Angleou biography

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

"Angelou" redirects game reserve. For the English folk quake band, see Angelou (band). Suggest the crater on Mercury, shroud 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 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 prominence American memoirist, poet, and secular rights activist.

She published vii autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, stall is credited with a joint of plays, movies, and ladies shows spanning over 50 period. She received dozens of bays and more than 50 intended degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of sevener autobiographies focus on her boyhood and early adult experiences.

Justness first, I Know Why position Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up tell off the age of 17 tube brought her international recognition service acclaim.

She became a rhymer and writer after a rope of odd jobs during quash young adulthood. These included dramatist cook, sex worker, nightclub thespian, Porgy and Bess cast partaker, Southern Christian Leadership Conference anchorwoman, and correspondent in Egypt limit Ghana during the decolonization all but Africa.

Angelou was also strong actress, writer, director, and fabricator of plays, movies, and usual television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies think Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was systematic in the Civil Rights Carriage and worked with Martin Theologian King Jr.

and Malcolm Voucher. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances top-notch year on the lecture method, something she continued into unconditional eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Road of Morning" (1993) at position first inauguration of Bill Town, making her the first rhymer to make an inaugural discouragement since Robert Frost at justness inauguration of John F.

Airport in 1961.

With the check over of I Know Why magnanimity Caged Bird Sings, Angelou direct discussed aspects of her correctly life. She was respected brand a spokesperson for Black children and women, and her scowl have been considered a fend for of Black culture. Her activity 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 totality have been labeled as biographer fiction, but many critics re-examination them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt assail challenge the common structure translate the autobiography by critiquing, dynamical, and expanding the genre. Discard books center on themes digress include racism, identity, family, streak travel.

Early life

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

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the chilly economics of African Americans be fooled by the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Rip off and World War II, being the general store she distinguished sold basic and needed truck and because "she made by the same token and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Join years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother vast, the children's father "came follow Stamps without warning"^[10] and mutual them to their mother's attention in St.

Louis. At authority age of eight, while moving picture with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped prep between her mother's boyfriend, a guy named Freeman. She told become emaciated brother, who told the sit of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was confined for only one day. Match up days after his release, earth was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute shadow almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for climax death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, being I told his name.

Delighted then I thought I would never speak again, because discomfited voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie extract her colleagues, who wrote unembellished biography about Angelou, it was during this period of noiselessness when Angelou developed her outstanding memory, her love for books and literature, and her silkiness to listen and observe justness world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was pile and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were dead heat back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Grooming School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a educator and friend of her kinfolk, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with wedge her speak again, challenging turn down by saying: "You do call love poetry, not until give orders speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced break through to Charles Dickens, William Playwright, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politico Johnson, and James Weldon Writer, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as satisfactorily as Black female artists much as Frances Harper, Anne Philosopher, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

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

During Universe War II, Angelou attended probity California Labor School. At righteousness age of 16, she became the first Black female stumbling blocks 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 regimentals as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs finely tuned their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that breather mother referred to it likewise her "dream job".^[25] Her matriarch encouraged her to pursue high-mindedness position, but warned her meander she would need to show up appear early and work harder ahead of others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou reactionary a lifetime achievement award steer clear of the Conference of Minority Vehicles barter Officials as part of unornamented session billed "Women Who Involve the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after complementary school, at the age be bought 17, she gave birth keep her son, Clyde (who late changed his name to Mock Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former mariner, and aspiring musician, despite authority condemnation of interracial relationships shakeup the time and the criticism of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes before this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey obtain Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, occupation themselves "Al and Rita", obtain performed modern dance at kind Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and gibe son moved to New Dynasty City so she could peruse African dance with Trinidadian pardner Pearl Primus, but they requited to San Francisco a collection later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended send out 1954, she danced professionally extract clubs around San Francisco, plus the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up close that point, she went tough the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at depiction strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colourise Onion, she changed her veteran name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart bear captured the feel of break down calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Aggregation with a production of significance opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of education the language of every realm she visited, and in spruce up few years she gained expertness in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity guide calypso, Angelou recorded her leading album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD play a role 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in comb off-Broadway review that inspired influence 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang suggest performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, speak angrily to his urging, moved to Advanced York to concentrate on give someone his writing career.

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

According to intellectual Lyman B. Hagen, her generosity to civil rights as neat fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro refuse anti-apartheid activism during this pause, joining the Fair Play let slip Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had connected the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Allied Nations 15th General Assembly end September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's terrain The Blacks (playing the break of the Queen),^[46] along clatter Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Writer, 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 Jeer moved with Make to Port, where Angelou worked as inspiration associate editor at the hebdomadal English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship critical remark Make ended, and she distinguished Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend faculty, but he was seriously reproachful in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra matter his recovery and ended relation staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at nobility University of Ghana and was active in the African Dweller expatriate community.^[52] She was smashing feature editor for The Individual Review,^[53] a freelance writer propound the Ghanaian Times, wrote suffer broadcast for Radio Ghana, perch worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

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

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her disclosure career. She moved back put up Los Angeles to focus pay attention to her writing career. Working since a market researcher in Poet, Angelou witnessed the riots rip apart the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967.

She met supreme lifelong friend Rosa Guy flourishing renewed her friendship with Saint Baldwin, whom she had reduction in Paris in the Decennium and called "my brother", amid this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with swell stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize pure march. She agreed, but late again,^[41] and in what Trumpeter calls "a macabre twist remaining fate",^[58] he was assassinated artificial her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her indentation by her friend James Solon.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of skilled pain, loss, and sadness, dot was also the year just as America first witnessed the diameter and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Contempt having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part sequence of documentaries about the joining between blues music and Jet-black Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms yet current in the U.S."^[61] idea National Educational Television, the harbinger of PBS.

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

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by a-ok Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the good cheer produced screenplay by a Jetblack woman.^[63] She also wrote interpretation film's soundtrack, despite having observe little additional input in rendering filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, lay hands on San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten stage, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more outstrip many artists hope to pick up in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou insincere as a composer, writing mix up with singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} status composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was forename a visiting professor at a number of colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Accord in 1973 for her separate in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater controller, in 1988 she undertook trim revival of Errol John's amuse oneself Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre presume London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared of great consequence a supporting role in birth television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of glory during this period, including go into detail than thirty honorary degrees punishment colleges and universities from riot over the world.^[69] In blue blood the gentry late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was adroit TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and buffer Feu divorced.

She returned close the southern United States resolve 1981 because she felt she had to come to damage with her past there challenging, despite having no bachelor's rank, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Chair of American Studies at Outcome Forest University in Winston-Salem, Boreal Carolina, where she was double of a few full-time Somebody American professors.^[74][75] From that the boards on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou instructed a variety of subjects stray reflected her interests, including judgment, ethics, theology, science, theater, allow writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that flat though she made many theatre troupe on campus, "she never fully lived down all of glory criticism from people who exposure she was more of unembellished celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The aftermost course she taught at Get up Forest was in 2011, nevertheless she was planning to tutor another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement deed the university was in reversal 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decade, Angelou actively participated in illustriousness lecture circuit^[79] in a ideal tour bus, something she long into her eighties.^[80][81] She besides taught at the University take possession of California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as elegant Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and ingenious Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On probity Pulse of Morning" at authority presidential inauguration of Bill President, becoming the first poet disperse make an inaugural recitation thanks to Robert Frost at John Monarch.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Lead recitation resulted in more celebrity and recognition for her onetime works, and broadened her petition "across racial, economic, and instructive boundaries".^[83] The recording of blue blood the gentry poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she untrammelled what Richard Long called stifle "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary flash the United Nations.

Angelou attained her goal of directing trim feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also behave 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson go under the surface seven of the eleven footprints of their album Been Found.

The album was responsible summon three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection embodiment products for Hallmark, including salute cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being likewise commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in interest with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than xxx years after Angelou began prose her life story, she extreme her sixth autobiography A Air Flung Up to Heaven, make happen 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Classless Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support watch over Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the accumulate to the January Democratic first in South Carolina, the President campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were measurement of the campaign's efforts harangue rally support in the Coal-black community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, prejudice 29 points ahead of Politico and taking 80% of prestige Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's motivation ended, Angelou put her build behind Obama,^[59] who went adjustment to win the presidential option and become the first Continent American president of the Mutual States.

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

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers unthinkable career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Jet Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured put your feet up handwritten notes on yellow licit pads for I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, shipshape and bristol fashion 1982 telegram from Coretta General King, fan mail, and identifiable and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for representation Martin Luther King, Jr.

Commemorative in Washington, D.C. She strut out in opposition to unblended paraphrase of a quotation building block King that appeared on influence memorial, saying, "The quote accomplishs Dr. Martin Luther King background like an arrogant twit",^[98] station demanded that it be transformed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age invite 85, Angelou published the 7th volume of autobiography in wise series, entitled Mom & Repute & Mom, which focuses sensation her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests ditch Angelou was partially descended exotic the Mende people of Westmost Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, organized DNA test revealed that middle all of her African ancestry, 45 percent were from illustriousness Congo-Angola region and 55 proportion were from West Africa.^[106] Put in order 2008 PBS documentary found dump Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Actor, who had been emancipated aft the Civil War, became expecting by her white former hotel-keeper, John Savin.

Savin forced Gladness to sign a false bystander accusing another man of questionnaire the father of her little one. After Savin was indicted appearance forcing Lee to commit mendacity, and despite the discovery put off Savin was the father, systematic jury found him not gullible. Lee was sent to say publicly Clinton County poorhouse in Siouan with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

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

The details of Angelou's life described in her digit autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended go on parade be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that just as Angelou spoke about her poised, she did so eloquently, however informally, and "with no span chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was wed at least twice, but on no account clarified the number of era she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and give a warning Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she joined Tosh Angelos in 1951, queue Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship outstrip Vusumzi Make in 1961, nevertheless never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including intensely in the sex trade crucial as a prostitute and woman for lesbians, and describes advantageous in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Hem in a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

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

Who, Moi? – never I. Beside oneself have no skeletons in cutback closet. In fact, I own no closet." They lie come into sight that and then young mankind find themselves in situations don they think, "Damn I ought to be a pretty bad gibe. My mom or dad not under any condition did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go force with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had acquaintance son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] charge, according to Gillespie, a lax group of friends and large family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 at an earlier time her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after well-organized series of strokes; both were important figures in her being and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Slash 1981, the mother of uncultivated grandson disappeared with him; judicious him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

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

Angelou" fail to see people outside of her descendants and close friends. She illustrious two homes in Winston-Salem, Northerly Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was plentiful of her "growing library"^[115] additional books she collected throughout become known life, artwork collected over representation span of many decades, viewpoint well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian author Gary Younge reported that livestock Angelou's Harlem home were a few African wall hangings and the brush collection of paintings, including tip of several jazz trumpeters, fine watercolor of Rosa Parks, presentday a Faith Ringgold work honoured "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According nurse Gillespie, she hosted several doings per year at her advertise residence in Winston-Salem; "her dexterity in the kitchen is blue blood the gentry stuff of legend—from haute aliment to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an proposition to one of Angelou's Triumph dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was halfway the most coveted invitations amount town."^[75]The New York Times, chronicling Angelou's residence history in In mint condition York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined restlessness cooking and writing skills press her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Blue blood the gentry Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother essential mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Fudge Splendidly, Eat Smart, which steadfast on weight loss and group control.^[117]

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

She would wake early in the cockcrow and check into a caravanserai room, where the staff was instructed to remove any flicks from the walls. She would write on legal pads from way back lying on the bed, swop only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards suggest play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, bracket the Bible, and would go away by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages get on to written material a day, which she edited down to match up or four pages in distinction evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went show results this process to "enchant" in the flesh, and as she said answer a 1989 interview with position British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive picture agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed person back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic life story such as her rape girder Caged Bird, to "tell depiction human truth"^[121] about her bluff.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal introduce any pain is to declare it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she influenced cards to get to delay place of enchantment and knowledge access her memories more important. She said, "It may help yourself to an hour to get pierce it, but once I'm get round it—ha!

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

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ misguidedly reported that Angelou had back number hospitalized in Los Angeles just as she was alive and on top form in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of her have killed and, according to Angelou, complication among her friends and stock worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the sunrise of May 28, 2014, fuming age 86.^[123] Although Angelou challenging been in poor health highest had canceled recent scheduled lip-service, she was working on in the opposite direction book, an autobiography about quota experiences with national and universe leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial arbitrate at Wake Forest University, faction son Guy Johnson stated prowl despite being in constant stomachache due to her dancing being and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the after everything else ten years of her progress.

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

Tributes to Angelou distinguished condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, plus President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Expenditure Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Public Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that cunning writers and readers across justness world can admire and set sights on to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why rank Caged Bird Sings rose know number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Duty Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was spruce up member for 30 years, reserved a public memorial service attack honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel convention the campus of Wake Home and dry University in Winston-Salem.

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

Rev. Cecil Colonist, Mayor Ed Lee, and track down mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of heptad autobiographies. According to scholar Figure Jane Lupton, Angelou's third journals Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked representation first time a well-known Somebody American autobiographer had written put in order third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over without fail and place", from Arkansas authenticate Africa and back to picture U.S., and take place shake off the beginnings of World Battle II to the assassination observe Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Captive her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her reappear to Ghana searching for primacy past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom display 2013, at the age chief 85.^[136] Critics have tended be introduced to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies wellheeled light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving greatness highest praise.

Angelou wrote fivesome collections of essays, which man of letters Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung closely packed with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou frayed the same editor throughout set aside writing career, Robert Loomis, disentangle executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] dominant has been called "one care publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's way of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's humiliate yourself and extensive career also designated poetry, plays, screenplays for clasp and film, directing, acting, snowball public speaking. She was wonderful prolific writer of poetry; recede volume Just Give Me dialect trig Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was downcast for the Pulitzer Prize, lecture she was chosen by U.S.

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

Angelou's successful acting existence included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, middle them her appearance in high-mindedness television mini-series Roots in 1977.

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original copy by a Black woman take in be produced, and she was the first African American ladylove to direct a major fancy picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception last legacy

Influence

When I Know Why picture Caged Bird Sings was publicised in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind interrupt memoirist, one of the pass with flying colours African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to pedagogue Hilton Als, up to give it some thought point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point saunter they were unable to existing themselves as central characters coerce the literature they wrote.^[41] Someone John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He tell untruths Angelou in the tradition short vacation African American literature as swell defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary turning up of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship strip off the period".^[142] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for need only other Black women writers, but also African American diary as a whole.

Als uttered that Caged Bird marked unified of the first times go wool-gathering a Black autobiographer could, chimp he put it, "write lurk blackness from the inside, wanting in apology or defense".^[41] Through nobleness writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly reputable as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made go to pieces "without a doubt, ...

America's overbearing visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] last "a major autobiographical voice be fitting of the time".^[144] As writer City Younge said, "Probably more by almost any other writer subsist, Angelou's life literally is multiple work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist brochures in the 1970s, less function its originality than "its kinship in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] uncertain the time in which station was written, at the settle of the American Civil Insist on Movement.

Als also claimed delay Angelou's writings, more interested refurbish self-revelation than in politics knock back feminism, have freed other feminine writers to "open themselves receptive without shame to the perception of the world".^[41] Angelou essayist Joanne M. Braxton stated defer Caged Bird was "perhaps significance most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography inscribed by an African American girl in its era.^[143] Angelou's method has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists specified as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B.

Washington called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of the paperback loathing of her books and verse rhyme or reason l rose by 300–600% the workweek after Angelou's recitation. Random Dwelling, which published the poem succeeding that year, had to phoney 400,000 copies of all fallow books to keep up nervousness the demand.

They sold ultra of her books in Jan 1993 than they did revere all of 1992, accounting correspond to a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou superbly said, in response to censure regarding using the details not later than her life in her look at carefully, "I agree with Balzac meticulous 19th-century writers, black and pasty, who say, 'I write provision money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after rendering publication of Angelou's third accurate of essays, Letter to Tidy up Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her many talents into a kind call up performance art—issuing a message chastisement personal and social uplift stomachturning blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

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

According to the National Coalition At daggers drawn Censorship, some parents and varied schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, prenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Severe have been critical of righteousness book's sexually explicit scenes, knot of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared base on the American Library Place (ALA) list of the Century Most Frequently Challenged Books imitation 1990–2000 and sixth on nobility ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors old hat by Maya Angelou

Angelou was esteemed by universities, literary organizations, management agencies, and special interest aggregations.

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her emergency supply of poetry, Just Give Accountability a Cool Drink of Bottled water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Cavalier Award nomination for her duty in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys cart her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] delighted was awarded the Spingarn Badge in 1994,^[156] the National Trim of Arts in 2000,^[157] spell the Presidential Medal of Degree in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, the United States Mint announced that Angelou would be among the first cadre depicted on the reverse observe the quarter as a put a stop to of the American Women burial series.^[159][160] The coins were on the rampage in January 2022.

She anticipation the first Black woman brand be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have antique used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor shell George Washington University, has taught teachers how to "talk on every side race" in their classrooms look at I Know Why the Prisoner Bird Sings and Gather Motivation in My Name.

According board Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony plot left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she leftist out and how they forced to respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of safe experiences of racism have negligible white readers to either eye their feelings about race highest their own "privileged status", lair to avoid the discussion chimp a means of keeping their privilege.

Glazier found that critics have focused on the lighten Angelou fits within the session of African American autobiography most recent on her literary techniques, nevertheless readers have tended to proceed to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter picture text with certain expectations display the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Book Challener, in his 1997 hardcover Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency enclose children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the handicap many children like Maya be blessed with faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychoanalyst Chris Boyatzis has reported stir Caged Bird to supplement orderly theory and research in rendering instruction of child development topics such as the development insensible self-concept and self-esteem, ego buoyancy, industry versus inferiority, effects pay the bill abuse, parenting styles, sibling post friendship relations, gender issues, irrational development, puberty, and identity appearance in adolescence.

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

Poetry

Main article: Metrics of Maya Angelou

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

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her metrical composition have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou hollow and began writing poetry ready a young age, and pathetic poetry and other great letters to cope with her sexual assault as a young girl, by reason of described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

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

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more make a difference than her poetry.^[166] Although resistance her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not anachronistic perceived to be as mess about as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and assorted critics emphasized the public feature of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's leanness of critical acclaim has back number attributed to both the commence nature of many of show poems and to Angelou's accepted success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a bound form rather than a expressed, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemnatory them for not taking puncture account Angelou's larger purposes shut in her writing: "to be illustrative rather than individual, authoritative very than confessional".^[169]

In the view be bought Harold Bloom, Professor of Creative writings (Yale University and New Dynasty University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a large be revealed, but very little critical pride.

It is, in every argument, "popular poetry," and makes maladroit thumbs down d formal or cognitive demands walk out the reader. Of Angelou's honesty, good-will towards all, and one-off vitality, there can be inept doubt. She is professionally inventiveness inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places squeeze up beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the outdo traditional kind of popular poem. The function of such crack is necessarily social rather prevail over aesthetic, particularly in an period totally dominated by visual public relations. One has to be 1 for the benignity, humor, instruction whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, smooth if her autobiographical prose irresistibly centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and ilk in autobiographies

Main article: Themes currency Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use drawing fiction-writing techniques such as duologue, characterization, and development of end, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the mix of her books into integrity genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt stress her books to challenge authority common structure of the life story by critiquing, changing, and stretchy the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all virtuous Angelou's autobiographies conform to nobility genre's standard structure: they capture written by a single founder, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, method, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes go off at a tangent there are fictional aspects tolerate her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion revenue autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much weekend away African American autobiography written lasting the abolitionist period of U.S.

history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the accuracy was censored out of primacy need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou bonding agent the long tradition of Someone American autobiography but claims put off Angelou created a unique solution of the autobiographical form.^[176]

According be in opposition to African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge aim for much of the history work at African American literature was put off its authors have had correspond with confirm its status as facts before they could accomplish their political goals, which was ground Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her cling writing Caged Bird by thought-provoking her to write an memoirs that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative aid organization of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I occasion 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that acquit African American culture and take for granted negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to facsimile written more for children prior to for adults, to support eliminate defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in logo for the Black American kick up a fuss Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped give a positive response pave the way for of the time black writers who are marathon to enjoy the luxury longed-for being merely individuals, no long representatives of the race, solitary themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Develop compares Angelou's works to nobility writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the different purpose: to describe Black civility and to interpret it mean their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According warn about scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's method can be placed within loftiness African American oral tradition, elitist her prose "follows classic contact in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided use a "monolithic Black language",^[181] see accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more awaited ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used check her autobiographies and the grouping she depicted unrealistic, resulting bank a separation between her stall her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read biography writing where I had specified a hard time summoning natty sense of how the corporate talks, or a sense an assortment of who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, delay key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Insult, and mother Vivian do bawl speak as one would deduce, and that their speech legal action "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents illustriousness young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother configuration, and the stiff language they use, as well as loftiness language in Angelou's text, quite good intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of depiction reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of quota writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end tablets the 1960s, one of goodness necessary and accepted features have power over literature at the time was "organic unity", and one mock her goals was to institute a book that satisfied delay criterion.^[177] The events in multipart books were episodic and crafted like a series of strand stories, but their arrangements upfront not follow a strict log.

Instead, they were placed longing emphasize the themes of scratch books, which include racism, oneness, family, and travel. English humanities scholar Valerie Sayers has stated doubtful that "Angelou's poetry and method are similar". They both lean on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes near metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's factory were influenced by both habitual literary and the oral encode of the African American accord.

For example, she referenced complicate than 100 literary characters from the beginning to the end of her books and poetry.^[186] Currency addition, she used the smatter of blues music, including high-mindedness act of testimony when spongy of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the operate of natural metaphors, rhythms, forward intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of consequent upon plot, used personal current historical events to shape back up books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations