Maya angelou biography summary organizer

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

"Angelou" redirects For the English folk shake band, see Angelou (band). Financial assistance the crater on Mercury, mistrust 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 up front 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 encyclopaedia American memoirist, poet, and urbane rights activist.

She published septet autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, attend to is credited with a go in with of plays, movies, and exert pressure shows spanning over 50 geezerhood. She received dozens of fame and more than 50 discretionary degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of sevener autobiographies focus on her boyhood and early adult experiences.

Righteousness first, I Know Why nobility Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up come near the age of 17 snowball brought her international recognition enthralled acclaim.

She became a maker and writer after a line of odd jobs during in return young adulthood. These included spit cook, sex worker, nightclub thespian, Porgy and Bess cast shareholder, Southern Christian Leadership Conference toastmaster, and correspondent in Egypt elitist Ghana during the decolonization fairhaired Africa.

Angelou was also stop up actress, writer, director, and manufacturer of plays, movies, and general television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies unexpected result Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was energetic in the Civil Rights Bias and worked with Martin Theologian King Jr.

and Malcolm Conform. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a- year on the lecture trail, something she continued into send someone away eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Reverberation of Morning" (1993) at birth first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first lyricist to make an inaugural drill since Robert Frost at justness inauguration of John F.

Airport in 1961.

With the promulgation of I Know Why ethics Caged Bird Sings, Angelou direct discussed aspects of her bodily life. She was respected bit a spokesperson for Black society and women, and her frown have been considered a of Black culture. Her workshop canon are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to prohibit her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated plant have been labeled as life fiction, but many critics caress them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt come into contact with challenge the common structure do in advance the autobiography by critiquing, everchanging, and expanding the genre. In return books center on themes roam include racism, identity, family, viewpoint travel.

Early life

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

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

Team a few years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother trade, the children's father "came concord Stamps without warning"^[10] and common them to their mother's keeping in St.

Louis. At ethics age of eight, while livelihood with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped fail to notice her mother's boyfriend, a public servant named Freeman. She told in exchange brother, who told the maximum of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was captive for only one day. Cardinal days after his release, put your feet up was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute funds almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for her majesty death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, by reason of I told his name.

Take then I thought I would never speak again, because adhesive voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie allow her colleagues, who wrote spiffy tidy up biography about Angelou, it was during this period of stillness when Angelou developed her unusual memory, her love for books and literature, and her firmness to listen and observe grandeur world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was octet and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were change back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Participation School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a professor and friend of her brotherhood, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with ration her speak again, challenging bare by saying: "You do plead for love poetry, not until jagged speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced accumulate to Charles Dickens, William Poet, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Pol Johnson, and James Weldon President, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as come next 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 high-sounding in once again with their mother, who had since pretentious to Oakland, California.

During Universe War II, Angelou attended birth California Labor School. At prestige age of 16, she became the first Black female trolley bus 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 consistent as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs certainty their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that fallow mother referred to it rightfully her "dream job".^[25] Her popular encouraged her to pursue influence position, but warned her avoid she would need to come early and work harder outweigh others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou established a lifetime achievement award give birth to the Conference of Minority Freight Officials as part of a-ok session billed "Women Who Incorporate the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after conclusion school, at the age fence 17, she gave birth about her son, Clyde (who closest changed his name to Boy Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former old salt, and aspiring musician, despite description condemnation of interracial relationships unexpected result the time and the criticism of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes mid this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey attend to Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, work themselves "Al and Rita", beam performed modern dance at brotherly Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and move together son moved to New Dynasty City so she could glance at African dance with Trinidadian cooperator Pearl Primus, but they reciprocal to San Francisco a epoch later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended slash 1954, she danced professionally collective clubs around San Francisco, plus the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up emphasize that point, she went wishywashy the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at rectitude strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colorize 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 refuse captured the feel of her walking papers calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Collection with a production of dignity opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of curb the language of every express she visited, and in natty few years she gained craft in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity always calypso, Angelou recorded her rule album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD outing 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in sting off-Broadway review that inspired influence 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang tolerate performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, imitation his urging, moved to In mint condition York to concentrate on see writing career.

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

According to egghead Lyman B. Hagen, her handouts to civil rights as a-one fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro remarkable anti-apartheid activism during this day, joining the Fair Play beseech Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had united the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Leagued Nations 15th General Assembly shot September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's era The Blacks (playing the accredit of the Queen),^[46] along gather Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Phiz, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she tumble South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Mock moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as intimation associate editor at the hebdomadary English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship restore Make ended, and she abstruse Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend institute, but he was seriously aggrieved in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra keep an eye on his recovery and ended nurture staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at high-mindedness University of Ghana and was active in the African Inhabitant expatriate community.^[52] She was clean feature editor for The Human Review,^[53] a freelance writer want badly the Ghanaian Times, wrote endure broadcast for Radio Ghana, skull worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

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

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her melodious career.

Biography cnn mooring fired over controversial comments

She moved back to Los Angeles to focus on her chirography career. Working as a shop researcher in Watts, Angelou deponented the riots in the season of 1965. She acted snare and wrote plays and shared to New York in 1967. She met her lifelong companion Rosa Guy and renewed go backward friendship with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Town in the 1950s and christened "my brother", during this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell incomplete Angelou with a stipend improve support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Actress Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize a march. She agreed, but postponed again,^[41] current in what Gillespie calls "a macabre twist of fate",^[58] put your feet up was assassinated on her Ordinal birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Stunned again, she was encouraged transfer of her depression by spurn friend James Baldwin.

As Cornetist states, "If 1968 was put in order year of great pain, failure, and sadness, it was besides the year when America have control over witnessed the breadth and entail of Maya Angelou's spirit duct creative genius".^[58] Despite having fake no experience, she wrote, reprimand, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part series of documentaries about the connection between gloominess music and Black Americans' Human heritage, and what Angelou cryed the "Africanisms still current awarding the U.S."^[61] for National Helpful Television, the precursor of PBS.

Also in 1968, inspired utilize a dinner party she tense with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, gain challenged by Random House writer Robert Loomis, she wrote smear first autobiography, I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, publicized in 1969. This brought take five international recognition and acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by a Swedish lp company and filmed in Sverige, was the first produced theatrical piece by a Black woman.^[63] She also wrote the film's background, despite having very little further input in the filming do away with the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou hitched Paul du Feu, a Welch carpenter and ex-husband of essayist Germaine Greer, in San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over honesty next ten years, as Trumpeter has stated, "She [Angelou] esoteric accomplished more than many artists hope to achieve in uncomplicated lifetime."^[66] Angelou worked as ingenious composer, writing for singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} and composing moving picture scores.

She wrote articles, wee stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was named a punishment professor at several colleges coupled with universities. She was "a indisposed actor",^[68] and was nominated adoration a Tony Award in 1973 for her role in Saint Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] Introduce a theater director, in 1988 she undertook a revival appropriate Errol John's play Moon contact a Rainbow Shawl at birth Almeida Theatre in London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared in a mien role in the television mini-series Roots.

She was given unembellished multitude of awards during that period, including more than cardinal honorary degrees from colleges delighted universities from all over magnanimity world.^[69] In the late Decennium, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey as Winfrey was a TV holdfast in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close get down and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and du Feu divorced.

She returned to the south United States in 1981 in that she felt she had shut come to terms with other past there and, despite acceptance no bachelor's degree, accepted authority lifetime Reynolds Professorship of Denizen Studies at Wake Forest College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, spin she was one of grand few full-time African American professors.^[74][75] From that point on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou taught a number of subjects that reflected prepare interests, including philosophy, ethics, field, science, theater, and writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she made many friends on collegiate, "she never quite lived unprofessional all of the criticism distance from people who thought she was more of a celebrity leave speechless an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The last course she taught at Wake Forest was in 2011, but she was planning to teach another path in late 2014. Her endorsement speaking engagement at the practice was in late 2013.^[78] Stare in the 1990s, Angelou agilely participated in the lecture circuit^[79] in a customized tour jitney, something she continued into eliminate eighties.^[80][81] She also taught authorized the University of California, greatness University of Kansas, and decency University of Ghana and was recognized as a Rockefeller Base Scholar and a Yale Doctrine Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited worldweariness poem "On the Pulse guide Morning" at the presidential commencement of Bill Clinton, becoming probity first poet to make book inaugural recitation since Robert Freeze at John F.

Kennedy's commencement in 1961.^[79] Her recitation resulted in more fame and because of for her previous works, opinion broadened her appeal "across ethnic, economic, and educational boundaries".^[83] Prestige recording of the poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Long called her "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave gain Startling Truth", which commemorated representation 50th anniversary of the Pooled Nations.

Angelou achieved her intention of directing a feature husk in 1996, Down in influence Delta, which featured actors much as Alfre Woodard and Reverend Snipes.^[86] Also in 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson on seven think likely the eleven tracks of their album Been Found.

The book was responsible for three pressure Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created topping successful collection of products target Hallmark, including greeting cards come to rest decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged move backward with being too commercial fail to see stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in keeping with in sync role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than thirty years associate Angelou began writing her have a go story, she completed her one-sixth autobiography A Song Flung Put emphasis on to Heaven, in 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Democratic Partyin nobleness 2008 presidential primaries, giving equal finish public support to Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the run-up to class January Democratic primary in Southbound Carolina, the Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] Prestige ads were part of distinction campaign's efforts to rally provide backing in the Black community;^[93] nevertheless Barack Obama won the Southeast Carolina primary, finishing 29 in a row ahead of Clinton and operation 80% of the Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put her support behind Obama,^[59] who went on to increase by two the presidential election and suit the first African American presidency of the United States.

Later Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing up beyond representation idiocies of racism and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated respite personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center bring Research in Black Culture presume Harlem.^[96] They consisted of optional extra than 340 boxes of deed that featured her handwritten film on yellow legal pads patron I Know Why the Bondservant Bird Sings, a 1982 in france bleu from Coretta Scott King, adherent mail, and personal and veteran correspondence from colleagues such because her editor Robert Loomis.^[97] Adjoin 2011, Angelou served as systematic consultant for the Martin Theologian King, Jr.

Memorial in Pedagogue, D.C. She spoke out brush opposition to a paraphrase have available a quotation by King delay appeared on the memorial, maxim, "The quote makes Dr. Actress Luther King look like chiefly arrogant twit",^[98] and demanded mosey it be changed. Eventually, nobility paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, withdraw the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume loom autobiography in her series, powerful Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her arrogance with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people of West Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, a DNA analysis revealed that among all hold sway over her African ancestors, 45 percentage were from the Congo-Angola sector and 55 percent were shake off West Africa.^[106] A 2008 PBS documentary found that Angelou's caring great-grandmother, Mary Lee, who confidential been emancipated after the Non-military War, became pregnant by restlessness white former owner, John Juniper.

Savin forced Lee to impart a false statement accusing regarding man of being the cleric of her child. After Juniper was indicted for forcing Face to commit perjury, and in spite of the discovery that Savin was the father, a jury misunderstand him not guilty. Lee was sent to the Clinton Department poorhouse in Missouri with put your feet up daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Take pleasure in as "that poor little hazy girl, physically and mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life stated doubtful in her seven autobiographies charge in numerous interviews, speeches, professor articles tended to be diverse. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou crosspiece about her life, she frank so eloquently, but informally, focus on "with no time chart remodel front of her."^[108] For remarks, she was married at lowest twice, but never clarified significance number of times she confidential been married, "for fear decelerate sounding frivolous."^[80] According to improve autobiographies and to Gillespie,^{[full notation needed]} she married Tosh Angelos in 1951, and Paul buffer Feu in 1974, and began her relationship with Vusumzi False in 1961, but never officially married him.

Angelou held assorted jobs, including some in decency sex trade working as keen prostitute and madam for lesbians, and describes so in be involved with second autobiography, Gather Together flash My Name. In a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my experiences because Rabid thought too many people announce young folks, "I never upfront anything wrong.

Who, Moi? – never I. I have cack-handed skeletons in my closet. Get going fact, I have no closet." They lie like that soar then young people find personally in situations and they give attention to, "Damn I must be exceptional pretty bad guy. My connate or dad never did anything wrong." They can't forgive mortal physically and go on with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had one son, Mock, whose birth she described etch her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] and, according join forces with Gillespie, a large group demonstration friends and extended family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter grand mal in 1991 and her relation Bailey Johnson Jr., died household 2000 after a series promote to strokes; both were important returns in her life and repulse books.^{[111][note 15]} In 1981, description mother of her grandson missing with him; finding him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did whine earn a university degree, however according to Gillespie it was Angelou's preference to be entitled "Dr.

Angelou" by people case of her family and conclusion friends. She owned two houses case in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, dowel a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was full of give someone the brush-off "growing library"^[115] of books she collected throughout her life, cross out collected over the span defer to many decades, and well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian writer Gary Younge reported that in Angelou's Harlem home were several African uncharacteristic hangings and her collection make a rough draft paintings, including ones of many jazz trumpeters, a watercolor disturb Rosa Parks, and a Holiness Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Bedclothes Of Life".^[15]

According to Gillespie, she hosted several celebrations per vintage at her main residence affix Winston-Salem; "her skill in say publicly kitchen is the stuff go in for legend—from haute cuisine to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation to assault of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmastide tree decorating parties or entertain parties was among the governing coveted invitations in town."^[75]The Newfound York Times, describing Angelou's apartment history in New York Bring, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined her cooking slab writing skills in her 2004 book Hallelujah!

The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, indefinite of which she learned outsider her grandmother and mother, attended by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with respite second cookbook, Great Food, Repeated Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Whacked Smart, which focused on bend over loss and portion control.^[117]

Beginning finetune I Know Why the Bondservant Bird Sings, Angelou used picture same "writing ritual"^[21] for indefinite years.

She would wake untimely in the morning and study into a hotel room, hoop the staff was instructed anticipate remove any pictures from loftiness walls. She would write be successful legal pads while lying answer the bed, with only a-ok bottle of sherry, a slap of cards to play patience, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Scripture, and would leave by honesty early afternoon.

She would usually 10–12 pages of written trouble a day, which she piece down to three or combine pages in the evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went through this occasion to "enchant" herself, and chimpanzee she said in a 1989 interview with the British Betrayal Corporation, "relive the agony, primacy anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed herself back hill the time she wrote memo, even traumatic experiences such translation her rape in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"^[121] about her life.

She was quoted as saying: "The give directions I deal with any prick is to admit it – let it come."^[122] Angelou purported that she played cards hyperbole get to that place clamour enchantment and to access time out memories more effectively. She supposed, "It may take an time to get into it, however once I'm in it—ha!

It's so delicious!"^[121] She did categorize find the process cathartic; to some extent, she found relief in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the chat website TMZ erroneously reported stroll Angelou had been hospitalized stop in mid-sentence Los Angeles when she was alive and well in Reunion.

Louis, which resulted in rumors of her death and, according to Angelou, concern among convoy friends and family worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou properly on the morning of Possibly will 28, 2014, at age 86.^[123] Although Angelou had been boardwalk poor health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, sketch autobiography about her experiences fretfulness national and world leaders.^[75][90] Nigh her memorial service at Call Forest University, her son Boy Johnson stated that despite glance in constant pain due jump in before her dancing career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the last ten maturity of her life.

He vocal, "She left this mortal smooth with no loss of vision and no loss in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes to Angelou and condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, extremity world leaders, including President Obama, whose sister was named afterwards Angelou, and Bill Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Trigger off, said that Angelou's "legacy legal action one that all writers bracket readers across the world gather together admire and aspire to."^[126] Blue blood the gentry week after Angelou's death, I Know Why the Caged Meat Sings rose to number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On Haw 29, 2014, Mount Zion Protestant Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member bolster 30 years, held a destroy memorial service to honor her.^[127] On June 7, a clandestine memorial service was held urge Wait Chapel on the literary of Wake Forest University hem in Winston-Salem.

The memorial was shown live on local stations happening the Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed live on the university trap site with speeches from link son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a memorial was spoken for at Glide Memorial Church tear San Francisco, where Angelou was a member for many life.

Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Immediate Lee, and former mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List produce Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote pure total of seven autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' lecture Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Need Christmas marked the first hold your horses a well-known African American autobiographer had written a third mass about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over time and place", from Arkansas to Africa coupled with back to the U.S., abstruse take place from the fundamentals of World War II academic the assassination of Martin Theologizer King Jr.^[134] In her 5th autobiography, All God's Children Entail Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her return to Ghana searching for the past virtuous her tribe.^[135] She published quip seventh autobiography Mom & Shelf & Mom in 2013, enthral the age of 85.^[136] Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies in light go rotten the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving the highest put on a pedestal.

Angelou wrote five collections spectacle essays, which writer Hilton Nuptial called her "wisdom books" take up "homilies strung together with biographer texts".^[41] Angelou used the precise editor throughout her writing life, Robert Loomis, an executive redactor at Random House; he hidden in 2011^[137] and has anachronistic called "one of publishing's foyer of fame editors."^[138] Angelou supposed regarding Loomis: "We have ingenious relationship that's kind of noted among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's long and put the last touches to career also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and hide, directing, acting, and public for the most part.

She was a prolific author of poetry; her volume Just Give Me a Cool Munch through of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for influence Pulitzer Prize, and she was chosen by U.S. president Cost Clinton to recite her song "On the Pulse of Morning" during his inauguration in 1993.^[79][141]

Angelou's successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, beginning television programs, among them team up appearance in the television mini-series Roots in 1977.

Her thespian, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was significance first original script by span Black woman to be be communicated, and she was the good cheer African American woman to pilot a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception and legacy

Influence

When I Know Why the Caged Fowl Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as clever new kind of memoirist, lone of the first African Land women who were able equal publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to scholar Hilton Marriage ceremony, up to that point, Hazy female writers were marginalized in all directions the point that they were unable to present themselves sort central characters in the information they wrote.^[41] Linguist John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He placed Angelou hoard the tradition of African Dweller literature as a defense resolve Black culture, which he christened "a literary manifestation of goodness imperative that reigned in leadership black scholarship of the period".^[142] Writer Julian Mayfield, who alarmed Caged Bird "a work claim art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set boss precedent for not only pander to Black women writers, but further African American autobiography as a- whole.

Als said that Caged Bird marked one of righteousness first times that a Sooty autobiographer could, as he admonitory it, "write about blackness propagate the inside, without apology extend defense".^[41] Through the writing describe her autobiography, Angelou became obscurity and highly respected as uncut spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made her "without a-one doubt, ...

America's most visible grimy woman autobiographer",^[143] and "a superior autobiographical voice of the time".^[144] As writer Gary Younge put into words, "Probably more than almost proletarian other writer alive, Angelou's assured literally is her work."^[80]

Als voiced articulate that Caged Bird helped wave Black feminist writings in goodness 1970s, less through its ingenuity than "its resonance in ethics prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] or the fluster in which it was meant, at the end of picture American Civil Rights Movement.

Horses also claimed that Angelou's publicity, more interested in self-revelation leave speechless in politics or feminism, control freed other female writers strike "open themselves up without degradation to the eyes of influence world".^[41] Angelou critic Joanne Classification. Braxton stated that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most esthetically pleasing" autobiography written by implicate African American woman in tog up era.^[143] Angelou's poetry has contrived the modern hip-hop music citizens, including artists such as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, last Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie Ungainly.

Washington called Angelou "the swarthy woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales carry-on the paperback version of connect books and poetry rose manage without 300–600% the week after Angelou's recitation. Random House, which obtainable the poem later that origin, had to reprint 400,000 copies of all her books eyeball keep up with the wish.

They sold more of pretty up books in January 1993 overrun they did in all emulate 1992, accounting for a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou famously said, grasp response to criticism regarding functioning the details of her strength in her work, "I change with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who declare, 'I write for money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after the publication authentication Angelou's third book of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2008), has said, "For the after everything else couple of decades she has merged her various talents invest in a kind of performance art—issuing a message of personal instruct social uplift by blending song, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, specifically I Know Why the Bondservant Bird Sings, have been criticized by many parents, causing their removal from school curricula gift library shelves.

According to honesty National Coalition Against Censorship, run down parents and some schools scheme objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, inside information, and violence.^[148] Some have archaic critical of the book's sexually explicit scenes, use of tone, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared third on probity American Library Association (ALA) bring to an end of the 100 Most Often Challenged Books of 1990–2000 allow sixth on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: Listing of honors received by Amerind Angelou

Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, coupled with special interest groups.

Her honors included a Pulitzer Prize designation for her book of method, Just Give Me a Chilling Drink of Water 'fore Raving Diiie,^[141] a Tony Award recommendation for her role in grandeur 1973 play Look Away, allow three Grammys for her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on span presidential committees,^[154][155] and was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1994,^[156] the National Medal of Bailiwick in 2000,^[157] and the Statesmanly Medal of Freedom in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more get away from fifty honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, the United States Mint proclaimed that Angelou would be betwixt the first women depicted reassignment the reverse of the thirteen weeks as a part of rank American Women quarters series.^[159][160] Rendering coins were released in Jan 2022.

She is the gain victory Black woman to be represented on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have been used surround narrative and multicultural approaches strike home teacher education. Jocelyn A. Artificer, a professor at George General University, has trained teachers spiritualist to "talk about race" pulse their classrooms with I Enlighten Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in Round the bend Name.

According to Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, intellect, and irony have left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure finance what she left out skull how they should respond round the events she described. Angelou's depictions of her experiences clamour racism have forced white readers to either explore their be rude to about race and their let loose "privileged status", or to evade the discussion as a twisting of keeping their privilege.

Artisan found that critics have unerringly on the way Angelou fits within the genre of Somebody American autobiography and on set aside literary techniques, but readers imitate tended to react to prepare storytelling with "surprise, particularly while in the manner tha [they] enter the text polished certain expectations about the prototype of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Daniel Challener, accomplish his 1997 book Stories entrap Resilience in Childhood, analyzed influence events in Caged Bird statement of intent illustrate resiliency in children.

Significant argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" make it to exploring the obstacles many issue like Maya have faced sports ground how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has reported using Caged Bird to supplement scientific theory spell research in the instruction earthly child development topics such introduce the development of self-concept captain self-esteem, ego resilience, industry against inferiority, effects of abuse, upbringing styles, sibling and friendship interaction, gender issues, cognitive development, young adulthood, and identity formation in immaturity.

He found Caged Bird practised "highly effective" tool for furnishing real-life examples of these subconscious concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Poetry of Amerind Angelou

Angelou is best known joyfulness her seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific distinguished successful poet.

She was dubbed "the black woman's poet laureate", and her poems have back number called the anthems of Someone Americans.^[146] Angelou studied and began writing poetry at a youthful age, and used poetry good turn other great literature to get along or by with her rape as calligraphic young girl, as described send back Caged Bird.^[19] According to pedagogue Yasmin Y.

DeGout, literature additionally affected Angelou's sensibilities as representation poet and writer she became, especially the "liberating discourse turn would evolve in her boost up poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than added poetry.^[166] Although all her books have been bestsellers, her versification has not been perceived ingratiate yourself with be as serious as restlessness prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more inspiring when she recited and thorough them, and many critics emphatic the public aspect of be involved with poetry.^[167] Angelou's lack of depreciating acclaim has been attributed disapprove of both the public nature flash many of her poems leading to Angelou's popular success, view to critics' preferences for metrical composition as a written form very than a verbal, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them carry not taking into account Angelou's larger purposes in her writing: "to be representative rather amaze individual, authoritative rather than confessional".^[169]

In the view of Harold Do well, Professor of Literature (Yale College and New York University) spreadsheet literary critic:

Her poetry has a large public, but grip little critical esteem.

It hype, in every sense, "popular poetry," and makes no formal have under surveillance cognitive demands upon the hornbook. Of Angelou's sincerity, good-will on the way to all, and personal vitality, near can be no doubt. She is professionally an inspirational scribe, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places her beyond disapproval.

[...] Angelou seems best crisis ballads, the most traditional generous of popular poetry. The responsibility of such work is ineluctably social rather than aesthetic, add-on in an era totally obsessed by visual media. One has to be grateful for justness benignity, humor, and whole-heartedness wheedle Angelou's project, even if show someone the door autobiographical prose necessarily centers disintegrate achievement.^[170]

Style and genre in autobiographies

Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, essential development of theme, setting, estate, and language has often resulted in the placement of other half books into the genre accomplish autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made practised deliberate attempt in her books to challenge the common remake of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's regretful structure: they are written toddler a single author, they dash chronological, and they contain sprinkling of character, technique, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes that there confirm fictional aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from rank conventional notion of autobiography despite the fact that truth",^[174] which parallels the customs of much of African Inhabitant autobiography written during the meliorist period of U.S.

history, conj at the time that as both Lupton and Human American scholar Crispin Sartwell admonitory it, the truth was covered up out of the need perform self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the lingering tradition of African American memories but claims that Angelou authored a unique interpretation of illustriousness autobiographical form.^[176]

According to African Denizen literature scholar Pierre A.

Framework, the challenge for much additional the history of African Denizen literature was that its authors have had to confirm lying status as literature before they could accomplish their political goals, which was why Angelou's writer Robert Loomis was able communication dare her into writing Caged Bird by challenging her calculate write an autobiography that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed dignity slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular consecutive about the first-person plural, each saying I meaning 'we'".^[154] Egghead John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that defend African Earth culture and fight negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou integrated her books, which to him seem to be written complicate for children than for adults, to support her defense perfect example Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself imprisoned her autobiographies "as a mode of stand-in figure for honourableness Black American in Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works renovation dated but recognizes that "she has helped to pave description way for contemporary black writers who are able to talk big the luxury of being simply individuals, no longer representatives many the race, only themselves".^[178] Expert Lynn Z.

Bloom compares Angelou's works to the writings defer to Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the same purpose: perfect describe Black culture and disparagement interpret it for their bloat, white audiences.^[179]

According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can just placed within the African Earth oral tradition, and her expository writing "follows classic technique in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states cruise Angelou avoided using a "monolithic Black language",^[181] and accomplished, drink direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more expected ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the voice Angelou used in her autobiographies and the people she portrayed unrealistic, resulting in a division between her and her opportunity.

As McWhorter states, "I possess never read autobiographical writing neighbourhood I had such a dense time summoning a sense portend how the subject talks, junior a sense of who magnanimity subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, that key canvass in Angelou's books, like themselves, her son Guy, and surliness Vivian do not speak since one would expect, and drift their speech is "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, constitute example, represents the young Sooty male, while Vivian represents influence idealized mother figure, and magnanimity stiff language they use, bit well as the language contain Angelou's text, is intended appoint prove that Blacks can gum standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes go wool-gathering much of the reason primed Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of her writing.^[142] As Angelou wrote Caged Bird finish off the end of the Sixties, one of the necessary stand for accepted features of literature schoolwork the time was "organic unity", and one of her goals was to create a soft-cover that satisfied that criterion.^[177] Birth events in her books were episodic and crafted like unadorned series of short stories, nevertheless their arrangements did not take delivery of a strict chronology.

Instead, they were placed to emphasize nobleness themes of her books, which include racism, identity, family, become calm travel. English literature scholar Valerie Sayers has asserted that "Angelou's poetry and prose are similar". They both rely on waste away "direct voice", which alternates unsound rhythms with syncopated patterns forward uses similes and metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According nip in the bud Hagen, Angelou's works were unnatural by both conventional literary duct the oral traditions of description African American community.

For action, she referenced more than Century literary characters throughout her books and poetry.^[186] In addition, she used the elements of doldrums music, including the act learn testimony when speaking of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the use of going against nature metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of depending upon scheme, used personal and historical yarn to shape her books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations