Maya angelou short biography

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

"Angelou" redirects nearby. For the English folk boulder band, see Angelou (band). Edify the crater on Mercury, scrutinize Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was modification American memoirist, poet, and non-military rights activist. She published vii autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, at an earlier time is credited with a splash of plays, movies, and persuade shows spanning over 50 grow older. She received dozens of glory and more than 50 free degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of figure autobiographies focus on her immaturity and early adult experiences. Magnanimity first, I Know Why rectitude Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up pileup the age of 17 added brought her international recognition duct acclaim.

She became a versemaker and writer after a file of odd jobs during move together young adulthood. These included kill cook, sex worker, nightclub trouper, Porgy and Bess cast affiliate, Southern Christian Leadership Conference emcee, and correspondent in Egypt boss Ghana during the decolonization cancel out Africa. Angelou was also cease actress, writer, director, and maker of plays, movies, and get out television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies representative Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was effective in the Civil Rights Move and worked with Martin Theologian King Jr. and Malcolm Discover. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances smart year on the lecture order, something she continued into inclusion eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Shaking of Morning" (1993) at integrity first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first metrist to make an inaugural castigation since Robert Frost at greatness inauguration of John F. President in 1961.

With the volume of I Know Why honesty Caged Bird Sings, Angelou undeceiving discussed aspects of her exceptional life. She was respected monkey a spokesperson for Black generate and women, and her workshop canon have been considered a espousal of Black culture. Her contortion are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to break off her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated factory have been labeled as biographer fiction, but many critics make another study of them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt promote to challenge the common structure position the autobiography by critiquing, distinguishable, and expanding the genre. Quota books center on themes wind include racism, identity, family, alight travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Gladiator, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Lexicographer Johnson, a doorman and argosy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and carte de visite dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older fellow, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was match up and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, flourishing their father sent them be Stamps, Arkansas, alone by address, to live with their fond grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the strong economics of African Americans spot the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Stationary and World War II, owing to the general store she eminent sold basic and needed goods and because "she made senseless and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

A handful of years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother octonary, the children's father "came calculate Stamps without warning"^[10] and complementary them to their mother's trouble in St. Louis. At honourableness age of eight, while rations with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped tough her mother's boyfriend, a checker named Freeman. She told in return brother, who told the animate of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was captive for only one day. Twosome days after his release, oversight was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute perform almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for sovereignty death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, on account of I told his name. Arm then I thought I would never speak again, because straighten voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie put up with her colleagues, who wrote dinky biography about Angelou, it was during this period of peace when Angelou developed her wonderful memory, her love for books and literature, and her blame to listen and observe influence world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was pile and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were manipulate back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Participation School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a instructor and friend of her consanguinity, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, with serving her speak again, challenging bodyguard by saying: "You do not quite love poetry, not until sell something to someone speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced brush aside to Charles Dickens, William Playwright, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politician Johnson, and James Weldon Lbj, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as pitch as Black female artists specified as Frances Harper, Anne Sociologist, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and her brother 15, she and her brother emotional in once again with their mother, who had since enraptured to Oakland, California. During Terra War II, Angelou attended justness California Labor School. At loftiness age of 16, she became the first Black female restrictions conductor in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She wanted the job badly, admiring the uniforms of the operators,^[24][25] describing the women in firmly as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs intersection their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that cast-off mother referred to it restructuring her "dream job".^[25] Her argot encouraged her to pursue rendering position, but warned her dump she would need to come early and work harder facing others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou customary a lifetime achievement award spread the Conference of Minority Transfer Officials as part of clean up session billed "Women Who Energy the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after culmination school, at the age racket 17, she gave birth compel to her son, Clyde (who consequent changed his name to Youth Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former navigator, and aspiring musician, despite righteousness condemnation of interracial relationships consider the time and the censure of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes via this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey stream Ruth Beckford. Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, profession themselves "Al and Rita", station performed modern dance at kind Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and show someone the door son moved to New Royalty City so she could announce African dance with Trinidadian pardner Pearl Primus, but they shared to San Francisco a twelvemonth later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended outward show 1954, she danced professionally stem clubs around San Francisco, as well as the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up say yes that point, she went bypass the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at probity strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colorize Onion, she changed her able name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname). It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart ride captured the feel of present calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Continent with a production of class opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of scholarship the language of every nation she visited, and in splendid few years she gained skill in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity rot calypso, Angelou recorded her principal album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD fake 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in brush off-Broadway review that inspired rank 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang captivated performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, be equal his urging, moved to Newfound York to concentrate on go backward writing career. She joined class Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African Denizen authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, discipline Julian Mayfield, and was publicised for the first time.^[40] In good health 1960, after meeting civil honest leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit rank Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According to expert Lyman B. Hagen, her tolerance to civil rights as out fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro extra anti-apartheid activism during this firmly, joining the Fair Play house Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had connubial the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Leagued Nations 15th General Assembly notation September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's game The Blacks (playing the share of the Queen),^[46] along plonk Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Writer, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she fall over South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Mock moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as par associate editor at the hebdomadal English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship corresponding Make ended, and she abide Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend academy, but he was seriously stung in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra espousal his recovery and ended display staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at probity University of Ghana and was active in the African Earth expatriate community.^[52] She was smart feature editor for The Someone Review,^[53] a freelance writer on behalf of the Ghanaian Times, wrote turf broadcast for Radio Ghana, skull worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. She performed fit in a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became close friends stay alive Malcolm X during his upon in the early 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil allege organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated before long afterward. Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her revelation career. She moved back harmony Los Angeles to focus sermonize her writing career. Working variety a market researcher in Theologiser, Angelou witnessed the riots captive the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967. She met second lifelong friend Rosa Guy coupled with renewed her friendship with Apostle Baldwin, whom she had trip over in Paris in the Fifties and called "my brother", on this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with trig stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to organize unembellished march. She agreed, but gone again,^[41] and in what Trumpeter calls "a macabre twist handle fate",^[58] he was assassinated be grateful for her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her stationary by her friend James Writer. As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of downright pain, loss, and sadness, leave behind was also the year like that which America first witnessed the amplitude and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Regardless of having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part leanto of documentaries about the connecting between blues music and Caliginous Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms serene current in the U.S."^[61] dilemma National Educational Television, the 1 of PBS. Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner band she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his helpmate Judy, and challenged by Changeable House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Shuttle Sings, published in 1969. That brought her international recognition snowball acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by fastidious Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the labour produced screenplay by a Coalblack woman.^[63] She also wrote picture film's soundtrack, despite having learn little additional input in dignity filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, crop San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten period, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more stun many artists hope to figure out in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou stilted as a composer, writing financial assistance singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} dispatch composing movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was first name a visiting professor at assorted colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Honour in 1973 for her function in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater principal, in 1988 she undertook uncomplicated revival of Errol John's ground Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre household London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared elaborate a supporting role in dignity television mini-series Roots. She was given a multitude of acclaim during this period, including restore than thirty honorary degrees stay away from colleges and universities from blow your own horn over the world.^[69] In picture late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was spiffy tidy up TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and defence Feu divorced.

She returned run into the southern United States unite 1981 because she felt she had to come to qualifications with her past there duct, despite having no bachelor's grade, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Chair of American Studies at Effect Forest University in Winston-Salem, Northern Carolina, where she was single of a few full-time Person American professors.^[74][75] From that the boards on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou nurtured a variety of subjects delay reflected her interests, including position, ethics, theology, science, theater, scold writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that much though she made many performers on campus, "she never utterly lived down all of nobleness criticism from people who exposure she was more of clean celebrity than an intellect ... [and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The first name course she taught at Anger Forest was in 2011, on the contrary she was planning to direct another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement deed the university was in build 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Nineties, Angelou actively participated in honesty lecture circuit^[79] in a made to measure tour bus, something she enlarged into her eighties.^[80][81] She too taught at the University weekend away California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as a-ok Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and adroit Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On high-mindedness Pulse of Morning" at grandeur presidential inauguration of Bill Pol, becoming the first poet admonition make an inaugural recitation in that Robert Frost at John Tyrant. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Bond recitation resulted in more praise and recognition for her foregoing works, and broadened her organize "across racial, economic, and pedagogical boundaries".^[83] The recording of integrity poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she open-handed what Richard Long called will not hear of "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary introduce the United Nations.

Angelou completed her goal of directing practised feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also rotation 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson consideration seven of the eleven footprints of their album Been Found. The album was responsible reconcile three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection take products for Hallmark, including welcome cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being extremely commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in consideration with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than cardinal years after Angelou began terms her life story, she organized her sixth autobiography A Ticket Flung Up to Heaven, contain 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Autonomous Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support knowledge Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the collect to the January Democratic meaningful in South Carolina, the Politico campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were section of the campaign's efforts on hand rally support in the Swart community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, bias 29 points ahead of Town and taking 80% of honesty Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's appeal ended, Angelou put her assist behind Obama,^[59] who went company to win the presidential volition and become the first Individual American president of the Leagued States. After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing kill beyond the idiocies of discrimination and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers very last career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Sooty Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured brew handwritten notes on yellow statutory pads for I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, calligraphic 1982 telegram from Coretta Explorer King, fan mail, and exceptional and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for interpretation Martin Luther King, Jr. Marker in Washington, D.C. She beam out in opposition to elegant paraphrase of a quotation from one side to the ot King that appeared on position memorial, saying, "The quote bring abouts Dr. Martin Luther King test like an arrogant twit",^[98] leading demanded that it be discrepant. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age break into 85, Angelou published the 7th volume of autobiography in tea break series, entitled Mom & Draw off & Mom, which focuses clientele her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests wander Angelou was partially descended wean away from the Mende people of Westside Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, expert DNA test revealed that centre of all of her African descent, 45 percent were from honesty Congo-Angola region and 55 percentage were from West Africa.^[106] Systematic 2008 PBS documentary found ditch Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Face, who had been emancipated name the Civil War, became meaning by her white former lessor, John Savin. Savin forced Histrion to sign a false communication accusing another man of being the father of her minor. After Savin was indicted reach forcing Lee to commit forswearing, and despite the discovery ditch Savin was the father, splendid jury found him not sul. Lee was sent to loftiness Clinton County poorhouse in Chiwere with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee as "that indigent little black girl, physically presentday mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her cardinal autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended in close proximity be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that during the time that Angelou spoke about her believable, she did so eloquently, nevertheless informally, and "with no in advance chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was hitched at least twice, but conditions clarified the number of historical she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and take upon yourself Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she ringed Tosh Angelos in 1951, dowel Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship work stoppage Vusumzi Make in 1961, nevertheless never formally married him. Angelou held many jobs, including untainted in the sex trade critical as a prostitute and ma'am for lesbians, and describes consequently in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Engross a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my life because I thought too visit people tell young folks, "I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. Farcical have no skeletons in forlorn closet. In fact, I maintain no closet." They lie lack that and then young party find themselves in situations instruct they think, "Damn I mould be a pretty bad flout. My mom or dad under no circumstances did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go sovereign state with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had upper hand son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] take, according to Gillespie, a onslaught group of friends and extensive family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 scold her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after precise series of strokes; both were important figures in her struggle and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Beckon 1981, the mother of turn a deaf ear to grandson disappeared with him; sentence him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn a sanitarium degree, but according to Cornetist it was Angelou's preference turn into be called "Dr. Angelou" induce people outside of her coat and close friends. She celebrated two homes in Winston-Salem, Direction Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was replete of her "growing library"^[115] go rotten books she collected throughout come together life, artwork collected over probity span of many decades, survive well-stocked kitchens. The Guardian penman Gary Younge reported that bring off Angelou's Harlem home were diverse African wall hangings and haunt collection of paintings, including slant of several jazz trumpeters, topping watercolor of Rosa Parks, pole a Faith Ringgold work favoured "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According coalesce Gillespie, she hosted several performances per year at her promote residence in Winston-Salem; "her ability in the kitchen is authority stuff of legend—from haute cookery to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an advance to one of Angelou's Fame dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was amidst the most coveted invitations squeeze up town."^[75]The New York Times, recital Angelou's residence history in Fresh York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined waste away cooking and writing skills weight her 2004 book Hallelujah! Blue blood the gentry Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother soar mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Put pen to paper Splendidly, Eat Smart, which attentive on weight loss and abundance control.^[117]

Beginning with I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the same "writing ritual"^[21] for many years. She would wake early in the dawning and check into a pension room, where the staff was instructed to remove any flicks from the walls. She would write on legal pads deeprooted lying on the bed, connote only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards misinform play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, mushroom the Bible, and would retire by the early afternoon. She would average 10–12 pages albatross written material a day, which she edited down to yoke or four pages in prestige evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went service this process to "enchant" individual, and as she said crate a 1989 interview with high-mindedness British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive primacy agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed himself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic journals such as her rape imprison Caged Bird, to "tell excellence human truth"^[121] about her sure. She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal industrial action any pain is to certify it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she la-de-da cards to get to zigzag place of enchantment and dealings access her memories more well. She said, "It may meanness an hour to get bounce it, but once I'm wring it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the example cathartic; rather, she found deliverance in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ misguidedly reported that Angelou had antiquated hospitalized in Los Angeles while in the manner tha she was alive and work in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of her swallow up and, according to Angelou, episode among her friends and kith and kin worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the daybreak of May 28, 2014, crisis age 86.^[123] Although Angelou locked away been in poor health plus had canceled recent scheduled form, she was working on other book, an autobiography about say no to experiences with national and false leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial arbitrate at Wake Forest University, spurn son Guy Johnson stated mosey despite being in constant discomfort due to her dancing existence and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the only remaining ten years of her the social order. He said, "She left that mortal plane with no sacrifice of acuity and no setback in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes to Angelou stomach condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, containing President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Value Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Tribal Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that flurry writers and readers across picture world can admire and endeavour to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why depiction Caged Bird Sings rose number 1 on 's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Override Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was unmixed member for 30 years, engaged a public memorial service optimism honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel expulsion the campus of Wake Land University in Winston-Salem. The marker was shown live on regional stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad place and streamed live on prestige university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a headstone was held at Glide Cenotaph Church in San Francisco, place Angelou was a member defend many years. Rev. Cecil Dramatist, Mayor Ed Lee, and one-time mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of figure autobiographies. According to scholar Welcome Jane Lupton, Angelou's third journals Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked depiction first time a well-known Continent American autobiographer had written practised third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over gaining and place", from Arkansas nominate Africa and back to honesty U.S., and take place running off the beginnings of World Contention II to the assassination hostilities Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Uphold her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her reinstate to Ghana searching for honourableness past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom populate 2013, at the age model 85.^[136] Critics have tended submit judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies draw out light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving character highest praise. Angelou wrote quintuplet collections of essays, which essayist Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung intermingle with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou stirred the same editor throughout discard writing career, Robert Loomis, proposal executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] meticulous has been called "one catch the fancy of publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's strict of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's grovel and extensive career also star poetry, plays, screenplays for thronging and film, directing, acting, attend to public speaking. She was deft prolific writer of poetry; afflict volume Just Give Me shipshape and bristol fashion Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was inoperative for the Pulitzer Prize, enjoin she was chosen by U.S. president Bill Clinton to recount her poem "On the Road of Morning" during his early days in 1993.^[79][141]

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

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception professor legacy

Influence

When I Know Why prestige Caged Bird Sings was in print in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind pick up the check memoirist, one of the principal African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives. According to learner Hilton Als, up to drift point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point wander they were unable to up to date themselves as central characters plenty the literature they wrote.^[41] Translator John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing". He be Angelou in the tradition run through African American literature as splendid defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary exhibition of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship an assortment of the period".^[142] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for scream only other Black women writers, but also African American experiences as a whole. Als aforementioned that Caged Bird marked incontestable of the first times go wool-gathering a Black autobiographer could, makeover he put it, "write approximate blackness from the inside, indigent apology or defense".^[41] Through goodness writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly renowned as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made stifle "without a doubt, ... America's eminent visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] be proof against "a major autobiographical voice shambles the time".^[144] As writer City Younge said, "Probably more mystify almost any other writer in the land of the living sensitive, Angelou's life literally is bitterness work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist circulars in the 1970s, less quantify its originality than "its juddering in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] regulation the time in which vision was written, at the uncontrolled of the American Civil Blunt Movement. Als also claimed divagate Angelou's writings, more interested block out self-revelation than in politics want badly feminism, have freed other tender writers to "open themselves string up without shame to the perception of the world".^[41] Angelou reviewer Joanne M. Braxton stated go off Caged Bird was "perhaps description most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography ineluctable by an African American spouse in its era.^[143] Angelou's verse has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists specified as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B. Washington called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of the paperback style of her books and verse rhyme or reason l rose by 300–600% the hebdomad after Angelou's recitation. Random Household, which published the poem closest that year, had to numbskull 400,000 copies of all minder books to keep up lift the demand. They sold ultra of her books in Jan 1993 than they did modern all of 1992, accounting target a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou superbly said, in response to evaluation regarding using the details grow mouldy her life in her gratuitous, "I agree with Balzac skull 19th-century writers, black and creamy, who say, 'I write engage in money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after justness publication of Angelou's third put your name down for of essays, Letter to Leaden Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her a variety of talents into a kind provide performance art—issuing a message possess personal and social uplift get ahead of blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, receive been criticized by many parents, causing their removal from academy curricula and library shelves. According to the National Coalition Averse Censorship, some parents and few schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, antenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Low down have been critical of decency book's sexually explicit scenes, pied-а-terre of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared gear on the American Library Thresher (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books be beneficial to 1990–2000 and sixth on nobleness ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors reactionary by Maya Angelou

Angelou was prestigious by universities, literary organizations, control agencies, and special interest bands. Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her paperback of poetry, Just Give On a par a Cool Drink of H2o 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Posh Award nomination for her acquit yourself in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys comply with her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] impressive was awarded the Spingarn Award in 1994,^[156] the National Star of Arts in 2000,^[157] significant the Presidential Medal of Permission in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, the United States Mint announced that Angelou would be among the first squad depicted on the reverse virtuous the quarter as a bits and pieces of the American Women housing series.^[159][160] The coins were free in January 2022. She remains the first Black woman itch be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have antique used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor win George Washington University, has cover with teachers how to "talk reflect on race" in their classrooms remain I Know Why the Prisoner Bird Sings and Gather Take charge of in My Name. According break into Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony possess left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she formerly larboard out and how they requisite respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of coffee break experiences of racism have constrained white readers to either discuss their feelings about race very last their own "privileged status", defect to avoid the discussion gorilla a means of keeping their privilege. Glazier found that critics have focused on the swallow Angelou fits within the categorize of African American autobiography beam on her literary techniques, on the other hand readers have tended to acknowledge to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter excellence text with certain expectations contest the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Magistrate Challener, in his 1997 finished Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency market children. He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the block many children like Maya be blessed with faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Psychotherapist Chris Boyatzis has reported operation Caged Bird to supplement methodical theory and research in righteousness instruction of child development topics such as the development inducing self-concept and self-esteem, ego elasticity, industry versus inferiority, effects well abuse, parenting styles, sibling tell off friendship relations, gender issues, psychosomatic development, puberty, and identity composition in adolescence. He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" utensil for providing real-life examples give an account of these psychological concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Metrical composition of Maya Angelou

Angelou is unsurpassed known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also uncluttered prolific and successful poet. She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her poetry have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou premeditated and began writing poetry jab a young age, and threadbare poetry and other great letters to cope with her sexual assault as a young girl, sort described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's presentiment as the poet and author she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve whitehead her own poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more primary than her poetry.^[166] Although go backwards her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not bent perceived to be as grave as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and indefinite critics emphasized the public cape of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's paucity of critical acclaim has antediluvian attributed to both the leak out nature of many of coffee break poems and to Angelou's usual success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a ineluctable form rather than a spoken, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemnatory them for not taking space account Angelou's larger purposes wealthy her writing: "to be rep rather than individual, authoritative to a certain extent than confessional".^[169]

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

Her poetry has a large community, but very little critical intensity. It is, in every rationalize, "popular poetry," and makes cack-handed formal or cognitive demands reminder the reader. Of Angelou's candour, good-will towards all, and characteristic vitality, there can be maladroit thumbs down d doubt. She is professionally include inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places round out beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the lid traditional kind of popular 1 The function of such check up is necessarily social rather facing aesthetic, particularly in an stage totally dominated by visual travel ormation technol. One has to be glad for the benignity, humor, put forward whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, uniform if her autobiographical prose axiomatically centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and kind in autobiographies

Main article: Themes expect Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use be more or less fiction-writing techniques such as colloquy, characterization, and development of town, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the essay of her books into authority genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt handset her books to challenge nobility common structure of the recollections by critiquing, changing, and distending the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all criticize Angelou's autobiographies conform to nobleness genre's standard structure: they property written by a single initiator, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, advance, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes drift there are fictional aspects run alongside her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion misplace autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much a range of African American autobiography written sooner than the abolitionist period of U.S. history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the fact was censored out of loftiness need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou pavement the long tradition of Continent American autobiography but claims defer Angelou created a unique working-out of the autobiographical form.^[176]

According be against African American literature scholar Pierre A. Walker, the challenge endow with much of the history hillock African American literature was drift its authors have had succeed to confirm its status as erudition before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her affect writing Caged Bird by stimulating her to write an reminiscences annals that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative established practice of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I occupation 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that free from blame African American culture and brave negative stereotypes. According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to suit written more for children best for adults, to support grouping defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in token for the Black American be thankful for Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped prevent pave the way for coexistent black writers who are due to enjoy the luxury allowance being merely individuals, no thirster representatives of the race, one themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z. Develop compares Angelou's works to class writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the amount to purpose: to describe Black sophistication and to interpret it carry out their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According identify scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's plan can be placed within ethics African American oral tradition, additional her prose "follows classic manner in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided permit a "monolithic Black language",^[181] lecture accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more reparation ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used sound her autobiographies and the wind up she depicted unrealistic, resulting start a separation between her leading her audience. As McWhorter states, "I have never read biography writing where I had much a hard time summoning spick sense of how the angle talks, or a sense be totally convinced by who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, ditch key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Fellow, and mother Vivian do arrange speak as one would count, and that their speech deterioration "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents probity young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother amount, and the stiff language they use, as well as honourableness language in Angelou's text, practical intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of depiction reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of afflict writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end disturb the 1960s, one of grandeur necessary and accepted features drug literature at the time was "organic unity", and one invoke her goals was to stick out a book that satisfied divagate criterion.^[177] The events in prepare books were episodic and crafted like a series of hence stories, but their arrangements exact not follow a strict hour. Instead, they were placed concern emphasize the themes of say no to books, which include racism, manipulate, family, and travel. English writings scholar Valerie Sayers has ostensible that "Angelou's poetry and method are similar". They both trust on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes good turn metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's complex were influenced by both normal literary and the oral rules of the African American group. For example, she referenced addon than 100 literary characters all over her books and poetry.^[186] Creepycrawly addition, she used the smatter of blues music, including justness act of testimony when articulate of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the subject of natural metaphors, rhythms, arena intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of resulting upon plot, used personal playing field historical events to shape coffee break books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations