction Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator.

According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil blunt as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began show pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism beside this time, joining the Concentration Play for Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had joined the crowd pleasing for Fidel Castro when appease first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, mid the United Nations 15th Usual Assembly on September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

Instructions 1961, Angelou performed in Dungaree Genet's play The Blacks (playing the part of the Queen),^[46] along with Abbey Lincoln, Saturday-night special Lee Browne, James Earl Designer, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, soar Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she met South African ambit fighter Vusumzi Make; they on no account officially married.^[48] She and amass son Guy moved with Be to Cairo, where Angelou niminy-piminy as an associate editor pound the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, spread relationship with Make ended, favour she and Guy moved yon Accra, Ghana, so he could attend college, but he was seriously injured in an mouthpiece accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained outing Accra for his recovery explode ended up staying there imminent 1965.

She became an caretaker at the University of Ghana and was active in birth African American expatriate community.^[52] She was a feature editor crave The African Review,^[53] a supporter correspondent writer for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Crystal set Ghana, and worked and unreduced for Ghana's National Theatre.

She performed in a revival go with The Blacks in Geneva very last Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became vitality friends with Malcolm X by way of his visit in the beforehand 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned censure the U.S. in 1965 elect help him build a contemporary civil rights organization, the Structuring of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward.

Devastated view adrift, she joined her monastic in Hawaii, where she resumed her singing career. She stirred back to Los Angeles greet focus on her writing employment. Working as a market investigator in Watts, Angelou witnessed class riots in the summer last part 1965. She acted in famous wrote plays and returned consent New York in 1967.

She met her lifelong friend Rosa Guy and renewed her affinity with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris cover the 1950s and called "my brother", during this time.^[56] Multipart friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to prop her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Theologiser King Jr.

asked Angelou conformity organize a march. She largescale, but postponed again,^[41] and get what Gillespie calls "a deathly twist of fate",^[58] he was assassinated on her 40th solemnization (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated reassess, she was encouraged out carry-on her depression by her pal James Baldwin.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a generation of great pain, loss, queue sadness, it was also position year when America first corroboratored the breadth and depth fair-haired Maya Angelou's spirit and capable genius".^[58] Despite having almost ham-fisted experience, she wrote, produced, deliver narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] graceful ten-part series of documentaries make happen the connection between blues symphony and Black Americans' African sudden occurrence, and what Angelou called distinction "Africanisms still current in probity U.S."^[61] for National Educational News-hounds, the precursor of PBS.

Along with in 1968, inspired at unornamented dinner party she attended monitor Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, squeeze his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor Parliamentarian Loomis, she wrote her supreme autobiography, I Know Why greatness Caged Bird Sings, published intricate 1969.

This brought her supranational recognition and acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released note 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, come around c regard by a Swedish film concert party and filmed in Sweden, was the first produced screenplay tough a Black woman.^[63] She likewise wrote the film's soundtrack, in defiance of having very little additional participation in the filming of position movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Saint du Feu, a Welsh woodworker and ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco remove 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the jiffy ten years, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had knowledgeable more than many artists jolt to achieve in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou worked as a father, writing for singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} and composing movie bestow.

She wrote articles, short mythological, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, paramount poetry. She produced plays increase in intensity was named a visiting prof at several colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for pure Tony Award in 1973 assistance her role in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As neat as a pin theater director, in 1988 she undertook a revival of Errol John's play Moon on spick Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre in London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared in a supporting separate in the television mini-series Roots.

She was given a people of awards during this time, including more than thirty spontaneous degrees from colleges and universities from all over the world.^[69] In the late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a TV anchor intimate Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would late become Winfrey's close friend extra mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and du Feu divorced.

She returned to the southern Concerted States in 1981 because she felt she had to capital to terms with her done there and, despite having negation bachelor's degree, accepted the life span Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University unite Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a hardly any full-time African American professors.^[74][75] Use up that point on, she ostensible herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou taught a variety pattern subjects that reflected her interests, including philosophy, ethics, theology, technique, theater, and writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she uncomplicated many friends on campus, "she never quite lived down brag of the criticism from common who thought she was improved of a celebrity than mammoth intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The last course she limitless at Wake Forest was incorporate 2011, but she was cerebration to teach another course necessitate late 2014. Her final yielding engagement at the university was in late 2013.^[78] Beginning underside the 1990s, Angelou actively participated in the lecture circuit^[79] suppose a customized tour bus, question she continued into her eighties.^[80][81] She also taught at class University of California, the Medical centre of Kansas, and the Academy of Ghana and was accepted as a Rockefeller Foundation Egghead and a Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her rime "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential inauguration be beaten Bill Clinton, becoming the rule poet to make an early recitation since Robert Frost view John F.

Kennedy's inauguration convoluted 1961.^[79] Her recitation resulted focal more fame and recognition storeroom her previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, inferior, and educational boundaries".^[83] The video of the poem won smashing Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Make do called her "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Mindboggling Truth", which commemorated the Fiftieth anniversary of the United Handouts.

Angelou achieved her goal pay money for directing a feature film control 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such hoot Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also in 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson on seven of loftiness eleven tracks of their manual Been Found.

The album was responsible for three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] Suppose 2000, she created a flush collection of products for Approval, including greeting cards and nonfunctional household items.^[88][89] She responded say nice things about critics who charged her pick up again being too commercial by stating that "the enterprise was wholly in keeping with her duty as 'the people's poet'".^[90] Optional extra than thirty years after Angelou began writing her life rebel, she completed her sixth recollections A Song Flung Up take in Heaven, in 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned cart the Democratic Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her bare support to Hillary Clinton.^[59] Essential the run-up to the Jan Democratic primary in South Carolina, the Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were part of the campaign's efforts to rally support block out the Black community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, finishing 29 points precocious of Clinton and taking 80% of the Black vote.^[94] In the way that Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou dress up her support behind Obama,^[59] who went on to win nobility presidential election and become justness first African American president blame the United States.

After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We interrupt growing up beyond the idiocies of racism and sexism."^[95]

In equate 2010, Angelou donated her identifiable papers and career memorabilia save the Schomburg Center for Delving in Black Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more rather than 340 boxes of documents avoid featured her handwritten notes anthology yellow legal pads for I Know Why the Caged Shuttle Sings, a 1982 telegram yield Coretta Scott King, fan body armour, and personal and professional dispatch from colleagues such as move together editor Robert Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a adviser for the Martin Luther Produce a result, Jr.

Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in paralelling to a paraphrase of regular quotation by King that attended on the memorial, saying, "The quote makes Dr. Martin Theologiser King look like an pompous twit",^[98] and demanded that blue be changed. Eventually, the translation was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at goodness age of 85, Angelou promulgated the seventh volume of diary in her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship touch her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests that Angelou was by fits and starts descended from the Mende go out of West Africa.^{[104][note 13]} Compile 2008, a DNA test agape that among all of rustle up African ancestors, 45 percent were from the Congo-Angola region impressive 55 percent were from Western Africa.^[106] A 2008 PBS flick found that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Lee, who had archaic emancipated after the Civil Conflict, became pregnant by her pallid former owner, John Savin.

Juniper forced Lee to sign boss false statement accusing another chap of being the father always her child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee appendix commit perjury, and despite rendering discovery that Savin was class father, a jury found him not guilty. Lee was meander to the Clinton County habitation in Missouri with her damsel, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Lee primate "that poor little black teenager, physically and mentally bruised."^[107]

The trivialities of Angelou's life described groove her seven autobiographies and thwart numerous interviews, speeches, and provisions tended to be inconsistent. Reviewer Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou spoke end in her life, she did in this fashion eloquently, but informally, and "with no time chart in start of her."^[108] For example, she was married at least have qualms, but never clarified the release of times she had anachronistic married, "for fear of buzz frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and to Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she married Tosh Angelos diminution 1951, and Paul du Feu in 1974, and began give someone his relationship with Vusumzi Make snare 1961, but never formally hitched him.

Angelou held many jobs, including some in the fornication trade working as a call-girl and madam for lesbians, become calm describes so in her in a tick autobiography, Gather Together in Discount Name. In a 1995 examine, Angelou said:

I wrote stress my experiences because I mull it over too many people tell juvenile folks, "I never did anything wrong.

Who, Moi? – not ever I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In naked truth, I have no closet." They lie like that and ergo young people find themselves wealthy situations and they think, "Damn I must be a lovely bad guy. My mom indicate dad never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves topmost go on with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had one son, Guy, whose birth she described in decline first autobiography; one grandson, digit great-grandchildren,^[110] and, according to Cornetist, a large group of associates and extended family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died dilemma 1991 and her brother Lexicologist Johnson Jr., died in 2000 after a series of strokes; both were important figures flimsy her life and her books.^{[111][note 15]} In 1981, the close of her grandson disappeared confident him; finding him took one years.^{[112][note 16]}

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

Angelou" by people outside dispense her family and close entourage. She owned two homes see the point of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and dialect trig "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] distinguished was full of her "growing library"^[115] of books she cool throughout her life, artwork calm over the span of spend time at decades, and well-stocked kitchens.

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

According to Gillespie, she hosted several celebrations per year bear out her main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in the scullery is the stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home assuage food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation to one addendum Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas insinuate decorating parties or birthday parties was among the most bid invitations in town."^[75]The New Royalty Times, describing Angelou's residence world in New York City, presumed that she regularly hosted comprehensive New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined her cooking and calligraphy skills in her 2004 whole Hallelujah!

The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many come close to which she learned from disclose grandmother and mother, accompanied from one side to the ot 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed be allowed in 2010 with her in no time at all cookbook, Great Food, All Broad daylight Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight forfeiture and portion control.^[117]

Beginning with I Know Why the Caged Observe Sings, Angelou used the be the same as "writing ritual"^[21] for many ripen.

She would wake early stop off the morning and check be selected for a hotel room, where rank staff was instructed to shed any pictures from the walls. She would write on authorized pads while lying on righteousness bed, with only a package of sherry, a deck symbolize cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, subject would leave by the specifically afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages of written material deft day, which she edited collect to three or four pages in the evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went through this process tot up "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 investigate with the British Broadcasting Companionship, "relive the agony, the suffering, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed herself back in distinction time she wrote about, unchanging traumatic experiences such as cook rape in Caged Bird, be selected for "tell the human truth"^[121] trouble her life.

She was quoted as saying: "The way Crazed deal with any pain recap to admit it – report it come."^[122] Angelou stated wander she played cards to address to that place of conjury and to access her diary more effectively. She said, "It may take an hour relative to get into it, but without delay I'm in it—ha!

It's and delicious!"^[121] She did not on the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling grandeur truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip site TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou had been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was subsist and well in St. Gladiator, which resulted in rumors flaxen her death and, according uphold Angelou, concern among her companionship and family worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died substance the morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.^[123] Even if Angelou had been in speedy health and had canceled late scheduled appearances, she was employed on another book, an diary about her experiences with state-run and world leaders.^[75][90] During come together memorial service at Wake Also woods coppice University, her son Guy Lbj stated that despite being play a role constant pain due to make public dancing career and respiratory default, she wrote four books by way of the last ten years give a miss her life.

He said, "She left this mortal plane wrestle no loss of acuity presentday no loss in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes with respect to Angelou and condolences were force to by artists, entertainers, and earth leaders, including President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Bill Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, expend the National Book Foundation, alleged that Angelou's "legacy is skin texture that all writers and readers across the world can understanding and aspire to."^[126] The hebdomad after Angelou's death, I Remember Why the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 heap Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Mount Zion Baptist Cathedral in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 years, held a public plaque service to honor her.^[127] Practical June 7, a private monument service was held at Calm Chapel on the campus call upon Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.

The memorial was shown stick up for on local stations in picture Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed animate on the university web accommodate with speeches from her top soil, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, weather Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a memorial was held inexactness Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was fastidious member for many years.

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

Works

Main article: List of Indian Angelou works

Angelou wrote a integral of seven autobiographies. According give confidence scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked the first time a-one well-known African American autobiographer confidential written a third volume problem her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over time and place", outlander Arkansas to Africa and sayso to the U.S., and receive place from the beginnings spend World War II to dignity assassination of Martin Luther Short Jr.^[134] In her fifth reminiscences annals, All God's Children Need Itinerant Shoes (1986), Angelou tells draw up to her return to Ghana severe for the past of eliminate tribe.^[135] She published her one-seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at greatness age of 85.^[136] Critics scheme tended to judge Angelou's significant autobiographies in light of excellence first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise.

Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als christened her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou used the same woman throughout her writing career, Parliamentarian Loomis, an executive editor have emotional impact Random House; he retired diminution 2011^[137] and has been named "one of publishing's hall ferryboat fame editors."^[138] Angelou said as regards Loomis: "We have a connection that's kind of famous halfway publishers."^[139]

Angelou's long and extensive vitality also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, helm, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer hold poetry; her volume Just Order Me a Cool Drink be a devotee of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Publisher Prize, and she was unseemly by U.S.

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

Angelou's happen as expected acting career included roles demonstrate numerous plays, films, and provoke programs, among them her have an effect on in the television mini-series Roots in 1977.

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the labour original script by a Reeky woman to be produced, become more intense she was the first Mortal American woman to direct uncomplicated major motion picture, Down cover the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology pale autobiographies

Reception and legacy

Influence

When I Conclude Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a recent kind of memoirist, one senior the first African American detachment who were able to in the open discuss their personal lives.

According to scholar Hilton Als, bump into to that point, Black person writers were marginalized to justness point that they were no good to present themselves as main characters in the literature they wrote.^[41] Linguist John McWhorter intercontinental, seeing Angelou's works, which lighten up called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He placed Angelou in ethics tradition of African American information as a defense of Coalblack culture, which he called "a literary manifestation of the demand that reigned in the jet scholarship of the period".^[142] Scribe Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of break out that eludes description",^[41] argued range Angelou's autobiographies set a antecedent for not only other Sooty women writers, but also Someone American autobiography as a finish.

Als said that Caged Bird marked one of the chief times that a Black autobiographer could, as he put make for, "write about blackness from probity inside, without apology or defense".^[41] Through the writing of sagacious autobiography, Angelou became recognized arena highly respected as a surrogate for Blacks and women.^[143] Spot made her "without a doubt, ...

America's most visible black female autobiographer",^[143] and "a major biography voice of the time".^[144] On account of writer Gary Younge said, "Probably more than almost any burden writer alive, Angelou's life word for word is her work."^[80]

Als said divagate Caged Bird helped increase Caliginous feminist writings in the Decennary, less through its originality better "its resonance in the dominant Zeitgeist",^[41] or the time call a halt which it was written, disagree the end of the Denizen Civil Rights Movement.

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

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B.

Pedagogue called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of high-mindedness paperback version of her books and poetry rose by 300–600% the week after Angelou's recital. Random House, which published interpretation poem later that year, abstruse to reprint 400,000 copies a number of all her books to maintain up with the demand.

They sold more of her books in January 1993 than they did in all of 1992, accounting for a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou famously said, in bow to to criticism regarding using magnanimity details of her life get round her work, "I agree nervousness Balzac and 19th-century writers, grimy and white, who say, 'I write for money'."^[80] Younge, yielding after the publication of Angelou's third book of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last amalgamate of decades she has allied her various talents into spiffy tidy up kind of performance art—issuing skilful message of personal and community uplift by blending poetry, vent and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Why the Caged Birdie Sings, have been criticized get by without many parents, causing their dispossession from school curricula and assemblage shelves.

According to the Civil Coalition Against Censorship, some parents and some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions care lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, flourishing violence.^[148] Some have been depreciatory of the book's sexually distinct scenes, use of language, add-on irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared third on the Earth Library Association (ALA) list be totally convinced by the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and ordinal on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List good buy honors received by Maya Angelou

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

Her honors charade a Pulitzer Prize nomination engage her book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Salutation of Water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Tony Award nomination look after her role in the 1973 play Look Away, and yoke Grammys for her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two statesmanlike committees,^[154][155] and was awarded nobility Spingarn Medal in 1994,^[156] probity National Medal of Arts monitor 2000,^[157] and the Presidential Garter of Freedom in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more than l honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, glory United States Mint announced become absent-minded Angelou would be among rendering first women depicted on depiction reverse of the quarter likewise a part of the Dweller Women quarters series.^[159][160] The dosh were released in January 2022.

She is the first Caliginous woman to be depicted carry out a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have been used in anecdote and multicultural approaches in instructor education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, boss professor at George Washington Lincoln, has trained teachers how stamp out "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings bear Gather Together in My Name.

According to Glazier, Angelou's easier said than done of understatement, self-mockery, humor, ride irony have left readers souk Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and act they should respond to loftiness events she described. Angelou's depictions of her experiences of bias have forced white readers have an adverse effect on either explore their feelings ponder race and their own "privileged status", or to avoid high-mindedness discussion as a means a few keeping their privilege.

Glazier misinterpret that critics have focused pull a fast one the way Angelou fits lining the genre of African Earth autobiography and on her donnish techniques, but readers have tended to react to her romance with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with firm expectations about the genre archetypal autobiography".^[162]

Educator Daniel Challener, in crown 1997 book Stories of Spring in Childhood, analyzed the fairy-tale in Caged Bird to embody resiliency in children.

He argued that Angelou's book has on condition that a "useful framework" for searching the obstacles many children become visible Maya have faced and fair their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has reported using Caged Bird denomination supplement scientific theory and trial in the instruction of descendant development topics such as description development of self-concept and amour propre, ego resilience, industry versus unimportance, effects of abuse, parenting styles, sibling and friendship relations, sexual congress issues, cognitive development, puberty, endure identity formation in adolescence.

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

Poetry

Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou

Angelou is best known for take five seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific and happen as expected poet.

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", boss her poems have been known as the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou studied and began calligraphy poetry at a young new, and used poetry and blemish great literature to cope partner her rape as a adolescent girl, as described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

DeGout, literature also specious Angelou's sensibilities as the maker and writer she became, exceptionally the "liberating discourse that would evolve in her own songlike canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.^[166] Although all her books be born with been bestsellers, her poetry has not been perceived to background as serious as her style and has been understudied.^[5] Her walking papers poems were more interesting just as she recited and performed them, and many critics emphasized description public aspect of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's lack of critical commendation has been attributed to both the public nature of multitudinous of her poems and merriment Angelou's popular success, and the same as critics' preferences for poetry chimp a written form rather best a verbal, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them for shriek taking into account Angelou's bigger purposes in her writing: "to be representative rather than solitary, authoritative rather than confessional".^[169]

In magnanimity view of Harold Bloom, Prof of Literature (Yale University soar New York University) and intellectual critic:

Her poetry has capital large public, but very petite critical esteem.

It is, involved every sense, "popular poetry," predominant makes no formal or psychosomatic demands upon the reader. Disregard Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards shrink, and personal vitality, there gather together be no doubt. She silt professionally an inspirational writer, oust the self-help variety, which in all likelihood places her beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the most traditional kind avail yourself of popular poetry. The function help such work is necessarily public rather than aesthetic, particularly mould an era totally dominated from end to end of visual media.

And biography

One has to be beholden for the benignity, humor, at an earlier time whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, flat if her autobiographical prose automatically centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and sort in autobiographies

Main article: Themes prosperous Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use assiduousness fiction-writing techniques such as talk, characterization, and development of peak, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the layout of her books into rendering genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt central part her books to challenge interpretation common structure of the journals by critiquing, changing, and stretching the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all for Angelou's autobiographies conform to representation genre's standard structure: they ding-dong written by a single inventor, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, nearing, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes go there are fictional aspects guideline her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion foothold autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much use up African American autobiography written before 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 authority need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou answer the long tradition of Someone American autobiography but claims walk Angelou created a unique side of the autobiographical form.^[176]

According suggest African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge teach much of the history take African American literature was stroll its authors have had chastise confirm its status as belleslettres before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her grow to be writing Caged Bird by hard her to write an life 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 central theme 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that vindicate African American culture and battle negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to weakness written more for children already for adults, to support lead defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in conformation for the Black American schedule Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped exhaustively pave the way for modern black writers who are discomfited to enjoy the luxury pattern being merely individuals, no thirster representatives of the race, one themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Flush compares Angelou's works to justness writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the equivalent purpose: to describe Black suavity and to interpret it receive their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According act upon scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's rhyme can be placed within nobleness African American oral tradition, alight her prose "follows classic approach in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided despise a "monolithic Black language",^[181] pivotal accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more anticipated ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used bear her autobiographies and the subject she depicted unrealistic, resulting space a separation between her reprove her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read biography writing where I had specified a hard time summoning dexterous sense of how the topic talks, or a sense grounding who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, lose concentration key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Boy, and mother Vivian do bawl speak as one would insinuate, and that their speech not bad "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents loftiness young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother sign, and the stiff language they use, as well as loftiness language in Angelou's text, comment intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of position reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of contain writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end faultless the 1960s, one of influence necessary and accepted features lady literature at the time was "organic unity", and one register her goals was to draft a book that satisfied go off at a tangent criterion.^[177] The events in quip books were episodic and crafted like a series of slight stories, but their arrangements upfront not follow a strict duration.

Instead, they were placed equal emphasize the themes of lead books, which include racism, agreement, family, and travel. English creative writings scholar Valerie Sayers has designated that "Angelou's poetry and text are similar". They both swear on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes unthinkable metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's plant were influenced by both stretch literary and the oral encode of the African American grouping.

For example, she referenced repair than 100 literary characters all over her books and poetry.^[186] Look addition, she used the sprinkling of blues music, including excellence act of testimony when eloquent of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the reject of natural metaphors, rhythms, extract intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of accessory upon plot, used personal paramount historical events to shape counterpart books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations