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Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was a multitalented poet and author known for her acclaimed 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings .

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Life as an performer and activist, movie career, son and husbands, legacy: maya angelou quarter and more, who was maya angelou.

A multitalented writer and performer, Maya Angelou is best known for her work as an author and poet . Her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , made literary history as the first nonfiction bestseller by a Black woman. Some of her famous poems include “Phenomenal Woman,” “Still I Rise,” and “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she recited at President Bill Clinton ’s inauguration in 1993 and which earned her a Grammy Award. Angelou also enjoyed a career as a Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor and singer in plays, musicals, and onscreen. She became the first Black woman to have a screenplay produced with the 1972 movie Georgia, Georgia . In her work as a civil rights activist , she collaborated with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X , among others. The Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient died in May 2014 at age 86.

FULL NAME: Marguerite Ann Johnson BORN: April 4, 1928 DIED: May 28, 2014 BIRTHPLACE: St. Louis, Missouri SPOUSES: Tosh Angelos (c. 1949-1952), Vusumzi Make (c. 1961), and Paul Du Feu (c. 1973-1981) CHILD: Guy Johnson ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis.

She had a difficult childhood. Her parents split up when she was very young, and she and her older brother, Bailey, were sent to live with their paternal grandmother, Anne Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. Bailey gave Marguerite the nickname “Maya,” which she would adopt as her preferred name later in life.

As an African American, Angelou experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas. She also suffered violence at home when she was around the age of 7. During a visit with her mother, Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. As vengeance for the sexual assault, her uncles killed the boyfriend.

Young Maya was so traumatized by the experience that she stopped talking. She returned to Arkansas and spent about five years as a virtual mute.

A short-lived high school relationship resulted in Maya becoming pregnant. She was 16 years old whens he delivered her son, Guy Johnson, in 1944. After giving birth, she worked a number of jobs to support herself and her child.

Around this time, Maya moved to San Francisco and won a scholarship to study dance and acting at the California Labor School. She also became the first Black female cable car conductor, a job she held only briefly, in San Francisco.

In the mid-1950s, the world began to know Maya Angelou, her professional name adapted from her first husband’s last name, when her career as an actor and singer took off. She landed a role in a touring production of Porgy and Bess , later appearing in the off-Broadway production Calypso Heat Wave (1957) and releasing her first album, Miss Calypso (1957).

A member of the Harlem Writers Guild and a civil rights activist , Angelou organized and starred in the musical revue Cabaret for Freedom as a benefit for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Martin Luther King Jr. helped found before becoming its first president. Angelou also served as the SCLC’s northern coordinator and became a close to King.

In 1961, Angelou appeared in an off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks with James Earl Jones , Lou Gossett Jr., and Cicely Tyson . Afterward, the performer retreated from the theater scene for much of the 1960s. She lived abroad, first in Egypt and then in Ghana, and worked as an editor and a freelance writer. Angelou also held a position at the University of Ghana for a time.

In Ghana, she also joined a community of “Revolutionist Returnees” exploring pan-Africanism and became close with activist and Black nationalist leader Malcolm X . In 1964, upon returning to the United States, Angelou helped Malcolm X set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which disbanded after his assassination the following year.

Back in the United States, Angelou earned a Tony Award nomination for her role in the play Look Away (1973) and an Emmy Award nomination for her work on the television miniseries Roots (1977), among other honors.

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie

Angelou published several collections of poetry, but her most famous was 1971’s collection Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie , which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Other famous collections of Angelou’s poetry include:

• Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), which includes Angelou’s poem “Alone,”
• And Still I Rise (1978), which features the beloved poem “Phenomenal Woman,”
• Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? (1983),
• I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), featuring the poem “Human Family,” and
• Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997).

Apple famously used a video of Angelou reading her poem “Human Family” in an advertisement at the 2016 Olympics.

“On the Pulse of Morning”

One of her most famous works, Angelou wrote the poem “On the Pulse of Morning” for President Bill Clinton ’s inaugural ceremony in January 1993. Her recitation at the ceremony marked the first inaugural poem reading since 1961, when Robert Frost delivered “The Gift Outright” at John F. Kennedy ’s inauguration. Angelou went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio version of “On the Pulse of Morning.”

Other well-known poems by Angelou include “His Day Is Done,” a 1962 tribute poem Angelou wrote for Nelson Mandela as he made his secret journey from Africa to London, and “Amazing Peace,” which she wrote in 2005 for the White House tree-lighting ceremony.

In addition to her books of poetry, Angelou also wrote several memoirs and even cookbooks. She won two NAACP Image Awards in the Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction) category for her 2005 cookbook and 2008’s Letter to My Daughter .

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Angelou’s friend and fellow writer James Baldwin urged her to write about her life experiences. The resulting work was the enormously successful 1969 memoir about her childhood and young adult years, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings .

The poignant story made literary history as the first nonfiction bestseller by a Black woman. The book, which made Angelou an international star, continues to be regarded as her most popular autobiographical work.

In 1995, Angelou was lauded for remaining on The New York Times ’ paperback nonfiction bestseller list for two years, the longest-running record in the chart’s history at the time.

Gather Together in My Name

Angelou’s follow-up to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , this 1974 memoir covers her life as an unemployed teenage mother in California, when she turned to narcotics and prostitution.

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas

Angelou wrote this autobiography, published in 1976, about her early career as a singer and actor.

The Heart of a Woman

Angelou crafted this 1981 memoir about leaving California with her son for New York, where she took part in the Civil Rights Movement .

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

A lyrical exploration about what it means to be an African American in Africa, this autobiographical book was published in 1986 and covers the years Angelou spent living in Ghana.

Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

This inspirational essay collection from 1994 features Angelou’s insights about spirituality and living well.

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

Another autobiographical work, A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) explores Angelou’s return from Africa to the United States and her ensuing struggle to cope with the devastating assassinations of two human rights leaders with whom she worked: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr .

King was killed on Angelou’s 40 th birthday, leading the author to stop celebrating her birthday for years afterward. She also sent flowers to King’s widow, Coretta Scott King , for more than 30 years, until Coretta’s death in 2006.

A Song Flung Up to Heaven ends as Angelou begins work on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Letter to My Daughter

Dedicated to a daughter Angelou never had, this 2008 book of essays features Angelou’s advice for young women about living a life of meaning.

Mom & Me & Mom

In this 2013 memoir, Angelou discusses her complicated relationship with her mother who abandoned her during childhood.

Interested in health, Angelou’s published cookbooks include Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes (2005) and Great Food, All Day Long (2010).

After publishing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , Angelou broke new ground artistically, educationally, and socially by writing the movie Georgia, Georgia (1972). The drama made her the first African American woman to have a screenplay produced.

In 1998, seeking new creative challenges, Angelou made her directorial debut with Down in the Delta , starring Alfre Woodard. Her work on the film was recognized with the Chicago International Film Festival’s 1998 Audience Choice Award and a nod from the Acapulco Black Film Festival in 1999.

Beginning in 1982, Angelou also returned to teaching at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Over the years, she led a number of humanities courses, including “Race, Politics and Literature,” “African Culture and Impact on U.S.,” and “Race in the Southern Experience.” In 2011, Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1944, Angelou gave birth to her son, Clyde Johnson, when she was 16 years old. Johnson followed in his mother’s footsteps to eventually become a poet known as Guy Johnson. He died in February 2022.

Angelou was often tight-lipped about her personal life, and details of her marriages and relationships have been inconsistent—even based on her own accounts. She is believed to have been married at least three times.

According to the National Women’s History Museum , Angelou wed Tosh Angelos, an electrician in the U.S. Navy, in 1949. She adopted a version of his surname and kept it through the rest of her life, despite the couple’s divorce in 1952.

In late 1960, Angelou met Vusumzi Make, a South African freedom fighter. The couple married in 1961, according to Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute . They moved to Cairo with her son in 1962, but the marriage dissolved soon after.

Then in 1973, Angelou married carpenter Paul du Feu and lived with him in Berkeley, California, until their divorce in 1981.

After experiencing health issues for a number of years, Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86 years old. A specific cause of death wasn’t given, but Angelou’s literary agent, Helen Brann, said that she had been “frail” and suffering from heart problems.

The news of her passing spread quickly with many people taking to social media to mourn and remember Angelou. Singer Mary J. Blige and politician Cory Booker were among those who tweeted their favorite quotes by her in tribute.

Then-President Barack Obama also issued a statement about Angelou, calling her “a brilliant writer, a fierce friend, and a truly phenomenal woman.” Angelou “had the ability to remind us that we are all God’s children; that we all have something to offer,” he wrote.

A memorial service for Angelou was held on June 7, 2014, at Wake Forest University, where she taught for about three decades. Among the attendees were her close friend Oprah Winfrey , former President Bill Clinton , then-First Lady Michelle Obama , and actor Cicely Tyson . BeBe Winans and Lee Ann Womack gave musical performances.

In November 2020, the San Francisco Arts Commission unanimously approved the recommendation for a sculpture honoring Angelou “in recognition of her many accomplishments, including breaking the color and gender barriers by becoming San Francisco’s first African-American female streetcar conductor, an award-winning author and poet, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient and a civil rights leader.”

The monument is in development by artist Lava Thomas and scheduled to be installed in fall 2024 outside the main branch of the San Francisco Library. The design is a book featuring Angelou’s likeness on one side and the title of her famous poem “Still I Rise” at the base.

Meanwhile, Angelou has become one of the historical figures featured on U.S. money . It was announced in May 2021 that she would be one of the first women commemorated with a new series of quarters from the U.S. Mint. The first shipments of the coin were made in January 2022.

The obverse, or heads, side of the coin depicts former President George Washington , with the reverse side showing Angelou with her arms uplifted. The bird in flight and rising sun behind her likeness are images inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived, according to the U.S. Mint .

The American Women Quarters Program has honored nine other women from 2022 through 2023, including astronaut Sally Ride , former Cherokee Nation chief Wilma Mankiller , former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt , and aviator Bessie Coleman . It is scheduled to continue through 2025.

• Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any of the other virtues consistently.
• I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
• The caged bird sings with a fearful trill / of things unknown but longed for still / and his tune is heard on the distant hill / for the caged birds sings of freedom.
• If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
• We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.
• I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
• Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
• How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
• To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents.
• We are only as blind as we want to be.
• The intensity with which young people live demands that they “black out” as often as possible.
• Home is a refuge, not only from my worries, my terrible concerns. I like beautiful things around me. I like to be beautiful because it delights my eyes and my soul is lifted up.
• You may not control the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
• When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
• Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
• If you get, give. If you learn, teach.
• In the flush of love’s light, we dare to be brave, and suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet, it is only love which sets us free.
• I believe that each of us comes from the creator trailing wisps of glory.

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Maya Angelou

Poet, dancer, singer, activist, and scholar Maya Angelou was a world-famous author. She was best known for her unique and pioneering autobiographical writing style.

On April 4, 1928, Marguerite Ann Johnson, known to the world as Maya Angelou, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to her parents’ tumultuous marriage and subsequent divorce, Angelou went to live with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas at an early age. Her older brother, Bailey, gave Angelou her nickname “Maya.”

Returning to her mother’s care briefly at the age of seven, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He was later jailed and then killed when released from jail. Believing that her confession of the trauma had a hand in the man’s death, Angelou became mute for six years. During her mutism and into her teens, she again lived with her grandmother in Arkansas.

Angelou’s interest in the written word and the English language was evident from an early age. Throughout her childhood, she wrote essays, poetry, and kept a journal. When she returned to Arkansas, she took an interest in poetry and memorized works by Shakespeare and Poe.

Prior to the start of World War II, Angelou moved back in with her mother, who at this time was living in Oakland, California. She attended George Washington High School and took dance and drama courses at the California Labor School.

When war broke out, Angelou applied to join the Women’s Army Corps. However, her application was rejected because of her involvement in the California Labor School, which was said to have Communist ties. Determined to gain employment, despite being only 15 years old, she decided to apply for the position of a streetcar conductor. Many men had left their jobs to join the services, enabling women to fill them. However, Angelou was barred from applying at first because of her race. But she was undeterred. Every day for three weeks, she requested a job application, but was denied. Finally, the company relented and handed her an application. Because she was under the legal working age, she wrote that she was 19. She was accepted for the position and became the first African American woman to work as a streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Angelou was employed for a semester but then decided to return to school. She graduated from Mission High School in the summer of 1944 and soon after gave birth to her only child, Clyde Bailey (Guy) Johnson.

After graduation, Angelou undertook a series of odd jobs to support herself and her son. In 1949, she married Tosh Angelos, an electrician in the US Navy. She adopted a form of his surname and kept it throughout her life, though the marriage ended in divorce in 1952.

Angelou was also noted for her talents as a singer and dancer, particularly in the calypso and cabaret styles. In the 1950s, she performed professionally in the US, Europe, and northern Africa, and sold albums of her recordings.

In 1950, African American writers in New York City formed the Harlem Writers Guild to nurture and support the publication of Black authors. Angelou joined the Guild in 1959. She also became active in the Civil Rights Movement and served as the northern coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a prominent African American advocacy organization

In 1969, Angelou published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , an autobiography of her early life. Her tale of personal strength amid childhood trauma and racism resonated with readers and was nominated for the National Book Award. Many schools sought to ban the book for its frank depiction of sexual abuse, but it is credited with helping other abuse survivors tell their stories.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been translated into numerous languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide. Angelou eventually published six more autobiographies, culminating in 2013’s Mom & Me & Mom.   

She wrote numerous poetry volumes, such as the Pulitzer Prize-nominated  Just Give me a Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), as well as several essay collections. She also recorded spoken albums of her poetry, including “On the Pulse of the Morning,” for which she won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. The poem was originally written for and delivered at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. She also won a Grammy in 1995, and again in 2002, for her spoken albums of poetry.

Angelou carried out a wide variety of activities on stage and screen as a writer, actor, director, and producer. In 1972, she became the first African American woman to have her screen play turned into a film with the production of Georgia, Georgia . Angelou earned a Tony nomination in 1973 for her supporting role in Jerome Kitty’s play Look Away , and portrayed Kunta Kinte’s grandmother in the television miniseries Roots in 1977.

She was recognized by many organizations both nationally and internationally for her contributions to literature. In 1981, Wake Forest University offered Angelou the Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. President Clinton awarded Angelou the National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 2012, she was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Wake Forest University Writers Hall of Fame. The following year, she received the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for outstanding service to the American literary community. Angelou also gave many commencement speeches and was awarded more than 30 honorary degrees in her lifetime.

Angelou died on May 28, 2014. Several memorials were held in her honor, including ones at Wake Forest University and Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. To honor her legacy, the US Postal Service issued a stamp with her likeness on it in 2015. (The US Postal Service mistakenly included a quote on the stamp that has long been associated with Angelou but was actually first written by Joan Walsh Anglund .) 

In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. It was a fitting recognition for Angelou’s remarkable and inspiring career in the arts.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. (New York: Random House, 1969). Angelou, Maya. Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration. (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

“Poet – Maya Angelou.” Academy of American Poets. Accessed August 8, 2017. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/maya-angelou

Brown, Emma. “Maya Angelou, Writer and Poet, dies at age 86.” The Washington Post, May 28, 2014. Accessed August 8, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/maya-angelou-writer-and-poet-dies-at-age-86/2014/05/28/2948ef5e-c5da-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html?utm_term=.408fffb9a82c

Brown , DeNeen L. “Maya Angelou honored for her first job as a street car conductor in San Francisco.” The Washington Post, March 12, 2014. Accessed August 8, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/03/12/maya-angelou-honored-for-her-first-job-as-a-street-car-conductor-in-san-francisco/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.92c836957f2f

“About Harlem Writers Guild.” Harlem Writers Guild. Accessed August 10, 2017. http://theharlemwritersguild.org/about.html

Moore, Lucinda. “Growing Up Maya Angelou.” Smithsonian.com, April 2013. Accessed August 8, 2017. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/growing-up-maya-angelou-79582387/

Nixon, Ron. “Postal Service Won’t Reissue Maya Angelou Stamp.” The New York Times, April 8, 2017. Accessed August 8, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/us/postal-service-wont-reissue-maya-angelou-stamp.html

“History.” Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Accessed August 10, 2017. http://nationalsclc.org/about-us/history/

Thursby, Jacqueline S. "Angelou, Maya (4 Apr. 1928–28 May 2014), writer, performer, and activist." American National Biography. 29 Nov. 2018; Accessed 7 Dec. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.013.00700

“Dr. Maya Angelou.” National Book Foundation. Accessed December 7, 2021. https://www.nationalbook.org/people/dr-maya-angelou/#fullBio

MLA - Spring, Kelly. “Maya Angelou." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago - Spring, Kelly. "Maya Angelou." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/maya-angelou.

Photo Credit:  MAYA ANGELOU, circa 1976. Courtesy: CSU Archives / Everett Collection. 

Angelou, Maya. Just Give me a Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie . (New York: Bantam, 1976).

Angelou, Maya. Mom & Me & Mom . (London: Virago, 2013).

“THE INAUGURATION; Maya Angelou: 'On the Pulse of Morning’.” The New York Times, January 21 1993.  http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/21/us/the-inauguration-maya-angelou-on-the-pulse-of-morning.html Classroom Posters:

• Maya Angelou Classroom Poster (11x17 in) | Maya Angelou Classroom Poster (24x36 in)

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Biography Online

Maya Angelou Biography

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

– Maya Angelou from ‘Still I rise’

Short biography Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou (original name Marguerite Johnson) was born April 4, 1928, in St Louis, Missouri.

Despite the inequities of her life as a child, Maya Angelou was able to provide a positive message of humanity and hope. Maya Angelou said that “The honorary duty of a human being is to love.”

“ Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.”

From: Touched By An Angel

Maya Angelou married a South African freedom fighter and for a time lived in Cairo where she was the editor of the Arab Observer. However, in the 1960s she returned to America and played a role in the civil rights movement. She was asked to work on behalf of Presidents Carter (National Commission on the observance of International Women’s Year) and President Ford (American Revolutionary Bicentennial Advisory Council).

As well as being a poet and writer, Maya Angelou had a productive career in TV and film. She wrote several prize-winning documentaries such as Afro-Americans in the Arts .

The popularity of Maya Angelou has in large part been due to her ability to write about the many experiences of life with a vivid and engaging style that absorbs the reader. As Sidonie Ann Smith states from Southern Humanities Review:

“Her genius as a writer is her ability to recapture the texture of the way of life in the texture of its idioms, its idiosyncratic vocabulary and especially in its process of image-making.”

In the 1960s, she was active in the civil rights movement, coming into contact with both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King . She was the northern leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). With Malcolm X, she helped to form the new Organization of African American Unity. She was devastated after both King and Malcolm X were assassinated in the late 1960s.

In the late 1960s , she published an influential autobiography, which spoke of her experiences growing up:  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings  (1969). It is considered an important work for giving a personal voice to African American women. She went on to write seven autobiographical works.

She has also been active in film and television. Dr. Angelou wrote the Pulitzer-winning screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia.

After reciting a poem ‘ On the Pulse of the Morning’  at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, she became one of the best known African-American authors, and sales increased significantly. Her works have also received criticism for depicting sexually explicit scenes and violence. However, her books remain on many school syllabuses.

Dr. Angelou received over 50 honorary degrees and was for a time Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

Dr. Maya Angelou passed quietly in her home on May 28, 2014.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Maya Angelou ”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net 26 Jan. 2011. Updated 26 June 2017.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928–May 28, 2014) was a celebrated poet, memoirist, singer, dancer, actor, and civil rights activist. Her autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," a bestseller published in 1969 and nominated for the National Book Award, revealed her experiences growing up as an African American during the Jim Crow Era . The book was one of the first written by an African American woman to appeal to a mainstream readership.

Fast Facts: Maya Angelou

• Known For : Poet, memoirist, singer, dancer, actor, and civil rights activist
• Also Known As : Marguerite Annie Johnson
• Born : April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri
• Parents : Bailey Johnson, Vivian Baxter Johnson
• Died : May 28, 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• Published Works : I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, The Heart of a Woman
• Awards and Honors : National Medal of Arts, Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Spouse(s) : Tosh Angelos, Paul du Feu
• Child : Guy Johnson
• Notable Quote : "My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style."

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father Bailey Johnson was a doorman and navy dietitian. Her mother Vivian Baxter Johnson was a nurse. Angelou received her nickname from her older brother Bailey Jr., who couldn't pronounce her name so he called her Maya, which he derived from "my sister."

Angelou's parents divorced when she was 3. She and her brother were sent to live with their paternal grandmother Anne Henderson in Stamps, Arkansas. Within four years, Angelou and her brother were taken to live with their mother in St. Louis. While living there, Angelou was raped before she turned 8 years old by her mother’s boyfriend. After she told her brother, the man was arrested and, upon his release, was killed, probably by Angelou's uncles. His murder and the trauma surrounding it caused Angelou to be almost completely mute for five years.

When Angelou was 14, she moved with her mother to San Francisco, California. She took lessons in dance and drama on a scholarship to the California Labor School and graduated from George Washington High School. That same year, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son Guy. She worked to support herself and her child as a cocktail waitress, cook, and dancer.

Arts Career Begins

In 1951, Angelou moved to New York City with her son and her husband Tosh Angelos so that she could study African dance with Pearl Primus. She also took modern dance classes. She returned to California and teamed with dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey to perform at African American fraternal organizations as “Al and Rita” throughout San Francisco.

In 1954, Angelou’s marriage ended but she continued dancing. While performing at San Francisco's Purple Onion, Angelou decided to use the name "Maya Angelou" because it was distinctive. She combined the nickname her brother had given her with a new last name she derived from her former husband's surname.

In 1959, Angelou became acquainted with novelist James O. Killens, who encouraged her to hone her skills as a writer. Moving back to New York City, Angelou joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild and began to publish her work.

About the same time, Angelou landed a role in a State Department-sponsored production of George Gershwin’s folk opera "Porgy and Bess" and toured 22 countries in Europe and Africa. She also studied dance with Martha Graham.  

The following year, Angelou met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , and she and Killens organized the Cabaret for Freedom benefit to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Angelou was appointed the SCLC’s northern coordinator. Continuing her performance career, in 1961 she appeared in Jean Genet’s play "The Blacks."

Angelou became romantically involved with South African activist Vusumzi Make and moved to Cairo, where she worked as an associate editor for the Arab Observer . In 1962, Angelou moved to Accra, Ghana, where she worked at the University of Ghana and continued to hone her craft as a writer, working as a feature editor for The African Review , a freelancer for the Ghanaian Times , and a radio personality for Radio Ghana.

While living in Ghana, Angelou became an active member of the African American expatriate community, meeting and becoming a close friend of Malcolm X. When she returned to the United States in 1965, Angelou helped Malcolm X develop the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Before the organization could really begin working, however, he was assassinated.

In 1968, while she was helping King organize a march, he, too, was assassinated. The death of these leaders inspired Angelou to write, produce, and narrate a 10-part documentary titled “Blacks, Blues, Black!”

The following year, her autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," was published by Random House to international acclaim. Four years later, Angelou published "Gather Together in My Name," which told about her life as a single mother and budding performer. In 1976, "Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas" was published. "The Heart of a Woman" followed in 1981. Sequels "All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986), "A Song Flung Up to Heaven" (2002), and "Mom & Me & Mom" (2013) came later.

Other Highlights 

In addition to publishing her autobiographical series, Angelou produced the film "Georgia, Georgia" in 1972. The following year she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in "Look Away ." In 1977, Angelou played a supporting role in the Golden Globes-winning TV mini-series "Roots ."

In 1981, Angelou was appointed the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Then, in 1993, Angelou was chosen to recite her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clinton 's inauguration. In 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and other items from her career to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture .

The following year, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.

Maya Angelou had been having health issues for many years and was suffering from heart problems when she died on May 28, 2014. She was found by her caretaker at her home in Winston-Salem, where she had taught for a number of years at Wake Forest University. She was 86.

Maya Angelou was a trailblazer in achieving success in so many fields as an African American woman. Immediate respondents to her passing indicated the breadth of her influence. They included singer Mary J. Blige, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker , and President Barack Obama.

In addition to the National Medal of Arts presented by President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by President Obama, she was given the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book Award for contributions to the literary community. Before her death, Angelou had been awarded more than 50 honorary degrees.

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Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. She grew up in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. She was an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. She was best known for her seven autobiographical books:  Mom & Me & Mom  (Random House, 2013);  Letter to My Daughter  (Random House, 2008);  All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes  (Random House, 1986);  The Heart of a Woman  (Random House, 1981);  Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas  (Random House, 1976);  Gather Together in My Name  (Random House, 1974); and  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings  (Random House, 1969), which was nominated for the National Book Award.

Among her volumes of poetry are  A Brave and Startling Truth  (Random House, 1995);  The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou  (Random House, 1994);  Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now  (Random House, 1993);  I Shall Not Be Moved  (Random House, 1990);  Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?  (Random House, 1983);  Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well  (Random House, 1975); and  Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie  (Random House, 1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1959, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1961 to 1962 she was associate editor of  The Arab Observer  in Cairo, Egypt, the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East, and from 1964 to 1966 she was feature editor of the  African Review  in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the United States in 1974 and was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year. She accepted a lifetime appointment in 1982 as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1993, Angelou wrote and delivered a poem, "On The Pulse of the Morning," at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request. In 2000, she received the National Medal of Arts, and in 2010 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

The first black woman director in Hollywood, Angelou wrote, produced, directed, and starred in productions for stage, film, and television. In 1971, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film  Georgia, Georgia , and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries "Three Way Choice." She also wrote and produced several prize-winning documentaries, including "Afro-Americans in the Arts," a PBS special for which she received the Golden Eagle Award. Angelou was twice nominated for a Tony award for acting: once for her Broadway debut in  Look Away  (1973), and again for her performance in  Roots  (1977).

Angelou died on May 28, 2014, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she had served as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University since 1982. She was eighty-six.

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Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou became one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. With over 50 honorary doctorate degrees Dr. Maya Angelou became a celebrated poet, memoirist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

Going Home With Maya Angelou

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

Mom & Me & Mom

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

The Heart of a Woman

I Shall Not Be Moved

Gather Together in My Name

Even The Stars Look Lonesome

Letter to My Daughter

Rainbow in the Cloud

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration

Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table

Great Food, All Day Long

My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me

Maya’s World: Renee Marie of France

Maya’s World: Mikale of Hawaii

Maya’s World: Izak of Lapland

Maya’s World: Angelina of Italy

The Complete Poetry

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Amazing Peace

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie

Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well

His Day Is Done

Phenomenal Woman

Celebrations

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?

And Still I Rise

Still I Rise

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

In the late 1950’s Maya Angelou joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings received international acclaim made the bestseller list. The book was also banned in many schools during that time as Maya Angelou’s honesty about having been sexually abused opened a subject matter that had long been taboo in the culture. Later, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings would become a course adoption at college campuses around the world. With more than 30 bestselling titles, Maya Angelou has written 36 books.

MAYA ANGELOU

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Maya angelou, poet and historian.

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One of the saddest things in the world is to see a cynical young person. Because it means that he and she have gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents divorced when she was only three and she essencewas sent with her brother Bailey to live with their grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, the young girl experienced the racial discrimination that was the legally enforced way of life in the American South, but she also absorbed the deep religious faith and old-fashioned courtesy of traditional African American life. She credits her grandmother and her extended family with instilling in her the values that informed her later life and career. She enjoyed a close relationship with her brother. Unable to pronounce her name because of a stutter, Bailey called her “My” for “My sister.” A few years later, when he read a book about the Maya Indians, he began to call her “Maya,” and the name stuck.

At age seven, while visiting her mother in Chicago, she was sexually molested by her mother’s boyfriend. Too ashamed to tell any of the adults in her life, she confided in her brother. When she later heard the news that an uncle had killed her attacker, she felt that her words had killed the man. She fell silent and did not speak for five years.

Maya began to speak again at 13, when she and her brother rejoined their mother in San Francisco. Maya attended Mission High School and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School, where she was exposed to the progressive ideals that animated her later political activism. She dropped out of school in her teens to become San Francisco’s first African American female cable car conductor. She later returned to high school, but became pregnant in her senior year and graduated a few weeks before giving birth to her son, Guy. She left home at 16 and took on the difficult life of a single mother, supporting herself and her son by working as a waitress and cook, but she had not given up on her talents for music, dance, performance and poetry.

In 1952, she married a Greek sailor named Anastasios Angelopulos. When she began her career as a nightclub singer, she took the professional name Maya Angelou, combining her childhood nickname with a form of her husband’s name. Although the marriage did not last, her performing career flourished. She toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess in 1954 and 1955. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows, and recorded her first record album, Calypso Lady, in 1957.

She had composed song lyrics and poems for many years, and by the end of the 1950s was increasingly interested in developing her skills as a writer. She moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and took her place among the growing number of young black writers and artists associated with the Civil Rights Movement. She acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks and wrote and performed a Cabaret for Freedom with the actor and comedian Godfrey Cambridge.

In New York, she fell in love with the South African civil rights activist Vusumzi Make, and in 1960, the couple moved, with Angelou’s son, to Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo, Angelou served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer . Angelou and Guy later moved to Ghana, where she joined a thriving group of African American expatriates. She served as an instructor and assistant administrator at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times and the Ghanaian Broadcasting Company.

During her years abroad, she read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. She met with the American dissident leader Malcolm X in his visits to Ghana, and corresponded with him as his views evolved from the racially polarized thinking of his youth to the more inclusive vision of his maturity.

Maya Angelou returned to America in 1964, with the intention of helping Malcolm X build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and his plans for a new organization died with him. Angelou involved herself in television production and remained active in the Civil Rights Movement, working more closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who requested that Angelou serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she found solace in writing, and began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . The book tells the story of her life from her childhood in Arkansas to the birth of her child. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1970 to widespread critical acclaim and enormous popular success.

Seemingly overnight, Angelou became a national figure. In the following years, books of her verse and the subsequent volumes of her autobiographical narrative won her a huge international audience. She was increasingly in demand as a teacher and lecturer and continued to explore dramatic forms as well. She wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the film Georgia, Georgia (1972). Her screenplay, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Angelou was invited by successive Presidents of the United States to serve in various capacities. President Ford appointed her to the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and President Carter invited her to serve on the Presidential Commission for the International Year of the Woman. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Angelou’s reading of her poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” was broadcast live around the world.

Beginning in 1981, Angelou served as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She continued to appear on television and in films including Poetic Justice (1993) and the landmark television adaptation of Roots (1977). She directed numerous dramatic and documentary programs on television and directed a feature film, Down in the Delta , in 1996.

The list of her published works includes more than 30 titles. These include numerous volumes of verse, beginning with Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die (1971). Books of her stories and essays include Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now (1993) and Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997). She continued the compelling narrative of her life in the books Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1987) and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002).

In 2000, Angelou was honored with the Presidential Medal of the Arts; she received the Ford’s Theatre Lincoln Medal in 2008. The same year, she narrated the award-winning documentary film The Black Candle and published a book of guidance for young women, Letter to My Daughter . In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 2021, the United States Mint announced that an image of Maya Angelou would appear on the reverse side of a new quarter in place of the customary eagle. The Maya Angelou 25-cent piece, along with one featuring astronaut Sally Ride , will be the first in a series of coins honoring the achievements of American women.

Maya Angelou participated in a series of live broadcasts for Achievement Television in 1991, 1994, and 1997, taking questions submitted by students from across the United States. The interview with Maya Angelou on this website has been condensed from these broadcasts.

“I was a mute from the time I was seven and a half until I was almost 13. I didn’t speak. I had voice, but I refused to use it.”

As a child, Maya Angelou was traumatized by abuse. For five years, she was silent, but in time, she found her voice, and that voice has been heard around the world. A single mother at age 16, she embarked on a remarkable career as an actress and entertainer, as a journalist, educator and civil rights activist, and finally, as one of the world’s most eminent authors and poets.

Her autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , created an international sensation when it was first published in 1970. Her books and poems made her one of the world’s favorite authors and one of America’s best-loved public speakers. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem for his first inaugural in 1993; she read that poem, “On the Pulse of the Morning,” to an audience of millions on live television.

A close friend and associate of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King as well as Malcolm X, Maya Angelou shared her hard-won wisdom — and the vivid memories of her remarkable life — through her books, poems, films and through her interviews with the American Academy of Achievement.

Dr. Angelou, you worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. What was Dr. King really like, personally?

Maya Angelou: Dr. King was a human being. He had a sense of humor which was wonderful. It is very dangerous to make a person larger than life because, then, young men and women are tempted to believe, well, if he was that great, he’s inaccessible, and I can never try to be that or emulate that or achieve that. The truth is, Martin Luther King was a human being with a brilliant mind, a powerful heart, and insight and courage, and also with a sense of humor. So he was accessible. I mentioned courage, and I would like to say something else about that, finding courage in the leaders and in you who will become leaders. Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtues consistently. You see? You can’t be consistently kind or fair or humane or generous, not without courage, because if you don’t have it, sooner or later you will stop and say, “Eh, the threat is too much. The difficulty is too high. The challenge is too great.” So I would like to say that Dr. King, while we know from all the publicity that he was brilliant, and he was powerful, and he was passionate and right, he was also a funny man, and that’s nice to know.

How old were you when you met Dr. King?

Maya Angelou: I was about 27, I think. I was much younger in my mind than I was in my body. I had a big Afro. It was so large that if the wind caught me wrong, it could have lifted me off the ground. I was pleased to have the chance to work for him.

He was also very young at that time. He was only 34 at the time he gave the “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, and he was already well into the movement.

Maya Angelou: Oh, yes. He was very young and very personable, so that he was really humble.

I don’t think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. You see, it’s a learned affectation. But humility comes from inside out. Humility says there was someone before me, someone found the path, someone made the road before me, and I have the responsibility of making the road for someone who is yet to come. Dr. King was really humble so that he was accessible to everybody. The smallest child could come up to him, the most powerful person could come up to him, he never changed. If somebody very rich and very powerful said, “Dr. King, I want to speak to you,” he was the same person to that person as he would be to one of you who is 16, 17, if you would say, “Dr. King…” He was still accessible, gentle, powerful, humble.

Which of these qualities do you think made him the leader he was?

I suppose courage would be the first of his many wondrous and wonderful qualities that I would list. I am convinced that courage is the most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently. You can be kind for a while; you can be generous for a while; you can be just for a while, or merciful for a while, even loving for a while. But it is only with courage that you can be persistently and insistently kind and generous and fair. So I think the first virtue — the first element — of his personality that I would extoll would be courage.

Courage is often lonely. Do you sense that he knew how alone he was when the struggle was starting?

Maya Angelou: It’s always lonely, I think. Those who have something to say accept the fact that that’s lonely. One already knows that there will be adversaries. And according to what is at stake, the adversaries will be more violent or less violent. One is sustained though, in the belief that what one has to say is right, and right for the most people. And then, one is sustained by one’s loved ones. Dr. King had, first, his wife and family, and then, the people who loved him, really, really loved him. I think that they and their undying, unswerving love sustained him, even in the loneliest of moments.

What other qualities do you think made him an effective leader?

Maya Angelou: Intelligence, a very profound intelligence. Now, that does not always go hand-in-hand with intellect. With Dr. King, it did. But I point out that intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.

Dr. King was profoundly intelligent. That is to say, he was able to see, to examine, to analyze, to evaluate, to measure the climate of the times, the expediency of his calling, of his ministry. That’s intelligence. Now intellect, of course, helped him to be able to explain what he saw with grace and eloquence and wonderful quotations, whether from Paul Laurence Dunbar or Longfellow. That was out of the virtue of his studies.

Would you say he was also unusually empathetic? He cared deeply how others were treated.

Maya Angelou: Yes. This is true. He cared about women. He cared about the poor. He cared about the Spanish-speaking. He cared about Jews. He cared about poor whites, the miners, and those who were having a very hard time. So that even as he was assassinated, he was planning a March on Washington, called the “Poor People’s March,” in which he had encouraged African Americans, white Americans, Spanish-speaking, Native Americans, Asian Americans, all of us, to join and go to Washington, and sit there in tent cities in the nation’s capital, until something was done for the poor.

I think some of the aspects of Dr. King which are rarely mentioned are necessary for young men and women to know about. Dr. King was not only a man of high moral values and, of course, intelligence and spirituality, but he was also very funny. Very few people really know that he had a wonderful sense of humor and appreciated a good laugh, and I think that’s important for young men and women to know, because the Bible says, “A cheerful spirit is good medicine.” Dr. King, in the face of the most horrid situations, the most cruel people, the most greedy and mean-spirited, he kept his spirit up, and quite often, with a wonderful smile.

How did Dr. King influence your life?

Maya Angelou: It is not a past tense for me. Dr. King continues to have an impact on my life, as he does upon the lives of many people in the world. A dream — an idea — never dies. It might go in or out of fashion, but it remains. So his idea of fair play and justice still impacts upon me. He was a friend of mine, I worked with him. And Ms. Coretta Scott King is a sister-friend of mine today, so we are in sisterly touch. The ideas which he embodied and subsequently gave to the world are ideas I am still trying to flesh out in my own life. I am trying to be that fair person, that kind person, that generous, courageous person, that loving person that Martin Luther King, Jr. was and encouraged us to become.

Do you feel that Dr. King can have the same influence on succeeding generations? What do you think is the most important thing young people should learn from him?

Maya Angelou: The effect of a great man or woman is not always visible. The fact that we are having this conversation is evidence that his impact has reached hundreds of millions of people. I pray that out of this kind of discussion and the various celebrations of Dr. King, a young person may decide to make life better, just for a minute and just in the place where you are. Don’t think of having to be grown up and having to have power and money and prestige and a name and all that. Don’t believe that is the only way that you can make a difference. You can start right now, just where you are, being a better person yourself, being kinder, being more courteous, trying to be a better student, so that you will make an impact yourself on your nation, on your race, on your gender, and in fact, on the world. That is where we see the impact of Martin Luther King, Jr.

What does Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream symbolize to you?

Maya Angelou: The dream of Martin Luther King, for me, represents the best the human being can hope for — a world of peace, of development, a world of respect, a world where all men and women are valued, none higher than the other, none lower than the other because of his or her color or his or her race or his or her religion or cultural persuasion. That is the best we can hope for. And so when we speak of the dream, I think if Martin Luther King said he had a dream, I think this is the dream of America. This is us at our best.

Do you find yourself mouthing the words when you hear the “I Have a Dream” speech after all these years?

Maya Angelou: Yes, of course. I have been so pleased to see young black men and young black women, and young white men and women, and Spanish-speaking, sometimes 12 years old and nine years old, reciting “I Have a Dream” with the passion and fervor of youth. It tells me so clearly that the speech, as much as the man, belongs to us all.

Dr. King’s speaking style — the “I Have a Dream” speech in particular — do you think it had an influence on your own writing, your poetry?

Maya Angelou: The music of the “I Have a Dream” speech is a replication of the music which comes out of the mouths of the African American preacher. Preacher, singer, blues singer, jazz singer, rap person, it is so catching, so hypnotic, so wonderful that, as a poet, I continue to try to catch it, to catch the music. If I can catch the music and have the content as well, then I have the ear of the public. And I know that’s what Martin Luther King was able to do, not just in the “I Have a Dream” speech — although that has become a kind of poem which is used around the world — but in everything he said there was the black Southern Baptist or Methodist preacher, singing his song, telling our story — not just black American story either, but telling the human story. And as a poet, if I can replicate that, I am okay, Jack.

View and listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.

• 19 photos

• My Preferences
• My Reading List
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

• Literature Notes
• Maya Angelou Biography
• About I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Introduction
• Chapters 1-3
• Chapters 4-5
• Chapters 6-7
• Chapters 8-9
• Chapters 10-11
• Chapters 12-13
• Chapters 14-15
• Chapters 18-19
• Chapters 20-23
• Chapters 24-25
• Chapters 26-29
• Chapters 30-32
• Chapters 33-36
• Critical Essays
• Form in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Settings in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Style in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Women in the Maya Character's Life
• A Note on Southern Fundamentalism
• Full Glossary for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

Lauded as a multifaceted superstar, Maya Angelou — a tall, gap-toothed, spirited individualist who is often labeled feminist writer, African-American autobiographer, historian, lecturer, journalist, activist, filmmaker, poet, singer, actor, and storyteller — fits no single designation. She set out to whip a variety of challenges, including the language barrier, and learned French, Italian, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, and Fanti, a Ghanaian dialect. Her dazzling blend of talents and energies renders her uniquely suited to a variety of self-directed projects, all of which broaden and ennoble her. Her works, translated into ten languages and hitting bestseller lists on two continents, attest to an indomitable spirit. In her words, "I will not allow anybody to minimize my life, not anybody, not a living soul — nobody, no lover, no mother, no son, no boss, no President, nobody."

Childhood and Adolescence

As she reveals in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou [mah' yuh an' jeh loh] was born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. The second child and first daughter of Bailey Johnson, a brash, insouciant Navy dietician, and Vivian Baxter Johnson, a nurse by profession and gambler by trade, Angelou acquired the first half of her pen name from her brother, Bailey Junior, whose babyish babbling transformed "my sister" into "Maya." Following her parents' divorce in 1931, Maya and Bailey, labeled on their wrists with "To Whom It May Concern," were dispatched by train from Long Beach, California, to Stamps, Arkansas, a rural Southern backwash that contrasted deeply with the citified gaiety of Maya's birthplace.

Stamps' nurturing community spirit became Maya's surrogate family. Under the care of Momma, the children's Old South paternal grandmother, and their semi-paralyzed Uncle Willie, the children lived in the town's black quarter in the rear of the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store, the family-owned grocery and feed store. There they absorbed iron-clad, no-nonsense religious and moral training, punctuated by lashes with a switch from a peach tree, and reminders that the Almighty brooked no laxness and that Momma Henderson tolerated neither dirt nor backtalk. Maya's escapism from her grim, dutiful everyday life led her to classic literature, particularly white writers — Shakespeare, Kipling, Poe, Thackeray, and James Weldon Butler — and notable black authors — Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, W E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson.

Returned by her father to the Baxters' extended family in St. Louis in 1936, Maya, thoroughly indoctrinated with Momma's strictures, was reintroduced to the easy ways of the big city, where her self-absorbed mother drank and danced in gambling halls, kept company with a new man, and encouraged her babies to enjoy food, music, and other indulgences which had been in short supply in Stamps. This idyllic season in Maya's life ended abruptly after Vivian's lover, Mr. Freeman, raped Maya. To add to the emotional torture, she was forced to testify against her attacker. After her uncles murdered the rapist, the tenderhearted eight year old, refusing to speak, crept into a wounded, private world of fear and guilt.

Unsuited to the demands of an emotionally damaged child, Vivian returned Maya to Stamps, where, with Momma's guidance, she rebuilt self-esteem by cocooning herself from the outside world, reading classic literature, excelling at school, and imitating the genteel, bookish tastes of Mrs. Bertha Flowers, an old-school black Southern aristocrat who ministered to her need for pampering. Following Maya's graduation with honors from the eighth grade at Lafayette County Training School in 1940, Momma escorted her to Los Angeles, where Vivian met them and helped them move into an apartment. After Bailey joined them a month later, Momma returned to Stamps, and Maya and Bailey joined Vivian in Oakland. Later, after Vivian married Daddy Clidell Jackson, the family eventually settled in a fourteen-room house on Post Street in San Francisco's Fillmore district.

Matriculating by day at George Washington High School and in the evening at the California Labor School from 1941 to 1945, Maya, who dreamed of becoming a real estate agent, complete with briefcase (in spite of her grandmother's hopes that she would become a preacher) developed the blend of scholarship and creativity that undergirds her current success. Following a short vacation at her father's trailer in southern California and a thirty-day disappearance, she returned to her mother's care and besieged city bureaucracy for a job as San Francisco's first black streetcar conductor. Shortly after summer school graduation from Mission High, she bore a son, Clyde Bailey "Guy" Johnson, who was fathered by a neighborhood boy.

Young Womanhood

For the remainder of the 1940s, to support her child, Angelou moved about California and took a variety of jobs — dancing in night clubs, cooking at a Creole cafe, removing paint at a dent and body shop, and serving as madam and sometime prostitute at a San Diego brothel. Terrified of arrest for her illegal activities, she hastily returned to Stamps, then Louisville, where the army accepted, then ousted her because of her connection with the California Labor School, which was sponsored by the Communist Party. In the interim, she eased the pain of rejection with marijuana and a new career hoofing to "Blue Flame" and "Caravan" as one half of the exotic dance duo of "Poole and Rita."

More short-term jobs followed, including fry cook in Stockton and a second short stint in prostitution. However, when Angelou became aware of Bailey's deep despair over the death of his young wife, Eunice, she returned her attention to family matters, and, in spite of his great sorrow, Bailey, concerned for the company his sister was immersed in, forced her to give up her dissolute life. A yearning to support herself drove Angelou to sell stolen clothes for a junkie, but on his advice, she stayed free of drugs, escaped the seamy life, and again sought a legitimate job.

While clerking in a record shop at the age of twenty-two, Maya met and married Tosh Angelos, a Greek-American sailor, and settled into domesticity in Los Angeles. However, beset by family and neighborhood disapproval of their mixed-race marriage, the relationship lasted only a few years, crumbling about the time of Momma's death. From 1954 to 1955, after a stint as exotic dancer at the Garden of Allah, Angelou left Guy in Vivian's care and toured Europe and Africa with a U.S. Department of State production of Porgy and Bess. Compelled by maternal unrest, she returned to California and settled in a houseboat commune in Sausalito to mother her son.

Because petty instances of neighborhood racism continued to plague her, the respite was shortlived. Within the year, with impetus from black poet John Oliver Killens, Angelou, eager to polish her writing skills, pushed on to New York and allied herself with the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 50s. Years of private music and drama training and dance classes with Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, and Ann Halprin prepared her well for a career. Searching for outlets for her talents in the 1950s, she danced and sang calypso and blues at San Francisco's Purple Onion, New York's Village Vanguard, and Chicago's Mr. Kelly's. In the 1960s, she sang at Harlem's Apollo Theatre and appeared in off-Broadway New York theatrical productions, including Heatwave and Jean Genet's The Blacks. Spurred by civil rights gains, she joined talents with comedian Godfrey Cambridge and wrote and produced Cabaret for Freedom, which epitomized a time of change when black performers and writers were receiving salaries and notoriety equivalent to their talents.

Sharing a common-law marriage with Vusumzi Make [mah' kay], a suave South African anti-apartheid leader from Johannesburg, in 1961, Angelou transported her interest and enthusiasm to a colony of black American expatriates in Egypt. As Madame Make, she lived in a milieu where her chocolate brown skin and nappy hair were accepted as "correct and normal." Although the relationship dissolved after she grew tired of her mate's patriarchal attitudes, mismanagement of money, and infidelities, she remained in Africa and for two years served as the first female editor of the Arab Observer, a Cairo news weekly. Moving on to Accra, she settled Guy into college, then remained to nurse him after an automobile accident broke his neck, an arm, and a leg. While administering the School of Music and Drama, she starred in Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage at the University of Ghana. To supplement her meager salary, she also wrote for the Ghanaian Times and the African Review, a political journal.

The African phase of Angelou's life ended with a growing sense of her American-ness. About the time of her father's death, she returned to Los Angeles, where in 1970 black spokesman Bayard Rustin sought leadership initiatives from her, including a post as Northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Two presidents — Ford and Carter — appointed her to honorary positions: the Bicentennial Commission and the National Commission on the Observance of the International Women's Year. Subsequently, groups such as the Family Service Convention, Michigan State Celebrity Lecture series, Tennessee Humanities Council, Coalition of 100 Black Women, and Johns Hopkins University's Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium clamored for her rollicking, emotional speeches. Her humanistic topics, spiked with recitation and impromptu songs, tended toward a universal acceptance of human differences and a celebration of similarities. As she professed to one audience, "as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike. That was one of the greatest lessons I learned."

Angelou in Print

Inspired by a meeting with novelist James Baldwin, Random House editor Robert Loomis, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and his wife, Judy, Angelou broadened her considerable store of anecdotes into autobiography, a particular strength of black writers ranging from Linda Brent and Frederick Douglass to post-slavery narratives of Eldridge Cleaver, Anne Moody, Angela Davis, Claude Brown, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. She established a rigid working style: beginning with notes in longhand on yellow legal pads, she let the ideas flow. Then, supported by her Bible, dictionary, thesaurus, playing cards, ashtrays, snacks of cheese and bread, and bottles of sherry, she booked a downtown hotel room and sprawled across the bed, composing weekdays from six o'clock a.m. until noon, allowing no one to interfere. If the material flowed at a steady pace, she remained until early afternoon before returning to her residence. She continued for six months, going on several weeks' sabbatical, then returning to her hermitage until she had a manuscript ready for publication. By this process, in 1970, Angelou scored her first literary hit with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an immediate bestseller and the flagship of a multi-part autobiographical armada.

In 1973, Angelou married her third husband, Paul Du Feu, an English-born carpenter and remodeler, and settled in Sonoma, California. Immersed in projects, she composed music for the movie For the Love of Ivy, published articles, short stories, and poems for Harper's, Black Scholar Mademoiselle, Redbook, Life, Playgirl, Cosmopolitan, Ebony, and Ladies' Home Journal, continued writing autobiographies, produced original plays, lectured at state universities in Kansas and California, and served on the American Revolution Bicentennial Council. She earned an Emmy nomination for her cameo role as Kunta Kinte's grandmother in the 1977 television version of Alex Haley's Roots, adapted Sophocles's Ajax for the American stage, wrote for "Brewster Place," an Oprah Winfrey production, and composed songs for Roberta Flack. In 1981, after divorcing Du Feu, she received the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she lectures, organizes writing workshops, and continues publishing.

Again in the South

Resettlement in the South returned Angelou to home territory, where life had, at one time, seemed inequitable and discouraging to blacks. For personal reasons, she had avoided confronting Southern bigotry for twenty-two years. As she perceived the danger, "I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts." To questions about her choice of roosting places, she has replied that America must embrace the people it has rejected, whose contributions might have made a considerable difference in the nation's history. Content in her twelve-room house in Old Town and with the congregation of the Mount Zion Baptist Church, she has come to grips with the reality of the days of lynching, Jim Crow, Mr. Charley, and the Ku Klux Klan. In an optimistic mood, she noted in an interview with Michele Howe of the Newark Star-Ledger, "It is significant and a statement of intent to give a lifetime appointment to a black and to a woman. . . . The South has changed for both blacks and whites. People are returning to their roots or moving there for the first time, and they bring new and progressive ideas with them."

Angelou's life revolved around her son, Guy, a California personnel analyst, her grandson, Colin Ashanti Murphy-Johnson, her close friend and colleague, Dolly McPherson, her long-time secretary, Mrs. Mildred Garris, and a close circle of friends and admirers, including authors Jessica Mitford, Shana Alexander, and Rosa Parks. A restless, mellow-voiced, dynamic beauty who often dressed in the bright colors and styles of Ghana, she made herself at home in a variety of settings, both intimate and public. To interviewer Greg Hitt of the Winston-Salem Journal , Angelou, with her usual playful humor, remarked on a future goal: "I want to know more — not intellectually — to know more so I can be a better human being, to be an honest, courageous, funny, and loving human being. That's what I want to be — and I blow it about eighty-six times a day. My hope is to cut that to seventy."

Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Angelou has received a gratifying share of public acclaim. She holds honorary degrees from Mills College, Smith College, Lawrence University, Oberlin College, Mt. Holyoke, Boston

College, Spelman College, Brown University, Rollins University, North Carolina School of the Arts, and, the most significant, the University of Arkansas, in the backyard of land tilled by her great-grandmother, a slave. In 1976, Ladies' Home Journal chose her Woman of the Year in Communications; in 1987, she accepted the North Carolina Award for Literature. Two years later, she was named one of USA Today's fifty black role models. She has also been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a Golden Eagle film award, and an Emmy for acting, and has received fellowships from Yale University and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1983, she accepted the Matrix Award from Women in Communications, Inc.; in 1990, along with dancer Judith Jamison and settlement worker Mother Clara Hale, she received the Candace Award, an honor extended by the National Coalition of Black Women to ten black Americans for achievement, character, and service. In 1993, she read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential inauguration ceremonies, and four years later she wrote the lyrics to the musical "King!" which was staged during that year's presidential inauguration to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

To all this praise, she has said, "I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry." To an interviewer's question about her influence, she replied, "Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are — cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes."

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Maya Angelou

• Occupation: Writer, Poet, Civil Rights Activist
• Born: April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri
• Died: May 28, 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• Best known for: Her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Gather Together in My Name
• Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
• The Heart of a Woman
• All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
• A Song Flung Up to Heaven
• Mom & Me & Mom
• On the Pulse of Morning
• Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Die
• And Still I Rise
• Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
• Even the Stars Look Lonesome
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first nonfiction best-selling book by an African-American woman.
• She had one son, Guy Johnson, at the age of seventeen.
• In 1973, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the play Look Away .
• She taught as a full-time professor at Wake Forest University.
• She recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the 1993 presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton .
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

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Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson) was an American poet, novelist, singer, civil rights activist, and memoirist. In her literary career, she published three books of essays, seven autobiographies based on different stages in her life, and numerous books of poetry. She is also recognized for her television shows, movies, and plays. She received more than fifty honorary degrees and dozens of awards.

Angelou is recognized for her seven autobiographies. She discusses her childhood and early adult experiences in her autobiographies. Her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , was published in 1966. In this book, she focuses on her childhood and teenage life for up to 17 years. This autobiography was internationally recognized and brought approval.

She did a series of jobs as a young adult. These jobs include fry cook, performer, nightclub dancer, sex worker, coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the actor of the opera Porgy and Bess, and also did journalism in Ghana and Egypt during the decolonization in Africa.

Afterward, she became a poet. In 1982, at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, she was titled as the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies.  She was also an active member of the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Malcolm X.  and Martin Luther King Jr. from the 1990s, on the lecture circuit, she would make around 80 appearances annually. She also continues to appear on the lecture circuit in her eighties. 

She also recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration ceremony of Bill Clinton in 1993. She is the first poem to do an inaugural recitation after Robert Frost, who recited at the inauguration ceremony of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Angelou discussed the aspects of personal life publically with her publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She was a respected spokesperson for women and black people. Her works are regarded as a defense of black culture. Even though various attempts have been made to ban her publications in the libraries of the U.S., her books are widely included in the school curriculum and studied in universities across the world.

The most celebrated books of Angelou are labeled as autobiographical fiction. However, many critics do not consider them fiction but pure autobiographies. By changing, critiquing, and expanding the genre of autobiography, Angelou deliberately tried to challenge the ordinary and conventional structure of the autobiography.

A Short Biography of Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Johnson) was born on 4 th April 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. When she was three years old, her parents got separated. Maya and her brother went to live in Stamps, Arkansas, with her grandmother. She was raped by the boyfriend of her mother when she was only eight years old. When Angelou discloses the incident, her uncle killed the culprit. She was not able to speak for the next five years after being frightened by the power of her words.

In 1940, Maya and her brother shifted to San Francisco with her mother. There, Angelou started taking dance classes, and then finally gave auditions for professional theatre. At the age of 16, she had a son, which made her hold her plans for a while. She then shifted to San Diego and started working as a waitress in a nightclub. She was tangled with prostitution, drugs, and also danced in a strip club. Over there, she was discovered by a theatre group, and her career was saved, ironically.

She auditioned for Porgy and Bess with other women. She won a role for an international tour. She traveled to 22 countries from 1954 to 1955.

She shifted to New York in 1956. In New York, she became associated with leading Harlem writers. She also involved herself in the Civil Rights Movement. With her boyfriend, she shifted to Egypt in 1961. Over there, she became an editor of Arab Observer. She left her boyfriend and headed to Ghana.

A car accident in Ghana relentlessly injured her son. Besides taking care of her son, she also started a job at a news channel, African Review. She stayed in Ghana for several years. Under the renaissance of African culture, she developed and flourished personally and so as her writings.

Angelou published the multi-volume autobiography when she went back to the U.S. The first volume was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was followed by four more volumes in the next twenty years. Along with autobiographies, she also published numerous books of poetry. At the Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, she was appointed as a Professor of American Studies in 1981.

She recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration ceremony of Bill Clinton in 1993. She receives various honorary degrees and dozens of other awards. On 28 th May 2014, she died in North Carolina at the age of 86.

Maya Angelou’s Writing Style

General characteristic of maya angelou’s style.

Maya Angelou is an Afro-American writer. She is best recognized for her seven autobiographies. She was also a productive and successful poet. The poetic and prosaic style of Maya Angelo has many similarities. In poetry and prose both, she employs direct and informal voice. Her stories are welcoming for readers as she is inviting them to share her secrets with them. She also used persuasive and strong similes and metaphors. In her first novel/autobiography, she used the best metaphor in the title: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She compares herself with the caged bird.

Angelou considers herself as a playwright and a poet. In 1969, she wrote Caged Bird, which brought her recognition and approval across the world. Many readers regard her first as a poet and then an autobiographer. However, she is more recognized for her prose works. She published numerous collections of poetry and is equally acclaimed as a poet. She would also alternate her autobiographies with her poetry in her early career.

Throughout her writing (both in poetry and autobiographies), Angelou explores almost the same themes. These themes are painful loss, love, music, racism, struggle, and discrimination. Angelou’s poetry is mainly about relationships, love, and overcoming hardships. The metaphors she used in her poetry function as litotes or “coding.” These metaphors would only be understood by black people. However, her themes and subject matter are applied universally.

In her works, Maya Angelou employs everyday language, the Black vernacular. She employs the black form of rhetorical techniques such as surprising language. In her poetry, she uses the music and form of black people. She also occasionally uses vulgar language and conventionally unaccepted subjects. In her autobiographies and all other works in general, she does not speak for her but for the whole world. She did not confine her works to any particular gender or race.

Through her autobiographies and poems, she employs the themes of mild protest. Through humor, she injects hope into black people. She talks about suffering and hardships experienced by her race in her works.

Many critics regard her autobiographies as more significant than her poetry. Her poetic books have been the best-sellers; they are not studied much. Her popular success and preference of critics for the written form of poetry rather than spoken or performed is the reason for lack of critical acclaim.

Style of Poetry

At a very young age, Angelou started studying and writing poetry. To cope with the trauma of her life, she would engage herself with writing poetry and other literary works. After a little series of the job, she became a poet. She was a performer of calypso music in a nightclub. The songs she wrote during this period were placed in her poetry collections.

It is very hard to classify the writing style of Maya Angelou. She never employed any specific or one set of the rhyming scheme in her poetry. But in many poems, she used a specific type of dialect called Black Secular. This dialect is the most simplified form of the English language. She also employed metaphors related to black slavery in her works. 

Angelou also employed a form response or call form. This form creates a sort of verbal interaction between the poet and readers. She uses this technique in her poems, such as “Sepia Fashion Show,” And Still I Rise.” She wrote her most poems in this style with the employment of metaphors that are truly understood by black people.

She used her poetry to encourage black people to protest against the government. The government has banned the teaching of Black Secular speech in school. Moreover, in her poetry, she also showed racism in her poetry that is still prevalent in America and protested against them. Maya Angelou has been considered as the poet laureate of black women. Her poems are regarded as the anthems of African Americans.

Maya Angelou herself said that in terms of patter, her poems follow the model based on blues. Her poetry has a verse that is followed by a chorus. Her poems that reflect this style are “Phenomenal women,” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

Being grown up as a black woman in America, and listening to blues music has significantly influenced her writing style. She also used this style because it was invented by black slaves. This music was created to express their grief and miseries and to recount their stories. Maya Angelou was doing the same with her poetry.

Angelou’s poetry cannot be placed in the category of techniques or themes. Her poetry is most of the time compared with the musical form of music, especially with the blues singers and blues form. To cope with minor sadness, suffering, or irritation, she employs laughter or ridicules that tears. 

Maya Angelou’s Writing Style in Prose

In her prose work, Maya Angelou employed a unique style. Angelou was challenged by Robert Loomis, a publisher from Random House, to write an account of her own life with the merit of literature. This spurred her, and to accomplish her achievement, Angelou wrote the most celebrated autobiography/novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Her first prose work and the succeeding volumes shared the two genres of literature. They were novel/literary fiction because they employed widespread themes. They were autobiographical because they were based on her personal experience, narrated in her own perspective. Even though in her biography, Angelou talks about her personal experiences of living and growing as a black woman, she also associates her experience with all those black women who are struggling hard to overcome sexism, racism, and isolation.

Maya Angelou wrote five other biographies after I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing. In these biographies, she studies and explored sex, race, and identity with clear and persistent directedness. In her first autobiography/novel, she wrote that for the southern, if growing up is painful, then being conscious about her dislocation is like “rust on the razor that threatens the throat.”

Through her prose works, Angelou slows her readers to peer into her personal life. She describes her efforts to raise her son, Guy Johnson, in her book Singin’ and Swingin. She talks about her determination to raise him by working as a shake dancer in nightclubs, dinner cook, fry cook, and also had worked in a mechanic’s shop. She also gives details about her life as a prostitute. An intimate outlook of Angelou’s experiences is provided to the readers through her frank and conversational tone.

Angelou’s books have been placed in the genre of autobiographical fiction as she employed the style and technique of fiction writing in her work. These techniques include characterization, dialogue, and development of setting, theme, plot, and language. To change the common structure of her autobiographies, she makes intentional changes in her structure of autobiography. She changed the genre by expanding and criticizing it.

A literary scholar Mary Jane Lupton says that the autobiographies of Angelou are conformed to the standard structure of the genre. For instance, they are chronological, written by one author, and also contain the elements of themes, technique, and character. Maya Angelou herself recognizes the aspect of functionality in her work. Likewise, Lupton argues that in her autobiographies, Angelou intentionally deviated from the conventional idea of “autobiography as truth.” Moreover, the autobiographies of Angelou are similar to the conventional autobiographies of the abolitionist period by African-Americans in the history of the U.S.

During that period, as maintained by Lupton and Crispin Starwell, an Africa-American scholar, out of the need for self-protection, the truth was censored. Similarly, Lyman B. Hagen also places Angelou in the autobiographical tradition of African-America. However, she also asserts that a unique interpretation of the form of autobiography was created by Angelou.

The African-American authors had to confirm their status as literature before they could achieve any political goal through their works. This was the major challenge for the African-American history of literature. That is why; Robert Loomis dared Angelou to write an autobiography on the merit of literature. Narrating her story in the first person singular pronoun “I” for first-person plural “we,” Angelou realized that she was following the tradition of the slave narrative.

A literary scholar John McWhorter regards the biographies of Angelou as “tracts.” She defends African-American culture and fights against negative stereotypes. Angelou structured her books to support her defense of black culture. Her structuring of books makes it appear to be written for children than adults.

In her autobiographies, Maya Angelou portrays herself as a sort of stand-in figure for the “black American in Troubled Times.” Though McWhorter regards her prose work as old-fashioned, he also asserts that her works have helped to pave the road for other contemporary black writers. These black writers are now enjoying the luxury of representing themselves, not their race.

The writing of Angelou has been compared to the writings of Frederick Douglass by Lyn Z. Bloom. She states that both writers achieve the same purpose of describing the black culture and to explaining and interpreting it to the white and wider audience.

According to McWhorter, the language and people that Angelou used in her autobiographies are unrealistic. This results in the parting between her audience and her. She says that she has never read an autobiography in which she could struggle to understand how people talk. Moreover, she would also find it difficult to recognize who is talking. The speech of Angelou, her son, and her mother do not speak the way one expects them; their speech is clear for the readers.

For example, Guy reflects a young black male, whereas her mother, Vivian, is portrayed as a perfect motherly figure. The rigid language Angelou used in her dialogues, as well as in the text, is trying to show that blacks can also speak and use Standard English fully.

The apologetic nature of Angelou’s writing makes her style unique. Organic unity was the basic feature of the time of literature that she was to achieve and satisfy the criterion. She crafted the events in her book like short stories and made it episodic. However, the arrangements of events were not strictly chronological. These events and episodes were placed to highlight the main themes of her book. These themes include family, travel, identity, and racism.

Beside I Know Why Caged Bird Sings, she also wrote numerous other novels. In this novel, she narrates her account of life from age one to seventeen. Her second autobiography/novel Gather Together in My Name was published in 1974 is the narration of her account of experiences as a mother with her son. The third and fourth book, Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting Merry Like Christmas , were published in 1976 and account for four of her experiences as a dancer. In this book, she also narrates her traveling experience with Porgy and Bess.

Her book, The Heart of the Woman , published in 1981, is about the 1950s and 1960s life of Angelou. In this book, she narrates her relationship with her son and her time in California. In another novel, All God’s Children Needs Travelling Shoes , published in 1986, accounts for her life as a social activist in The Civil Rights Movement. Through her book, Angelou puts forward her emotional life with her readers and celebrates it. She published her last novel A Song Flung Up to Heaven , in 2002. This novel accounts of Maya’s experiences when Marther Luther King was assassinated.

The themes that are found in her plays and poetry are also found in her autobiographical novels. These themes were oppression, racial discrimination, a celebration of black beauty, and self-acceptance. Maya Angelou was the first Afro-American writer who discussed her life and experiences in her autobiographies. The majority of the African writers of her time did not want to talk about their nugatory lives in their works. 

However, Maya Angelou not only succeeded in depicting her life, but she also exhibits her life with pleasure and pride. Her first two novels/autobiography were also critically praised. All of her novels/autobiographies are accounting for different stages of her life. Her first two novels/autobiographies reflect the themes of struggle for identity, the realization of black grandeur, steady realization, and recognition of black motherhood and womanhood. All her themes carry a particular style of writing, which affects the memory of readers. The greatness of Angelou is highly reflected in her autobiographies.

Works Of Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou facts for kids

Maya Angelou , born Marguerite Ann Johnson (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014), was an American author and poet. She published seven autobiographies , three books of essays, and several books of poetry . Maya took part in several plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. She received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees . Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies , which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of seventeen which made her famous.

Personal life

Chronology of autobiographies, awards and honors, maya angelou quotes, interesting facts about maya angelou, images for kids.

Angelou was born in St. Louis , Missouri , the second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian , and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer. When Angelou was three, her parents' marriage ended, and her father sent her and her siblings to Stamps, Arkansas , alone by train, to live with their paternal grandmother Annie Henderson. Henderson's general store had done well during the Great Depression and World War II , and she "made wise and honest investments."

Four years later, the children's father returned them to their mother's care in St. Louis. At the age of 8, Angelou suffered a phsycological trauma and became mute for about 5 years. She and her brother were sent back to their grandmother.

A teacher and friend of her family, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, introduced Angelou to authors such as Charles Dickens , William Shakespeare , Edgar Allan Poe , Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson . These authors would affect her life and career as well as other black female artists like Frances Harper , Anne Spencer , and Jessie Fauset . Angelou said that Flowers helped her speak again.

When Angelou was 14, she and her brother moved in with their mother once again, who had since moved to Oakland, California . During World War II , Angelou attended the California Labor School. Before graduating, she worked as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco .

Before becoming a poet and writer, Angelou tried other occupations as a young adult. Maya worked as a fry cook, a dancer and performer, a cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess , coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , and a journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization . She was an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs.

Starting in 1982, she taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem , North Carolina , where she held the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. From that point on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes". Angelou taught a variety of subjects that reflected her interests, including philosophy, ethics, theology, science, theater, and writing.

She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X .

During the 1990s, she made approximately eighty appearances a year as a lecturer , something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton 's inauguration. She was the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy 's inauguration in 1961. The recording of the poem won a Grammy Award . In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Long called her "second 'public' poem", entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem . They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents. In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Angelou died of natural causes on the morning of May 28, 2014, in her home in Winston-Salem , North Carolina . She was 86 years old.

Angelou married Tosh Angelos in 1951. Her second husband was Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer . The couple got married in 1974.

Angelou had one son, Guy, one grandson, and two great-grandchildren. Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 and her brother Bailey Johnson Jr., died in 2000 after a series of strokes; both were important figures in her life and her books.

Angelou wrote a total of seven autobiographies.

Angelou's long and extensive career also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, directing, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize .

Angelou's successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, including her appearance in the television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original script by a Black woman to be produced, and she was the first African American woman to direct a major motion picture, Down in the Delta , in 1998.

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969): Up to 1944 (age 17)
• Gather Together in My Name (1974): 1944–48
• Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976): 1949–55
• The Heart of a Woman (1981): 1957–62
• All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986): 1962–65
• A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002): 1965–68
• Mom & Me & Mom (2013): overview

Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, and special interest groups. Her honors included a Tony Award nomination for her role in the 1973 play Look Away , and three Grammys for her spoken-word albums. She served on two presidential committees and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Angelou was awarded over thirty honorary degrees.

• “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
• “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
• “ Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
• “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
• “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
• "Maya" was a nickname given to Marguerite Ann by her brother.
• After Angelou's rough childhood, she graduated from high school and gave birth to her son Guy a few weeks later.
• Angelou became a calypso singer and dancer near San Francisco .
• Angelou's literary talent was noticed by James O. Killens, the spiritual father of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. He encouraged her to join the Harlem Writers Guild .
• Maya moved to Ghana in 1962 and worked as an administrator at the University of Ghana.
• She accompanied Malcolm X back to the United States to help him build his Organization of Afro-American Unity .
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on her 40th birthday. In mourning, she refused to celebrate her birthday for years after his death, choosing instead to send flowers to Dr. King's widow .
• Although she never attended college, Maya learned and experienced much in her adult life. She preferred to be referred to as "Dr."
• Angelou wrote her works in a hotel room. She authored autobiographies , cookbooks, and even greeting cards.
• She added the word "joy" when she signed her books.

Maya Angelou speaking at a rally for Barack Obama, 2008

Angelou and Hillary Clinton at an event in North Carolina in 2008

Angelou at York College in February 2013

• This page was last modified on 6 March 2024, at 06:35. Suggest an edit .

Maya Angelou

Marguerite Annie Johnson, better known as Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014), was an American poet, civil rights activist, historian, songwriter and frequent autobiographer (she wrote seven). Angelou was a significant presence in American culture and politics, with over fifty years of credits for plays, movies, and television, along with her intimate writing about herself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) is widely read in schools, though it was threatened to be, or actually banned in certain districts due to its provocative content. She challenged the traditional autobiography by critiquing and changing the genre. Her themes focus on racism, identity, family, and travel. She was an influential actor in the epic mini-series Roots in 1977, and served as a close friend and mentor to Oprah Winfrey in launching her prolific career.

Angelou worked with Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X during the Civil Rights Movement. She read her poem On the Pulse of the Morning at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in 1993, the first poet to do so since Robert Frost 's recitation of The Gift Outright at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.

American Literature will have to wait decades before her work is in the public domain, but we honor Angelou's many contributions to literature and humanity. One of our favorite quotes: "If you don't like something, change it. if you can't change it, change your attitude."