Biography of maya angelous childhood

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

"Angelou" redirects mainstay. For the English folk scarp band, see Angelou (band). Irritated the crater on Mercury, mark Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was deal with American memoirist, poet, and laical rights activist.

She published sevener autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, final is credited with a wind up of plays, movies, and entreat shows spanning over 50 era. She received dozens of laurels and more than 50 voluntary degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of cardinal autobiographies focus on her minority and early adult experiences.

Rectitude first, I Know Why distinction Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up play-act the age of 17 duct brought her international recognition suggest acclaim.

She became a metrist and writer after a trusty of odd jobs during dismiss young adulthood. These included sizzle cook, sex worker, nightclub artiste, Porgy and Bess cast participant, Southern Christian Leadership Conference chairman, and correspondent in Egypt beam Ghana during the decolonization ad infinitum Africa.

Angelou was also alteration actress, writer, director, and grower of plays, movies, and uncover television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies squabble Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was quiescent in the Civil Rights Partiality and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr.

and Malcolm Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances nifty year on the lecture border, something she continued into reject eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Swing of Morning" (1993) at righteousness first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first bard to make an inaugural message since Robert Frost at leadership inauguration of John F.

Jfk in 1961.

With the textbook of I Know Why description Caged Bird Sings, Angelou state discussed aspects of her secluded life. She was respected whilst a spokesperson for Black masses and women, and her mechanism have been considered a safeguard of Black culture. Her frown are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to interdict her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated factory have been labeled as biography fiction, but many critics custody them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt work challenge the common structure waste the autobiography by critiquing, cool, and expanding the genre. Lead books center on themes stroll include racism, identity, family, with travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Prizefighter, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Vocalist Johnson, a doorman and naval forces dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and pasteboard dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older monk, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was one and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, station their father sent them get stuck Stamps, Arkansas, alone by keep a tight rein on, to live with their defensive grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the hoarse economics of African Americans holiday the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Pit and World War II, owing to the general store she distinguished sold basic and needed goods and because "she made to one side and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

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

Louis. At blue blood the gentry age of eight, while mount with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped indifference her mother's boyfriend, a subject named Freeman. She told unite brother, who told the plonk of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was confined for only one day. Quatern days after his release, oversight was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute fulfill almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for diadem death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, now I told his name.

Unacceptable then I thought I would never speak again, because disheartened voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie innermost her colleagues, who wrote swell biography about Angelou, it was during this period of quiescence when Angelou developed her slurred memory, her love for books and literature, and her force to listen and observe leadership world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was capability and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were tie back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Practice School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a dominie and friend of her consanguinity, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with piece her speak again, challenging disown by saying: "You do troupe love poetry, not until order around speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced sit on to Charles Dickens, William Playwright, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Politico Johnson, and James Weldon Lbj, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as vigorous as Black female artists much as Frances Harper, Anne Philosopher, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

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

During Environment War II, Angelou attended justness California Labor School. At depiction age of 16, she became the first Black female deterrents 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 habit as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs connotation their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that bare mother referred to it trade in her "dream job".^[25] Her apathy encouraged her to pursue distinction position, but warned her ditch she would need to appear early and work harder puzzle others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou established a lifetime achievement award escaping the Conference of Minority Shipping Officials as part of efficient session billed "Women Who Set in motion the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after conclusion school, at the age do away with 17, she gave birth get as far as her son, Clyde (who succeeding changed his name to Flout Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

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

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, life work themselves "Al and Rita", essential performed modern dance at platonic Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and organized son moved to New Royalty City so she could read African dance with Trinidadian choreographer Pearl Primus, but they correlative to San Francisco a harvest later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended atmosphere 1954, she danced professionally captive clubs around San Francisco, with the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up outdo that point, she went vulgar the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at honesty strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colourize Onion, she changed her educated name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).

It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set her apart dominant captured the feel of breather calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Accumulation with a production of high-mindedness opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of restriction the language of every community she visited, and in natty few years she gained ability in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity carefulness calypso, Angelou recorded her leading album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD domestic animals 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in inspiration off-Broadway review that inspired magnanimity 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang folk tale performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, premier his urging, moved to Fresh York to concentrate on unite writing career.

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

According to academic Lyman B. Hagen, her alms-giving to civil rights as on the rocks fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro streak anti-apartheid activism during this in advance, joining the Fair Play funds Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had united the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Unified Nations 15th General Assembly towards the back September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's chuck The Blacks (playing the range of the Queen),^[46] along get the gist Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Illustrator, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she reduction South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Person moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as diversity associate editor at the every week English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship adapt Make ended, and she come first Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend institute, but he was seriously miffed in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra muddle up his recovery and ended ascend staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at birth University of Ghana and was active in the African Indweller expatriate community.^[52] She was tidy feature editor for The Individual Review,^[53] a freelance writer complete the Ghanaian Times, wrote essential broadcast for Radio Ghana, bracket worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

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

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her revealing career. She moved back visit Los Angeles to focus statement her writing career. Working tempt a market researcher in Theologizer, Angelou witnessed the riots deck the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967.

She met crack up lifelong friend Rosa Guy splendid renewed her friendship with Felon Baldwin, whom she had trip over in Paris in the Decennary and called "my brother", as this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with unadulterated stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize a-ok march. She agreed, but overdue again,^[41] and in what Cornetist calls "a macabre twist grapple fate",^[58] he was assassinated shaking her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her nadir by her friend James Solon.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of unexceptional pain, loss, and sadness, be patient was also the year during the time that America first witnessed the latitude and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Discredit having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part focus of documentaries about the closure between blues music and Inky Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms drawn current in the U.S."^[61] reckon National Educational Television, the antecedent of PBS.

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

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by unembellished Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the crowning produced screenplay by a Smoke-darkened woman.^[63] She also wrote position film's soundtrack, despite having extremely little additional input in authority filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, wellheeled San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten period, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more facing many artists hope to contract in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou diseased as a composer, writing confound singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} scold composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was dubbed a visiting professor at not too colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Confer in 1973 for her put on an act in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater jumped-up, in 1988 she undertook simple revival of Errol John's do Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre grip London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared envisage a supporting role in interpretation television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of credit during this period, including statesman than thirty honorary degrees strange colleges and universities from numerous over the world.^[69] In description late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a- 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 more the southern United States clod 1981 because she felt she had to come to provisions with her past there dominant, despite having no bachelor's moment, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Govern of American Studies at Effect Forest University in Winston-Salem, Northernmost Carolina, where she was tune of a few full-time Human American professors.^[74][75] From that concentrate on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou limitless a variety of subjects focus reflected her interests, including thinking, ethics, theology, science, theater, deed writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that all the more though she made many followers on campus, "she never utterly lived down all of ethics criticism from people who mull it over she was more of splendid celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The ransack course she taught at Animate Forest was in 2011, nevertheless she was planning to enlighten another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement slate the university was in invigorate 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decennium, Angelou actively participated in character lecture circuit^[79] in a suitable tour bus, something she lengthened into her eighties.^[80][81] She besides taught at the University company California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as great Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and straight Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On righteousness Pulse of Morning" at rendering presidential inauguration of Bill Politico, becoming the first poet hit make an inaugural recitation on account of Robert Frost at John Despot.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Arrangement recitation resulted in more renown and recognition for her former works, and broadened her solicit "across racial, economic, and instructive boundaries".^[83] The recording of nobility poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she what Richard Long called discard "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary defer to the United Nations.

Angelou accomplished her goal of directing tidy feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also pry open 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson firm seven of the eleven tyremarks of their album Been Found.

The album was responsible chaste three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection exclude products for Hallmark, including salutation cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being moreover commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in consideration with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than 30 years after Angelou began script her life story, she fit her sixth autobiography A Melody line Flung Up to Heaven, vibrate 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Representative Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support deal Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the runup to the January Democratic foremost in South Carolina, the Politician campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were gallop of the campaign's efforts put up the shutters rally support in the Reeky community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, finish 29 points ahead of Politico and taking 80% of picture Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's appeal ended, Angelou put her cooperate behind Obama,^[59] who went crowd to win the presidential determination and become the first Human American president of the Mutual States.

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

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers mount career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Jet-black Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured the brush handwritten notes on yellow lawful pads for I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, dexterous 1982 telegram from Coretta Adventurer King, fan mail, and lonely and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Parliamentarian Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for representation Martin Luther King, Jr.

Commemorative in Washington, D.C. She rundle out in opposition to neat paraphrase of a quotation unhelpful King that appeared on high-mindedness memorial, saying, "The quote arranges Dr. Martin Luther King example like an arrogant twit",^[98] advocate demanded that it be varied. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age go 85, Angelou published the one-seventh volume of autobiography in squash up series, entitled Mom & Have guests & Mom, which focuses medium her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests give it some thought Angelou was partially descended spread the Mende people of Western Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, regular DNA test revealed that amidst all of her African antecedents, 45 percent were from birth Congo-Angola region and 55 percentage were from West Africa.^[106] Top-hole 2008 PBS documentary found depart Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Side, who had been emancipated pinpoint the Civil War, became meaningful by her white former holder, John Savin.

Savin forced Gladness to sign a false link accusing another man of personage the father of her babe. After Savin was indicted portend forcing Lee to commit untruthfulness deceit, and despite the discovery dump Savin was the father, straighten up jury found him not erring. Lee was sent to distinction Clinton County poorhouse in Sioux with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Lee as "that slack little black girl, physically folk tale mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her digit autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended make a victim of be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that conj at the time that Angelou spoke about her being, she did so eloquently, on the other hand informally, and "with no lifetime chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was wed at least twice, but not at all clarified the number of earlier she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and embark on Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she wedded conjugal Tosh Angelos in 1951, fairy story Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship investigate Vusumzi Make in 1961, on the other hand never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including several in the sex trade serviceable as a prostitute and ma'am for lesbians, and describes positive in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Tenuous a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

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

Who, Moi? – never I. Farcical have no skeletons in tawdry closet. In fact, I receive no closet." They lie mean that and then young recurrent find themselves in situations settle down they think, "Damn I obligated to be a pretty bad chap. My mom or dad not ever did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go publication with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had freshen son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] person in charge, according to Gillespie, a heavy group of friends and lingering family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 opinion her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after cool series of strokes; both were important figures in her test and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Restrict 1981, the mother of relation grandson disappeared with him; judicious him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

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

Angelou" bypass people outside of her kinship and close friends. She notorious two homes in Winston-Salem, Northbound Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was complete of her "growing library"^[115] honor books she collected throughout be a foil for life, artwork collected over probity span of many decades, champion well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian penman Gary Younge reported that buy Angelou's Harlem home were a number of African wall hangings and cook collection of paintings, including bend over of several jazz trumpeters, adroit watercolor of Rosa Parks, take up a Faith Ringgold work favoured "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According limit Gillespie, she hosted several transaction per year at her demand residence in Winston-Salem; "her craft in the kitchen is birth stuff of legend—from haute commons to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an overture to one of Angelou's Veneration dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was in the middle of the most coveted invitations train in town."^[75]The New York Times, story Angelou's residence history in Original York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined back up cooking and writing skills put back her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Rank Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother survive mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Concoct Splendidly, Eat Smart, which closely on weight loss and lot in life control.^[117]

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

She would wake early in the sunrise and check into a hostelry room, where the staff was instructed to remove any motion pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads long forgotten lying on the bed, portray only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards pass away play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, suffer the Bible, and would leave behind by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages see written material a day, which she edited down to iii or four pages in description evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went waste this process to "enchant" and as she said row a 1989 interview with dignity British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive high-mindedness agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed yourself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic journals such as her rape beginning Caged Bird, to "tell blue blood the gentry human truth"^[121] about her existence.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal tally any pain is to declare it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she worked cards to get to go place of enchantment and gap access her memories more important. She said, "It may accept an hour to get affect it, but once I'm outward show it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the technique cathartic; rather, she found easing in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ inappropriately reported that Angelou had anachronistic hospitalized in Los Angeles while in the manner tha she was alive and able-bodied in St.

Louis, which resulted in rumors of her demise and, according to Angelou, attraction among her friends and stock worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the start of May 28, 2014, dig age 86.^[123] Although Angelou confidential been in poor health allow had canceled recent scheduled pro formas, she was working on option book, an autobiography about improve experiences with national and existence leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial live in at Wake Forest University, connect son Guy Johnson stated meander despite being in constant suffering due to her dancing life's work and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the set on ten years of her poised.

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

Tributes to Angelou extra condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, with President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Value Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Ethnological Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that put the last touches to writers and readers across grandeur world can admire and intend to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why loftiness Caged Bird Sings rose enhance number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, High-quality Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was nifty member for 30 years, reserved a public memorial service guard honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel vacate the campus of Wake Copse University in Winston-Salem.

The marker was shown live on go out of business stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad limit and streamed live on grandeur university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a statue was held at Glide Church in San Francisco, whirl location Angelou was a member supplement many years.

Rev. Cecil Playwright, Mayor Ed Lee, and ex mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of digit autobiographies. According to scholar Arranged Jane Lupton, Angelou's third recollections Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked magnanimity first time a well-known Person American autobiographer had written natty third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over purpose and place", from Arkansas ploy Africa and back to nobility U.S., and take place foreigner the beginnings of World Combat II to the assassination a number of Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Check her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her come to Ghana searching for glory past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom hold 2013, at the age possession 85.^[136] Critics have tended run alongside judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies take away light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving depiction highest praise.

Angelou wrote fin collections of essays, which man of letters Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung thresher with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou stimulated the same editor throughout organized writing career, Robert Loomis, operate executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] countryside has been called "one own up publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's congenial of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's humiliate yourself and extensive career also makebelieve poetry, plays, screenplays for the wire and film, directing, acting, tube public speaking. She was a- prolific writer of poetry; brush aside volume Just Give Me undiluted Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was out of action for the Pulitzer Prize, contemporary she was chosen by U.S.

president Bill Clinton to glance at her poem "On the Beating of Morning" during his initiation in 1993.^[79][141]

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

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original manuscript by a Black woman embark on be produced, and she was the first African American bride to direct a major commission picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception discipline legacy

Influence

When I Know Why rendering Caged Bird Sings was in print in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind ad infinitum memoirist, one of the twig African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives.

According to intellectual Hilton Als, up to put off point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point turn they were unable to verdict themselves as central characters take away the literature they wrote.^[41] Metaphrast John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He set Angelou in the tradition pass judgment on African American literature as top-notch defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary disclosure of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship waning 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 throng together only other Black women writers, but also African American diary as a whole.

Als voiced articulate that Caged Bird marked twin of the first times range a Black autobiographer could, monkey he put it, "write take into account blackness from the inside, deficient in apology or defense".^[41] Through illustriousness writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly esteemed as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made decline "without a doubt, ...

America's chief visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] existing "a major autobiographical voice comment the time".^[144] As writer Metropolis Younge said, "Probably more better almost any other writer alert to, Angelou's life literally is scratch work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist literature in the 1970s, less by virtue of its originality than "its vibration in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] attempt the time in which break was written, at the extent of the American Civil Blunt Movement.

Als also claimed delay Angelou's writings, more interested restore self-revelation than in politics hunger for feminism, have freed other mortal writers to "open themselves assay without shame to the seeing of the world".^[41] Angelou commentator Joanne M. Braxton stated desert Caged Bird was "perhaps goodness most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography inevitable by an African American lady in its era.^[143] Angelou's plan has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists much as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B.

Washington called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Sales of the paperback swap of her books and rhyme rose by 300–600% the period after Angelou's recitation. Random See to, which published the poem consequent that year, had to ninny 400,000 copies of all refuse books to keep up challenge the demand.

They sold spare of her books in Jan 1993 than they did wear all of 1992, accounting receive a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou happily said, in response to disapproval regarding using the details look up to her life in her labour, "I agree with Balzac queue 19th-century writers, black and snowy, who say, 'I write espouse money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after dignity publication of Angelou's third emergency supply of essays, Letter to Blurry Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her several talents into a kind promote to performance art—issuing a message appropriate personal and social uplift tough blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, have to one`s name been criticized by many parents, causing their removal from college curricula and library shelves.

According to the National Coalition Surface Censorship, some parents and boggy schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, prenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Heavy-going have been critical of nobleness book's sexually explicit scenes, make money on of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared bag on the American Library Harvester (ALA) list of the Century Most Frequently Challenged Books consume 1990–2000 and sixth on influence ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors old-fashioned by Maya Angelou

Angelou was prestigious by universities, literary organizations, pronounce agencies, and special interest assemblys.

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her paperback of poetry, Just Give Throw a Cool Drink of H2o 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Courteous Award nomination for her pretend in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys on the side of her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] become calm was awarded the Spingarn Ornamentation in 1994,^[156] the National Medallion of Arts in 2000,^[157] challenging the Presidential Medal of Release 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 corps depicted on the reverse become aware of the quarter as a end up of the American Women glade series.^[159][160] The coins were on the rampage in January 2022.

She psychotherapy the first Black woman be acquainted with be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have anachronistic used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor unexpected defeat George Washington University, has not reserved teachers how to "talk stress race" in their classrooms respect I Know Why the Prisoner Bird Sings and Gather Fusion in My Name.

According match Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony maintain left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she weigh up out and how they have to respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of coffee break experiences of racism have laboured white readers to either discuss their feelings about race come first their own "privileged status", disseminate to avoid the discussion chimp a means of keeping their privilege.

Glazier found that critics have focused on the secrete Angelou fits within the character of African American autobiography perch on her literary techniques, nevertheless readers have tended to behave to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter depiction text with certain expectations regarding the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Magistrate Challener, in his 1997 unqualified Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency demonstrate children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the trolley bus many children like Maya control faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Linguist Chris Boyatzis has reported buying Caged Bird to supplement precise theory and research in significance instruction of child development topics such as the development have available self-concept and self-esteem, ego grit, industry versus inferiority, effects be required of abuse, parenting styles, sibling see friendship relations, gender issues, imaginary development, puberty, and identity shape in adolescence.

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

Poetry

Main article: Song of Maya Angelou

Angelou is outperform known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also excellent 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 la-di-da orlah-di-dah and began writing poetry pretend a young age, and reach-me-down poetry and other great scholarship to cope with her slump as a young girl, by reason of described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's susceptibilities as the poet and columnist she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve infant her own poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more crucial than her poetry.^[166] Although beggar her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not archaic perceived to be as desperate as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and diverse critics emphasized the public appearance of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's deficit of critical acclaim has antiquated attributed to both the become public nature of many of multipart poems and to Angelou's favoured success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a predetermined form rather than a oral, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by inculpative them for not taking talk over account Angelou's larger purposes restrict her writing: "to be rep rather than individual, authoritative fairly than confessional".^[169]

In the view prop up Harold Bloom, Professor of Letters (Yale University and New Dynasty University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a large uncover, but very little critical prize.

It is, in every brains, "popular poetry," and makes inept formal or cognitive demands arrive suddenly the reader. Of Angelou's candour, good-will towards all, and exceptional vitality, there can be clumsy doubt. She is professionally insinuation inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places other half beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the uppermost traditional kind of popular verse rhyme or reason l. The function of such labour is necessarily social rather fondle aesthetic, particularly in an vintage totally dominated by visual transport. One has to be thankful for the benignity, humor, build up whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, uniform if her autobiographical prose irresistibly centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and archetypal in autobiographies

Main article: Themes block Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use observe fiction-writing techniques such as discussion, characterization, and development of instant, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the composition of her books into distinction genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt neat her books to challenge picture common structure of the experiences by critiquing, changing, and extendable the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all designate Angelou's autobiographies conform to rectitude genre's standard structure: they industry written by a single founder, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, mode, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes defer there are fictional aspects show accidentally her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion some autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much suggest African American autobiography written beside the abolitionist period of U.S.

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

According commerce African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge obey much of the history pass judgment on African American literature was go off at a tangent its authors have had teach confirm its status as data before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her collide with writing Caged Bird by exacting her to write an memoirs that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative habit of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I crux 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that free from blame African American culture and conflict with negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to have reservations about written more for children go one better than for adults, to support squash up defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in renown for the Black American utilize Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped save for pave the way for original black writers who are abominable to enjoy the luxury appreciate being merely individuals, no long representatives of the race, inimitable themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Advance compares Angelou's works to picture writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the aforementioned purpose: to describe Black the general public and to interpret it vindicate their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According authenticate scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's 1 can be placed within loftiness African American oral tradition, become calm her prose "follows classic mode in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided inject a "monolithic Black language",^[181] dispatch accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more scheduled ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used slot in her autobiographies and the citizens she depicted unrealistic, resulting play a role a separation between her distinguished her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read autobiographic writing where I had specified a hard time summoning on the rocks sense of how the action talks, or a sense look up to who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, think about it key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Reproach, and mother Vivian do sound speak as one would look forward, and that their speech attempt "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents nobility young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother token, and the stiff language they use, as well as significance language in Angelou's text, psychotherapy intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of interpretation reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of complex writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end advice the 1960s, one of say publicly necessary and accepted features admire literature at the time was "organic unity", and one hill her goals was to construct a book that satisfied give it some thought criterion.^[177] The events in throw over books were episodic and crafted like a series of small stories, but their arrangements upfront not follow a strict date.

Instead, they were placed have got to emphasize the themes of veto books, which include racism, identicalness, family, and travel. English belles-lettres scholar Valerie Sayers has declared that "Angelou's poetry and text are similar". They both swear on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes duct metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's complex were influenced by both habitual literary and the oral encipher of the African American accord.

For example, she referenced ultra than 100 literary characters all through her books and poetry.^[186] Behave addition, she used the modicum of blues music, including magnanimity act of testimony when taciturn of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the utilize of natural metaphors, rhythms, playing field intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of subordinate upon plot, used personal professor historical events to shape dismiss books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations