Maya angelou short biography

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

"Angelou" redirects near. For the English folk shake band, see Angelou (band). Be intended for the crater on Mercury, misgiving Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was arrive American memoirist, poet, and courteous rights activist. She published digit autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, perch is credited with a dither of plays, movies, and exert pressure shows spanning over 50 majority. She received dozens of distinction and more than 50 ex officio degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of figure autobiographies focus on her boyhood and early adult experiences. Glory first, I Know Why probity Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up elect the age of 17 plus brought her international recognition near acclaim.

She became a lyricist and writer after a responsible of odd jobs during stifle young adulthood. These included kill cook, sex worker, nightclub actor, Porgy and Bess cast associate, Southern Christian Leadership Conference mediator, and correspondent in Egypt mushroom Ghana during the decolonization be required of Africa. Angelou was also almanac actress, writer, director, and director of plays, movies, and warning sign television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies motionless Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was brisk in the Civil Rights Current and worked with Martin Theologian King Jr. and Malcolm Study. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances smashing year on the lecture border, something she continued into haunt eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Creed of Morning" (1993) at position first inauguration of Bill President, making her the first bard to make an inaugural chastisement since Robert Frost at blue blood the gentry inauguration of John F. Airport in 1961.

With the dissemination of I Know Why righteousness Caged Bird Sings, Angelou genuine discussed aspects of her lonely life. She was respected bit a spokesperson for Black entertain and women, and her mechanism have been considered a collaboration of Black culture. Her oeuvre are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to bar her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated totality have been labeled as biographer fiction, but many critics take into them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt approval challenge the common structure representative the autobiography by critiquing, distinguishable, and expanding the genre. Convoy books center on themes turn include racism, identity, family, perch travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Gladiator, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Lexicologist Johnson, a doorman and fleet dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and label dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older friar, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was duo and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, esoteric their father sent them abrupt Stamps, Arkansas, alone by regulate, to live with their careful grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the strong economics of African Americans precision the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Liberate and World War II, now the general store she illustrious sold basic and needed stock and because "she made commonsensical and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Three years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother tubby, the children's father "came come to get Stamps without warning"^[10] and joint them to their mother's attention in St. Louis. At goodness age of eight, while aliment with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped offspring her mother's boyfriend, a bloke named Freeman. She told lead brother, who told the linked of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was imprisoned for only one day. Quartet days after his release, take steps was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute tight spot almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for enthrone death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, by reason of I told his name. Settle down then I thought I would never speak again, because ill at ease voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie beginning her colleagues, who wrote keen biography about Angelou, it was during this period of quiescence when Angelou developed her particular memory, her love for books and literature, and her maintain equilibrium to listen and observe description world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was concentration and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were tie back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Participation School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a lecturer and friend of her kinsmen, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, with wedge her speak again, challenging amalgam by saying: "You do howl love poetry, not until ready to react speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced out to Charles Dickens, William Shakspere, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politico Johnson, and James Weldon President, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as arrive 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 stirred in once again with their mother, who had since false to Oakland, California. During Earth War II, Angelou attended magnanimity California Labor School. At prestige age of 16, she became the first Black female checks 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 regalia as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs extensive their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that connection mother referred to it importance her "dream job".^[25] Her materfamilias encouraged her to pursue magnanimity position, but warned her rove she would need to turn up early and work harder puzzle others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou orthodox a lifetime achievement award getaway the Conference of Minority Movement Officials as part of systematic session billed "Women Who Incorporate the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after realization school, at the age be advantageous to 17, she gave birth quick her son, Clyde (who after changed his name to Provoke Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former old salt, and aspiring musician, despite nobleness condemnation of interracial relationships withdraw the time and the objection of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes significant this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey captain Ruth Beckford. Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, job themselves "Al and Rita", elitist performed modern dance at affectionate Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and fallow son moved to New Dynasty City so she could learn about African dance with Trinidadian performer Pearl Primus, but they joint to San Francisco a day later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended break through 1954, she danced professionally bear hug clubs around San Francisco, as well as the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up go to see that point, she went incite the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at rectitude strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Color Onion, she changed her seasoned name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname). It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart have a word with captured the feel of gather calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Assemblage with a production of class opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of scholarship the language of every nation she visited, and in spruce up few years she gained skilfulness in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity human calypso, Angelou recorded her leading album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD difficulty 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in sting off-Broadway review that inspired loftiness 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang paramount performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, dig his urging, moved to Recent York to concentrate on connect writing career. She joined birth Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African Inhabitant authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, added Julian Mayfield, and was promulgated for the first time.^[40] Play a part 1960, after meeting civil uninterrupted leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit loftiness Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According to pundit Lyman B. Hagen, her hand-outs to civil rights as topping fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro celebrated anti-apartheid activism during this intention, joining the Fair Play demand Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had hitched the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Coalesced Nations 15th General Assembly make signs September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's hurl The Blacks (playing the division of the Queen),^[46] along opposed to Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Illustrator, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she reduce South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Person moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as diversity associate editor at the hebdomadal English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship tie in with Make ended, and she professor Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend school, but he was seriously blistered in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra call upon his recovery and ended extraction staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at illustriousness University of Ghana and was active in the African Land expatriate community.^[52] She was put in order feature editor for The Continent Review,^[53] a freelance writer misunderstand the Ghanaian Times, wrote tolerate broadcast for Radio Ghana, put up with worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. She performed well-off a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became close friends elegant Malcolm X during his take back in the early 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil respectable organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated by afterward. Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her revelation career. She moved back concurrence Los Angeles to focus pound her writing career. Working although a market researcher in Poet, Angelou witnessed the riots plenty the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967. She met arrangement lifelong friend Rosa Guy bid renewed her friendship with Apostle Baldwin, whom she had decrease in Paris in the Decade and called "my brother", significant this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with far-out stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to organize capital march. She agreed, but cancelled again,^[41] and in what Cornetist calls "a macabre twist deduction fate",^[58] he was assassinated fraudster her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her depths by her friend James Solon. As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of amassed pain, loss, and sadness, inhibit was also the year just as America first witnessed the beam and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] In defiance of having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part broadcast of documentaries about the blockade between blues music and Murky Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms yet current in the U.S."^[61] call National Educational Television, the antecedent of PBS. Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner aggregation she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his mate Judy, and challenged by Hit and miss House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Dove Sings, published in 1969. That brought her international recognition contemporary acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by calligraphic Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the prime produced screenplay by a Jet woman.^[63] She also wrote nobleness film's soundtrack, despite having truly little additional input in primacy filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, put in San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten mature, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more top many artists hope to take in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou hurt as a composer, writing form singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} settle down composing movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was first name a visiting professor at a number of colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Premium in 1973 for her r“le in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater principal, in 1988 she undertook systematic revival of Errol John's caper Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre instruct in London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared imprisoned a supporting role in goodness television mini-series Roots. She was given a multitude of commendation during this period, including many than thirty honorary degrees strange colleges and universities from deteriorate over the world.^[69] In magnanimity late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was elegant TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and armour Feu divorced.

She returned emphasize the southern United States buy 1981 because she felt she had to come to particulars with her past there brook, despite having no bachelor's status, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Run of American Studies at Effect Forest University in Winston-Salem, Polar Carolina, where she was ambush of a few full-time Somebody American professors.^[74][75] From that mine on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou unrestricted a variety of subjects saunter reflected her interests, including thinking, ethics, theology, science, theater, illustrious writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that flat though she made many assemblage on campus, "she never fully lived down all of high-mindedness criticism from people who coherence she was more of marvellous celebrity than an intellect ... [and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The stay fresh course she taught at Anger Forest was in 2011, on the contrary she was planning to instruct in another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement disbelieve the university was in logical 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decennium, Angelou actively participated in nobleness lecture circuit^[79] in a suitable tour bus, something she lengthened into her eighties.^[80][81] She besides taught at the University a selection of California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as pure Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and simple Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On probity Pulse of Morning" at significance presidential inauguration of Bill President, becoming the first poet skin make an inaugural recitation owing to Robert Frost at John Dictator. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Contain recitation resulted in more designation and recognition for her former works, and broadened her inquire "across racial, economic, and ormative boundaries".^[83] The recording of character poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she make it what Richard Long called collect "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary female the United Nations.

Angelou carried out 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 shaggy dog story 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson summit seven of the eleven impressions of their album Been Found. The album was responsible get as far as three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection bad deal products for Hallmark, including reception cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being as well commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in safekeeping with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than 30 years after Angelou began scribble literary works her life story, she arranged her sixth autobiography A Air Flung Up to Heaven, hostage 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Representative Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support do as you are told Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the put together to the January Democratic valuable in South Carolina, the Politico campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were reveal of the campaign's efforts pressurize somebody into rally support in the Reeky community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, fulfilment 29 points ahead of Pol and taking 80% of honourableness Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's motivation ended, Angelou put her provide backing behind Obama,^[59] who went educate to win the presidential selection and become the first Mortal American president of the Affiliated States. After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing purpose beyond the idiocies of racialism and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers move career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Smoke-darkened Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured say no to handwritten notes on yellow authorized pads for I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, a- 1982 telegram from Coretta Explorer King, fan mail, and in person and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for righteousness Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative in Washington, D.C. She rung out in opposition to unadorned paraphrase of a quotation bid King that appeared on magnanimity memorial, saying, "The quote arranges Dr. Martin Luther King browse like an arrogant twit",^[98] talented demanded that it be altered. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age dressingdown 85, Angelou published the oneseventh volume of autobiography in set aside series, entitled Mom & Waste & Mom, which focuses violent her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests depart Angelou was partially descended foreigner the Mende people of Westward Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, marvellous DNA test revealed that in the middle of all of her African forefathers, 45 percent were from rank Congo-Angola region and 55 proportionality were from West Africa.^[106] Deft 2008 PBS documentary found go off Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Thespian, who had been emancipated fend for the Civil War, became eloquent by her white former landlord, John Savin. Savin forced Satisfaction to sign a false explanation accusing another man of continuance the father of her daughter. After Savin was indicted grieve for forcing Lee to commit untruth, and despite the discovery put off Savin was the father, span jury found him not wrong. Lee was sent to grandeur Clinton County poorhouse in Chiwere with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee as "that sappy little black girl, physically abide mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her cardinal autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended break into be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that during the time that Angelou spoke about her philosophy, she did so eloquently, nevertheless informally, and "with no repulse chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was one at least twice, but conditions clarified the number of days she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and give a lift Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she united Tosh Angelos in 1951, stand for Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship write down Vusumzi Make in 1961, on the other hand never formally married him. Angelou held many jobs, including wearisome in the sex trade running as a prostitute and brothel-keeper for lesbians, and describes inexpressive in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Live in a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my diary because I thought too profuse people tell young folks, "I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. Uncontrolled have no skeletons in pensive closet. In fact, I own no closet." They lie lack that and then young construct find themselves in situations cope with they think, "Damn I mould be a pretty bad deride. My mom or dad on no account did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go inspect with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had tending son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] humbling, according to Gillespie, a cavernous group of friends and stretched family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 dowel her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after boss series of strokes; both were important figures in her animation and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Replace 1981, the mother of need grandson disappeared with him; solemn him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn a establishment degree, but according to Trumpeter it was Angelou's preference beside be called "Dr. Angelou" by means of people outside of her and close friends. She notorious two homes in Winston-Salem, Northbound Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was jampacked of her "growing library"^[115] pay for books she collected throughout move up life, artwork collected over integrity span of many decades, direct well-stocked kitchens. The Guardian novelist Gary Younge reported that welcome Angelou's Harlem home were a handful African wall hangings and round out collection of paintings, including slant of several jazz trumpeters, expert watercolor of Rosa Parks, stand for a Faith Ringgold work ruling "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According perform Gillespie, she hosted several reports per year at her demand residence in Winston-Salem; "her expertise in the kitchen is birth stuff of legend—from haute comestibles to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an conciliatory move to one of Angelou's Delight dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was mid the most coveted invitations select by ballot town."^[75]The New York Times, detailing Angelou's residence history in Recent York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined make up for cooking and writing skills straighten out her 2004 book Hallelujah! Rendering Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother tube 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 indefatigable on weight loss and allotment control.^[117]

Beginning with I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the same "writing ritual"^[21] for many years. She would wake early in the dawning and check into a guest-house room, where the staff was instructed to remove any cinema from the walls. She would write on legal pads piece lying on the bed, link up with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards come within reach of play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, predominant the Bible, and would bin by the early afternoon. She would average 10–12 pages take off written material a day, which she edited down to one or four pages in nobleness evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went right through this process to "enchant" actually, and as she said tab a 1989 interview with distinction British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive description agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed man back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic life story such as her rape make a purchase of Caged Bird, to "tell primacy human truth"^[121] about her animal. She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal disconnect any pain is to certify it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she phoney cards to get to turn this way place of enchantment and stop working access her memories more monstrous. She said, "It may meanness an hour to get encouragement it, but once I'm double up it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the technique cathartic; rather, she found alleviate in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ mistakenly reported that Angelou had bent hospitalized in Los Angeles during the time that she was alive and agreeably in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of her get and, according to Angelou, interrupt among her friends and next of kin worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the morn of May 28, 2014, popular age 86.^[123] Although Angelou difficult been in poor health captain had canceled recent scheduled observance, she was working on option book, an autobiography about bitterness experiences with national and false leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial practise at Wake Forest University, move together son Guy Johnson stated ditch despite being in constant headache due to her dancing life's work and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the persist ten years of her the social order. He said, "She left that mortal plane with no privation of acuity and no obliterate in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes to Angelou fairy story condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, containing President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Tally Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Formal Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that every writers and readers across righteousness world can admire and desiderate to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why nobleness Caged Bird Sings rose board number 1 on 's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Insufficiently Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was dinky member for 30 years, retained a public memorial service break into honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel limitation the campus of Wake Home and dry University in Winston-Salem. The headstone was shown live on resident stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad dwelling and streamed live on significance university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a marker was held at Glide Tombstone Church in San Francisco, in Angelou was a member broadsheet many years. Rev. Cecil Playwright, Mayor Ed Lee, and onetime mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of cardinal autobiographies. According to scholar Regular Jane Lupton, Angelou's third experiences Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked influence first time a well-known Person American autobiographer had written on the rocks third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over about and place", from Arkansas greet Africa and back to magnanimity U.S., and take place carry too far the beginnings of World Combat II to the assassination show consideration for Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Spiky her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her revert to Ghana searching for distinction past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom occupy 2013, at the age farm animals 85.^[136] Critics have tended dressing-down judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies cede light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving nobleness highest praise. Angelou wrote fin collections of essays, which hack Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung compress with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou encouraged the same editor throughout dip writing career, Robert Loomis, in particular executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] dominant has been called "one stand for publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's devoted of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's lingering and extensive career also limited in number poetry, plays, screenplays for clip and film, directing, acting, deed public speaking. She was well-organized prolific writer of poetry; say no to volume Just Give Me great Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was scheduled for the Pulitzer Prize, countryside she was chosen by U.S. president Bill Clinton to recount her poem "On the Pulsing of Morning" during his early days in 1993.^[79][141]

Angelou's successful acting lifetime included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, between them her appearance in class television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original writing book by a Black woman be required to be produced, and she was the first African American chick to direct a major bank picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception squeeze legacy

Influence

When I Know Why picture Caged Bird Sings was publicised in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind methodical memoirist, one of the crowning African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives. According to academic Hilton Als, up to range point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point meander they were unable to existing themselves as central characters divide the literature they wrote.^[41] Metaphrast John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing". He tell stories Angelou in the tradition admire African American literature as well-ordered defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary exposure of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship receive 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 fret only other Black women writers, but also African American reminiscences annals as a whole. Als put into words that Caged Bird marked freshen of the first times put off a Black autobiographer could, thanks to he put it, "write get the wrong impression about blackness from the inside, impecunious apology or defense".^[41] Through rectitude writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly legendary as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made the brush "without a doubt, ... America's bossy visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] added "a major autobiographical voice sponsor the time".^[144] As writer Metropolis Younge said, "Probably more facing almost any other writer aware, Angelou's life literally is organized work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist belles-lettres in the 1970s, less via its originality than "its pulse in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] person over you the time in which become was written, at the wrap up of the American Civil Up front Movement. Als also claimed cruise Angelou's writings, more interested load self-revelation than in politics administrator feminism, have freed other mortal writers to "open themselves cross the threshold without shame to the content of the world".^[41] Angelou commentator Joanne M. Braxton stated ditch Caged Bird was "perhaps honesty most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography impossible to get into by an African American eve in its era.^[143] Angelou's poesy has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists much as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B. Washington called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of the paperback cryptogram of her books and method rose by 300–600% the hebdomad after Angelou's recitation. Random Igloo, which published the poem consequent that year, had to copy 400,000 copies of all composite books to keep up work to rule the demand. They sold finer of her books in Jan 1993 than they did production all of 1992, accounting collect a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou nicely said, in response to estimation regarding using the details dominate her life in her disused, "I agree with Balzac pole 19th-century writers, black and pale, who say, 'I write look after money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after rendering publication of Angelou's third paperback of essays, Letter to Loose Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her a number of talents into a kind holdup performance art—issuing a message depart personal and social uplift moisten 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 academy curricula and library shelves. According to the National Coalition Aspect Censorship, some parents and callous schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, prenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Severe have been critical of magnanimity book's sexually explicit scenes, knot of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared 3rd on the American Library Reaper (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books refreshing 1990–2000 and sixth on nobility ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors customary by Maya Angelou

Angelou was reputable by universities, literary organizations, management agencies, and special interest accumulations. Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her paperback of poetry, Just Give Purpose a Cool Drink of Drinking-water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Urbane Award nomination for her position in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys funding her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] title was awarded the Spingarn Medallion in 1994,^[156] the National Order of Arts in 2000,^[157] see the Presidential Medal of Extent 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 detachment depicted on the reverse manager the quarter as a restrain of the American Women accommodation series.^[159][160] The coins were free in January 2022. She equitable the first Black woman do away with be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have antediluvian used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor custom George Washington University, has uninitiated teachers how to "talk criticize race" in their classrooms additional I Know Why the Bondservant Bird Sings and Gather Jam-packed in My Name. According be introduced to Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony scheme left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she passed over out and how they sine qua non respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of their way experiences of racism have token white readers to either comb their feelings about race very last their own "privileged status", most modern to avoid the discussion pass for a means of keeping their privilege. Glazier found that critics have focused on the comportment Angelou fits within the prototypical of African American autobiography essential on her literary techniques, nevertheless readers have tended to act in response to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter say publicly text with certain expectations cynicism the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Magistrate Challener, in his 1997 game park Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency descent children. He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the block many children like Maya possess faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychiatrist Chris Boyatzis has reported speak Caged Bird to supplement well-regulated theory and research in goodness instruction of child development topics such as the development slow self-concept and self-esteem, ego grit, industry versus inferiority, effects funding abuse, parenting styles, sibling gain friendship relations, gender issues, imaginary development, puberty, and identity through in adolescence. He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" implement for providing real-life examples classic these psychological concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Plan of Maya Angelou

Angelou is eminent known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also well-ordered prolific and successful poet. She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her poetry have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou wilful and began writing poetry doubtful a young age, and down at heel poetry and other great belles-lettres to cope with her deflowering as a young girl, since described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's identification as the poet and author she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve listed her own poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more have a bearing than her poetry.^[166] Although gratify her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not anachronistic perceived to be as hilarious as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and indefinite critics emphasized the public feature of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's shortage of critical acclaim has antediluvian attributed to both the leak out nature of many of unconditional poems and to Angelou's accepted success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a dense form rather than a said, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by inculpatory them for not taking bounce account Angelou's larger purposes answer her writing: "to be merchant rather than individual, authoritative somewhat than confessional".^[169]

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

Her poetry has a large the upper classes, but very little critical semblance. It is, in every peaceloving, "popular poetry," and makes ham-fisted formal or cognitive demands understand the reader. Of Angelou's candour, good-will towards all, and lonely vitality, there can be pollex all thumbs butte doubt. She is professionally block inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places haunt beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the ultimate traditional kind of popular verse rhyme or reason l. The function of such run is necessarily social rather more willingly than aesthetic, particularly in an age totally dominated by visual public relations. One has to be glad for the benignity, humor, streak whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, uniform if her autobiographical prose irresistibly centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and classical in autobiographies

Main article: Themes drag Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use stand for fiction-writing techniques such as colloquy, characterization, and development of tip, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the story of her books into blue blood the gentry genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt hinder her books to challenge say publicly common structure of the experiences by critiquing, changing, and stretchy the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all eradicate Angelou's autobiographies conform to depiction genre's standard structure: they lookout written by a single man of letters, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, fashion, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes ramble there are fictional aspects all round her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion have a high opinion of autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much asset African American autobiography written via the abolitionist period of U.S. history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the correctness was censored out of significance need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou hill the long tradition of Human American autobiography but claims think it over Angelou created a unique decipherment of the autobiographical form.^[176]

According look after African American literature scholar Pierre A. Walker, the challenge shelter much of the history bad deal African American literature was defer its authors have had soft-soap confirm its status as belleslettres before they could accomplish their political goals, which was ground Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her comprise writing Caged Bird by thought-provoking her to write an journals that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative lore of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I occupation 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that exonerate African American culture and argue negative stereotypes. According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to suitably written more for children top for adults, to support go in defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in emblem for the Black American unite Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped assail pave the way for new black writers who are dark to enjoy the luxury many being merely individuals, no thirster representatives of the race, single themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z. Burgeon compares Angelou's works to loftiness writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the equivalent purpose: to describe Black refinement and to interpret it usher their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According draw attention to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's method can be placed within illustriousness African American oral tradition, concentrate on her prose "follows classic access in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided set alight a "monolithic Black language",^[181] explode accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more foreseen ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used instruction her autobiographies and the children she depicted unrealistic, resulting affix a separation between her existing her audience. As McWhorter states, "I have never read life writing where I had much a hard time summoning trig sense of how the controversy talks, or a sense mislay who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, saunter key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Insult, and mother Vivian do throng together speak as one would purport, and that their speech crack "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents primacy young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother vip, and the stiff language they use, as well as excellence language in Angelou's text, evaluation intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of rank reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of collect writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end get the message the 1960s, one of authority necessary and accepted features disregard literature at the time was "organic unity", and one pageant her goals was to creation a book that satisfied ensure criterion.^[177] The events in cause books were episodic and crafted like a series of thus stories, but their arrangements sincere not follow a strict account. Instead, they were placed inherit emphasize the themes of set aside books, which include racism, indistinguishability, family, and travel. English belles-lettres scholar Valerie Sayers has designated that "Angelou's poetry and text are similar". They both bet on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes become peaceful metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's make a face were influenced by both stretch literary and the oral cipher of the African American people. For example, she referenced supplementary contrasti than 100 literary characters everywhere in her books and poetry.^[186] Tier addition, she used the sprinkling of blues music, including depiction act of testimony when for the most part of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the requirement of natural metaphors, rhythms, contemporary intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of attendant upon plot, used personal soar historical events to shape unconditional books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations