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• Born: 4 April 1928
• Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
• Best Known As: Author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Name at birth: Marguerite Johnson

Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, was nominated for a National Book Award and made her a symbol of pluck and pride for African-American women. In the 1950s Angelou had been a dancer and stage actress, and she was active in the civil rights movement (she became a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, thanks to a request from Martin Luther King, Jr.). During the 1960s she spent five years in Africa, working as a journalist and a teacher. Angelou returned to the United States and in 1969 published I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. In 1972 she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. Since then, Angelou has continued teaching, writing, acting, producing, recording (she won Grammy Awards for the spoken word for the years 1993, 1995 and 2002) and collecting honorary degrees from across the United States. Since 1981 she has been the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. At Bill Clinton's request, Angelou wrote a poem -- On the Pulse of Morning -- for his 1993 inauguration as U.S. president.

Angelou was nominated for an Emmy for her role in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots, based on Alex Haley's novel... She also appeared with Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur in the 1993 film Poetic Justice.

Angelou, Maya (b. 1928), autobiographer, poet, playwright, director, producer, performance artist, educator, and winner of the Horatio Alger Award. A prolific author, with a successful career as a singer, actress, and dancer, Maya Angelou became one of America's most famous poets when she stood before the nation to deliver her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clinton's inauguration on 20 January 1993. At sixty-four years old, she was the first black woman to be asked to compose such a piece, and the second poet to be so recognized after the pairing of Robert Frost and John F. Kennedy in 1961. Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, but raised in Arkansas, Angelou was a natural choice for the forty-second president and fellow Arkansan. The poem reflects a theme that is common to all of Angelou's published works, namely that human beings are more alike than different, and that a message of hope and inclusion is a most inspiring dream and ideal, something to be savored at such a moment of political change. She writes of the triumph of the human spirit over hardship and adversity. Her voice speaks of healing and reconciliation, and she is a willing symbol for the American nation on the eve of the twenty-first century.

The great-granddaughter of a slave-born Arkansas woman, Angelou has had a rich and varied life, and her serial autobiography intertwines in a harmonious way her individual experiences with the collective social history of African Americans. As she recounts in the first volume of her serial autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Angelou spent her first three years in California. Her father, Bailey Johnson, was a navy cook and her mother, Vivian Baxter, a glamorous and dynamic woman, was a sometime nightclub performer and owner of a large rooming house in San Francisco in the 1940s. When Angelou's parents divorced in the early 1930s, her father sent her and her brother Bailey by train, with name tags on their wrists, to live with his mother, Momma Henderson, who ran the only black-owned general store in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou writes eloquently of the customs and harsh circumstances of life in the segregated pre-civil rights South, and of the dignity and mutual support that rural blacks extended to one another during the Depression. After Stamps came time in St. Louis with her mother's family, the discovery of urban greed and alienation, and her rape at age eight, a trauma that left her mute for several years. Upon her return to the South, she buried herself in the cocoon of her grandmother's store and in her imagination, and read widely. Books became her lifeline and prepared the terrain for her artistic and literary career. She moved back to California as a teenager, graduated from high school, and gave birth to her only child, Guy Johnson, himself a poet. In the 1960s, Angelou was active in the civil rights movement in the United States and abroad, and became briefly involved with African activist Vusumzi Make. She has been married and divorced.

By the time she was in her early twenties, Angelou had worked at a variety of odd jobs, as a waitress, a cook, and a streetcar conductor, flirting briefly with prostitution and drug addiction. She then worked as a stage performer, establishing a reputation among the avant-garde of the early 1950s, and appearing in Porgy and Bess on a twenty-two-nation tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1954–1955. She studied dance with Martha Graham. Off-Broadway, she acted in Jean Genet's The Blacks in 1960. She worked as an associate editor for the Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt, in 1961–1962 and as a writer for the Ghanaian Times and the Ghanaian Broadcasting Corporation in 1964–1966. She appeared in Mother Courage at the University of Ghana in 1964 and made her Broadway debut in Look Away in 1973. She directed her own play, And Still I Rise, in California in 1976. In 1977, she had a part in the television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots and received an Emmy Award nomination for best supporting actress. She has lectured on campuses, been a guest on many talk shows, and continues to be an extremely popular speaker. She is currently the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Her autobiographical fictions include Gather Together in My Name (1974) and Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), which received moderate critical praise; and The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), which were acclaimed as important works covering exciting periods in African American and African history, the civil rights marches, and the era of decolonization. These narratives survey the difficulties and personal triumphs of a remarkable woman with a keen understanding of the power of language to affect change, and of the role of “image making” in the self-representation of groups who have been historically oppressed. In her interview with Claudia Tate, Angelou acknowledged her debt to the black women writers who were her predecessors, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Zora Neale Hurston in particular, and to her friend James Bald-win who encouraged her to write after hearing her childhood stories. Angelou's personal experiences typify the changes that have occurred in America in the course of her lifetime. She consciously strives to be the kind of writer who brings people and traditions together and who appeals to the nobler sentiments of her readers. She is a humanist and a protean personality who has, against all odds, made her own life into the great American success story. Her works have a profound resonance with a long tradition that begins with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave narratives. Her style captures the cadences and aspirations of African American women whose strength she celebrates. She has been instrumental in helping refo-cus attention on black women's voices.

Bibliography

• Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work, 1983, pp. 1–38.
• Selwyn Cudjoe, “Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement,” in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, ed. Mari Evans, 1984, pp. 6–24.
• Lynn Z. Bloom, “Maya Angelou,” in DLB, vol. 38, Afro-American Writers after 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers, eds. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris, 1985, pp. 3–12.
• Françoise Lionnet, “Con Artists and Storytellers: Maya Angelou's Problematic Sense of Audience,” in Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self Portraiture, 1989, pp. 130–166.
• Mary Jane Lupton, Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion, 1998

Françoise Lionnet

• Genre: Vocal Music
• Active: '50s
• Instrument: Vocals

Biography

Maya Angelou is known primarily (and deservedly) as a poet and best-selling author, delivering the poem "In the Pulse of the Morning" as part of President Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremonies. She is far less known for her early career as a singer; she herself seldom refers to this facet of her background. In 1957, at the age of 27, she made a recording as a calypso singer, Miss Calypso, which consisted of quite respectable calypso with mild pop and world music influences. Also featuring light guitar, conga, drum, and bongo accompaniment, the album was reissued on CD in 1996. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

Representative Songs:

"Been Found," "To a Man," "Since Me Man Has Done Gone and Went"

Representative Albums:

Black Pearls: The Poetry of Maya Angelou, Miss Calypso

Similar Artists:

Lucille Clifton, Mona Vanduyn, Anne Waldman, Amiri Baraka, Sylvia Plath, Wanda Coleman, Gertrude Stein, Jayne Cortez

Performed Songs By:

Valerie Simpson

Black Pearls: The Poetry of Maya Angelou Buy this CD

Miss Calypso Buy this CD

Maya Angelou (born 1928) - author, poet, play wright, stage and screen performer, and director - is best known for her autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1970), which recalls a young African American woman's discovery of her self-confidence.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Growing up in rural Stamps, Arkansas, with her brother, Bailey, she lived with her pious grandmother, who owned a general store. She attended public schools in Arkansas and California, and became San Francisco's first female streetcar conductor. Later she studied dance with Martha Graham and drama with Frank Silvera, and went on to a career in theater. She appeared in Porgy and Bess, which toured 22 countries; on Broadway in Look Away; and in several off-Broadway plays, including Cabaret for Freedom, which she wrote in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge.

During the early 1960s, Angelou lived in Egypt, where she was the associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo. During this time, she also contributed articles to The Ghanaian Times and was featured on the Ghanaian Broadcasting Corporation programming in Accra. During the mid-1960s, she became assistant administrator of the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana. She was the feature editor of the African Review in Accra from 1964 to 1966. During this time she served as northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When she returned to the United States, Angelou worked as writer-producer for 20th Century-Fox Television, from which her full-length feature film Sisters, Sisters received critical acclaim. In addition, she wrote the screenplays Georgia, Georgia and All Day Long along with the television scripts for Sister, Sister and the series premiere of Brewster Place. She wrote, produced, and hosted the NET public broadcasting series Blacks! Blues! Black! Angelou also costarred in the motion picture How to Make an American Quilt in 1995.

Angelou has taught at several American colleges and universities, including the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Kansas, Wichita State University, and California State University at Sacramento. Since the early 1980s, she has been Reynolds Professor and writer-in-residence at Wake Forest University.

Angelou has been a prolific poet for decades. Her collections include Just Give Me A Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971); Oh Pray My Wings Are Going to Fit Me Well (1975); And Still I Rise (1976), which was produced as a choreo-poem on Off-Broadway in 1979; and Shaker, Why Don't You Sing (1983) Poems: Maya Angelou (1986); Life Doesn't Frighten Me, illustrated by celebrated New York artist Jean Michel Basquiat (1993); On the Pulse of the Morning (1993), recited at Bill Clinton's first Presidential Inauguration; Soul Looks Back in Wonder (1994); and I Shall Not Be Moved (1997), her first book of poetry in over 10 years.

Angelou's poetry is fashioned almost entirely of short lyrics and jazzy rhythms. Although her poetry has contributed to her reputation and is especially popular among young people, most commentators reserve their highest praise for her prose. Angelou's dependence on alliteration, her heavy use of short lines, and her conventional vocabulary has led several critics to declare her poetry superficial and devoid of her celebrated humor. Other reviewers, however, praise her poetic style as refreshing and graceful. They also laud Angelou for addressing social and political issues relevant to African Americans and for challenging the validity of traditional American values and myths. For example, Angelou directed national attention to humanitarian concerns with her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning," which she recited at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton. In this poem, Angelou calls for recognition of the human failings pervading American history and an renewed national commitment to unity and social improvement.

Although Angelou began her literary career as a poet, she is well known for her five autobiographical works, which depict sequential periods of her life. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) is about Marguerite Johnson and her brother Bailey growing up in Arkansas. It chronicles Angelou's life up to age sixteen, providing a child's perspective of the perplexing world of adults. Although her grandmother instilled pride and confidence in her, her self-image was shattered when she was raped at the age of eight by her mother's boyfriend. Angelou was so devastated by the attack that she refused to speak for approximately five years. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings concludes with Angelou having regained self-esteem and caring for her newborn son, Guy. In addition to being a trenchant account of an African American girl's coming-of-age, this work affords insights into the social and political tensions of the 1930s. Sidonie Ann Smith echoed many critics when she wrote: "Angelou's genius as a writer is her ability to recapture the texture of the way of life in the texture of its idioms, its idiosyncratic vocabulary and especially in its process of image-making."

Her next autobiographical work, Gather Together in My Name, (1974) covers the period immediately after the birth of her son Guy and depicts her valiant struggle to care for him as a single parent. Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976) describes Angelou's stage debut and concludes with her return from the international tour of Porgy and Bess. The Heart of A Woman (1981) portrays the mature Angelou becoming more comfortable with her creativity and her success. All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) recalls her four-year stay in Ghana.

Widely celebrated by popular audiences and critics, Angelou has a long roster of recognitions, including: a nomination for National Book Award, 1970, for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; a Yale University fellowship, 1970; a Pulitzer Prize nomination, 1972, for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie; an Antoinette Perry ("Tony" ) Award nomination from League of New York Theatres and Producers, 1973, for performance in Look Away; Rockefeller Foundation scholar in Italy, 1975; honorary degrees from Smith College, 1975, Mills College, 1975, Lawrence University, 1976, and Wake Forest University, 1977; a Tony Award nomination for best supporting actress, 1977, for Roots; and the North Carolina Award in Literature, 1987. In the 1970s she was appointed to the Bicentennial Commission by President Gerald Ford, and the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year by Jimmy Carter. She was also named Woman of the Year in Communications by Ladies' Home Journal, 1976; and named one of the top one hundred most influential women by Ladies' Home Journal, 1983.

Angelou's autobiographical works have an important place in the African American tradition of personal narrative, and they continue to garner praise for their honesty and moving sense of dignity. Although an accomplished poet and dramatist, Angelou is dedicated to the art of autobiography. Angelou explained that she is "not afraid of the ties [between past and present]. I cherish them, rather. It's the vulnerability … it's allowing oneself to be hypnotized. That's frightening because we have no defenses, nothing. We've slipped down the well and every side is slippery. And how on earth are you going to come out? That's scary. But I've chosen it, and I've chosen this mode as my mode."

Further Reading

For biographical information, see the following periodical pieces: "The African-American Scholar Interviews: Maya Angelou," in the African-American Scholar (January/February 1977); "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," in Ebony (April 1970); and Mary Helen Washington, "Their Fiction Becomes Our Reality," in African-American World (August 1974). For critical information see: Estelle C. Jelinek, "In Search of the African-American Female Self: African-American Women's Autobiographies and Ethnicity," in Women's Autobiography (1980); Claudia Tate, African-American Women Writers at Work (1983); Carol E. Neubauer, "Displacement and Autobiographical Style in Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman," in African-American Literature Forum (1983); and Mari Evans, "Maya Angelou" in African-American Women Writers, 1950-1980 (1983).

Additional information can be found in "Maya-ness is Next to Godliness," in GQ (July 1995) and "Maya Angelou: A Celebrated Poet Issues a Call to Arms to the Nation's Artists," in Mother Jones (May/June 1995).

novelist; performer

Personal Information

Born Marguerite Johnson, April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, MO; daughter of Bailey and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson; married Tosh Angelos (divorced c. 1952); married Paul Du Feu, December 1973 (divorced); children: Guy Johnson.
Education: Attended public schools in Arkansas and California.
Memberships: American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Directors Guild of America, Actors Equity, Harlem Writers Guild, American Film Institute, Women's Prison Association.

Career

Author, poet, playwright, professional stage and screen producer, director, and performer, and singer. Taught modern dance at Habima Theatre, Tel Aviv, Israel, and the Rome Opera House, Rome, Italy. Appeared in Porgy and Bess on twenty-two-nation tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, 1954-55; appeared in Off-Broadway plays Calypso Heatwave, 1957, and The Blacks, 1960; produced and performed in Cabaret for Freedom, with Godfrey Cambridge, Off-Broadway, 1960; University of Ghana, Institute of African Studies, Legon-Accra, Ghana, assistant administrator of School of Music and Drama, 1963-66; appeared in Mother Courage at University of Ghana, 1964, and in Meda in Hollywood, 1966; made Broadway debut in Look Away, 1973; directed film All Day Long, 1974, and Down in the Delta, Miramax, 1998; directed her play And Still I Rise in California, 1976; directed Errol John's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl in London, England, 1988; appeared in film Roots, 1977. Television narrator, interviewer, and host for Afro-American specials and theatre series, 1972. Lecturer at University of California, Los Angeles, 1966; writer in residence at University of Kansas, 1970; distinguished visiting professor at Wake Forest University, 1974, Wichita State University, 1974, and California State University, Sacramento, 1974; professor at Wake Forest University, 1981--. Northern coordinator of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1959-60; appointed member of American Revolution Bicentennial Council by President Gerald R. Ford, 1975-76; member of National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year.

Life's Work

The life experiences of the richly talented Maya Angelou--author, poet, actress, singer, dancer, playwright, director, producer--are the cornerstone of her most acclaimed work, a multi-volume autobiography that traces the foundations of her identity as a twentieth-century American black woman. Beginning with the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou's autobiographical books chart her beginnings in rural segregated Arkansas and urban St. Louis, her turbulent adolescence in California, and through her adult triumphs as a performing artist and writer, her work in the Civil Rights Movement, and her travels to Africa. "One of the geniuses of Afro- American serial autobiography," according to Houston A. Baker in the New York Times Book Review, Angelou has been praised for the rich and insightful prose of her narratives and for offering what many observers feel is an indispensable record of black experience. Author James Baldwin wrote on the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: "This testimony from a Black sister marks the beginning of a new era in the minds and hearts and lives of all Black men and women."

Born in Long Beach, California, Angelou was sent at the age of three to live with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, an event that served as the starting point for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book depicts Angelou's early years in Stamps, where her grandmother ran the town's only black-owned general store, and is a revealing portrait of the customs and harsh circumstances of black life in the segregated South. Economic hardship, murderous hate, and ingrained denigration were part of daily life in Stamps, and Angelou translates their impact on her early years. "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat," she wrote in the book. "It is an unnecessary insult."

Angelou also spent part of her youth in St. Louis with her mother--a glamorous and dynamic figure who occasionally worked as a nightclub performer. The book concludes with Angelou's early adolescent years in California and the birth of her illegitimate son, Guy. Much of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is grim--particularly Angelou's rape at the age of eight--yet it marks her distinct ability to recollect personal truth through insightful and powerful images, sights, and language. Angelou earned high marks from critics who praised her narrative skills and eloquent prose. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings "a carefully wrought, simultaneously touching and comic memoir ... [the] beauty [of which] is not in the story but in the telling." Sidonie Ann Smith wrote in the Southern Humanities Review that Angelou's "genius as a writer is her ability to recapture the texture of the way of life in the texture of its idioms, its idiosyncratic vocabulary and especially in its process of image-making.... That [Angelou] chooses to recreate the past in its own sounds suggests to the reader that she accepts the past and recognizes its beauty and its ugliness, its assets and its liabilities, its strength and its weakness.... Ultimately Maya Angelou's style testifies to her reaffirmation of self-acceptance, [which] she achieves within the pattern of the autobiography."

Angelou's next volume of autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, begins with Angelou leaving her mother's home in California at the age of seventeen to forge an independent life with her infant son. The book describes the chaotic years that follow, during which Angelou worked a variety of jobs--cook, waitress, brothel madam--and also suffered a brief drug addiction. Selwyn R. Cudjoe in Black Women Writers (1950-1980) noted that the book describes how "rural dignity gives way to the alienation and destruction of urban life.... The violation which began in Caged Bird takes on a much sharper focus in Gather Together.... The author is still concerned with the question of what it means to be Black and female in America, but her development is ... subjected to certain social forces which assault the black woman with unusual intensity." Critics again praised Angelou's skillful prose, but also noted that the book lacked a certain cohesiveness. Lynn Sukenick in the Village Voice called the book "sculpted, concise, rich with flavor and surprises, exuding a natural confidence and command." Sukenick added, however, that "in the tone of the book ... [Angelou's] refusal to let her earlier self get off easy, and the self-mockery which is her means to honesty, finally becomes in itself a glossing over.... It eventually becomes a tic and a substitute for a deeper look." Sondra O'Neale similarly commented in Black Women Writers that "the writing flows and shimmers with beauty; only the rigorous, coherent and meaningful organization of experience is missing."

In the 1950s Angelou embarked upon a career as a stage performer, working as an actress, singer, and dancer. Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas recounts Angelou's transition from late adolescence to early adulthood, when she began to define herself as a performing artist. She toured Europe with a U.S. State Department production of the black opera Porgy and Bess in the mid 1950s, a period that became a turning point in her life. While with the theater company Angelou began to link the turmoil of her past with her identity as a black adult, and, as Cudjoe commented, the book documents the "personal triumph of [a] remarkable black woman." Cudjoe wrote: "The pride which she takes in her company's professionalism, their discipline onstage, and the wellspring of spirituality that the opera emoted, all seem to conduce toward an organic harmony of her personal history as it intertwined with the social history of her people."

In The Heart of a Woman Angelou covers the late 1950s and early 1960s, a period in which black artists in the United States were increasingly addressing racial abuse and black liberation. In the book Angelou herself makes a decision to move away from show business in order to, as she describes it, "take on the responsibility of making [people] think. [It] was the time to demonstrate my own seriousness." She joined a group called the Harlem Writers Guild and in 1960 co-wrote the musical revue Cabaret for Freedom, which opened in New York City. Later that year she was asked by Martin Luther King, Jr., to become northern coordinator for the then-fledgling civil rights organization he had helped found, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Heart of a Woman concludes with Angelou and her son, Guy, moving to Africa, where she first worked for an English-language newsweekly in Cairo, and then at the University of Ghana. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Lynn Z. Bloom called The Heart of a Woman a particularly inspired book. Angelou's "enlarged focus and clear vision transcend the particulars," Bloom wrote, and like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the book presents "a fascinating universality of perspective and psychological depth."

Angelou more fully explored her Africa experience in her fifth book, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, of which a reviewer in Time noted that the author "meditates on the search for historical and spiritual roots." According to Baker in the New York Times Book Review, one of the interesting aspects that Angelou explores is her realization that Africa is "a homeland that refuses to become 'home.' Though independence and prosperity make Ghana a festival in black, there is no point of connection between Miss Angelou and what she calls the 'soul' of Africa." Barbara T. Christian likewise observed in the Chicago Tribune Book World that Angelou's "sojourn in Africa strengthens her bonds to her ancestral home even as she concretely experiences her distinctiveness as an Afro-American." Wanda Coleman in the Los Angeles Times Book Review called All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes "an important document drawing more much-needed attention to the hidden history of a people both African and American."

Commenting on Angelou's autobiographical writings, O'Neale wrote that one of the author's overall achievements is the elevation of the black female in literature. "One who has made her life her message and whose message to all aspiring Black women is the reconstruction of her experiential 'self,' is Maya Angelou. With the wide public and critical reception of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the early seventies, Angelou bridged the gap between life and art, a step that is essential if Black women are to be deservedly credited with the mammoth and creative feat of noneffacing survival." Cudjoe similarly commented that Angelou's autobiographies rescue not only her personal history, but the collective history of all black women: "It is in response to these specific concerns that Maya Angelou offered her autobiographical statements, presenting a powerful, authentic and pro- found signification of the condition of Afro-American womanhood in her quest for understanding and love rather than for bitterness and despair. Her work is a triumph in the articulation of truth in simple, forthright terms."

Angelou commented to Claudia Tate in Black Women Writers at Work on the special importance of images for black women. "Image making is very important for every human being. It is especially important for black American women in that we are, by being black, a minority in the United States, and by being female, the less powerful of the genders.... If we look out of our eyes at the immediate world around us, we see whites and males in dominant roles. We need to see our mothers, aunts, our sisters, and grandmothers." Angelou also described the awareness and responsibility she feels in providing images for black women: "In one way, it means all the work, all the loneliness and discipline my work exacts, demands, is not in vain. It also means, in a more atavistic, absolutely internal way, that I can never die. It's like living through children. So when I approach a piece of work, that is in my approach, whether it's a poem that might appear frivolous or is a serious piece. In my approach I take as fact that my work will be carried on."

In addition to her books of autobiography, Angelou has written several volumes of poetry that further explore the South, racial confrontation, and the triumph of black people against overwhelming odds. According to Tate, Angelou's poems "are characterized by a spontaneous joyfulness and an indomitable spirit to survive." Among her many accomplishments, Angelou wrote the screenplay and score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia, and in 1979 penned the screen adaptation of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She has made numerous television appearances, including her 1977 role in the landmark television movie, Roots, and as a guest on many talk shows.

Maya Angelou's writings and speeches which stress the hopeful innocence of children has earned her wide acclaim and many fans. Such devoted enthusiasts include Oprah Winfrey and President Bill Clinton, who invited Angelou to deliver a poem at his inauguration in 1993. Angelou became the first African American to read a poem at a presidential inauguration. The poem, "On the Pulse of Morning," electrified the audience and was published in a hardcover edition of Angelou's poetry.

Because of her moving literary works and devotion to the power of expression, Maya Angelou was awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1993 and the first Medal of Distinction from the University of Hawaii Board of Regents in 1994.

Angelou, with her booming laughter and deep rhythmic voice, has always been a symbol of strength and leadership for the plight of women and the underprivileged. She was named keynote speaker for the Chicago Foundation for Women in 1994. In September of 1996, Angelou and Camille Cosby joined to help African American women chart new directions in their lives with a $30 million dollar fund raising campaign for the National Council of Negro Women.

In 1995, Angelou starred in the film How to Make an American Quilt with Winona Ryder and Ellen Burstyn. She also delivered her poem "A Brave and Startling Truth" at the United Nations 50th birthday bash in San Francisco. Angelou contributed short stories to the HBO program America's Dream, which aired during Black History Month in 1996 and collaborated with musicians Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson on their 1996 release Been Found. She also wrote the lyrics to the musical King, which premiered in Washington DC on January 19, 1997 as part of the inaugural festivities for President Bill Clinton. In 1998, she directed a motion picture entitled Down in the Delta.

Fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Fanti, a language of southern Ghana, Angelou is a popular lecturer and tours throughout the United States.

Awards

Nominated for National Book Award, 1970, for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Yale University fellowship, 1970; Pulitzer Prize nomination, 1972, for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie; Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Award nomination from League of New York Theatres and Producers, 1973, for performance in Look Away; Rockefeller Foundation scholar in Italy, 1975; honorary degrees from Smith College, 1975, Mills College, 1975, Lawrence University, 1976, and Wake Forest University, 1977; named Woman of the Year in Communications by Ladies' Home Journal, 1976; Tony Award nomination for best supporting actress, 1977, for Roots; named one of the top one hundred most influential women by Ladies Home Journal, 1983; North Carolina Award in Literature, 1987; named Woman of the Year by Essence magazine, 1992; named Distinguished Woman of North Carolina, 1992; recipient, Horatio Alger Award, 1992; Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Traditional Album, 1994, for recording of "On The Pulse of the Morning"; Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, 1994, for Soul Looks Back in Wonder.

Works

Writings

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Random House, 1970.
• Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, Random House, 1971.
• Gather Together in My Name, Random House, 1974.
• O Pray My Wings are Gonna Fit Me Well, Random House, 1975.
• Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Random House, 1976.
• And Still I Rise New York, Random House, 1978.
• The Heart of a Woman, Random House, 1981 Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? Random House, 1983.
• All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, Random House, 1986.
• Now Sheba Sings the Song, Dutton/Dial, 1987.
• I Shall Not Be Moved, Random House, 1990 Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Random House, 1993.
• Kofi and His Magic, Crown Publishing Group, 1996.
• Even the Stars Look Lonesome (essays), Random House, 1997.
• Plays .
• (With Godfrey Cambridge) Cabaret for Freedom (musical revue), produced at Village Gate, New York City, 1960.
• The Least of These, produced in Los Angeles, 1966.
• Ajax (adaptation of Sophocles's Ajax), produced at the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 1974.
• And Still I Rise, produced in Oakland, Calif., 1976.
• King, 1997.
• Film and television scripts .
• Blacks, Blues, Black (ten television programs), National Educational Television, 1968.
• Georgia, Georgia (film), Cinerama, 1972.
• All Day Long, American Film Institute, 1974.
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (film), 1979.
• Sister, Sister, NBC-TV, 1982.
• Three-Way Choice, CBS-TV.
• How to Make an American Quilt, (film), 1995.
• Also author of the fiction work Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship, Redpath Press, 1986. Contributor of articles, short stories, and poems to periodicals, and of material to books.

Further Reading

Periodicals

• Black Scholar, Summer 1982.
• Boston Globe, January 20, 1997.
• Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1996; January 12, 1997.
• Chicago Tribune Book World, March 23, 1986.
• Harper's Bazaar, November 1972.
• Los Angeles Times, February 10, 1996.
• Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 13, 1986; August 9, 1987.
• New York Times, February 25, 1970; October 6, 1995.
• New York Times Book Review, June 16, 1974; May 11, 1986.
• Southern Humanities Review, Fall 1973.
• Time, March 31, 1986.
• USA Today, June 26, 1995; September 24, 1996.
• Village Voice, July 11, 1974; October 28, 1981.
• Washington Post, January 5, 1995; September 21, 1996.
• Washington Post Book World, October 4, 1981; June 26, 1983; May 11, 1986.

— Michael E. Mueller and David Oblender

For more information on Maya Angelou, visit Britannica.com.

(mī'ə ăn'jəlū) , 1928–, African-American writer and performer, b. St. Louis, Mo. as Marguerite Johnson. She toured Europe and Africa in the musical Porgy and Bess (1954–55), then sang in New York City nightclubs, joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and took part in several off-Broadway productions, including Genet's The Blacks and her own Cabaret for Freedom (1960). During the 1960s she was active in the African-American political movement; she subsequently spent several years in Ghana as editor of the African Review. Her six autobiographical volumes (1970–2002), beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, have generally been well-received. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including And I Still Rise (1987). Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.

(b. 1928)

1970	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The actor, playwright, and writer achieves her first major literary and popular success with this autobiographical account of her life in rural Arkansas and St. Louis. It details her rape at age seven, after which she became mute, and ends with the birth of a son when she is sixteen. Additional volumes of her memoirs are Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1987).
1974	Gather Together in My Garden. Angelou's second volume of memoirs continues the story of her life from age sixteen through a variety of jobs during the postwar period.
1976	Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. Angelou's third volume of memoirs covers her unsuccessful marriage and her theatrical career.
1981	The Heart of a Woman. In the fourth volume of this poet and performer's autobiography, Angelou describes with characteristic warmth, candor, and eloquence her transition from nightclub singer and dancer to writer and political activist.
1983	Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? Critics praise Angelou's verse for its light but deft lyrical quality. As in her autobiographies, her poetry gracefully deals with somber subjects such as racial tensions and the poet's melancholy sensibility. Included are "Family Affairs" and "Caged Bird."
1986	All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. The fifth installment of Angelou's memoirs describes her four-year residence in Ghana during the 1960s and African Americans' search for their African roots.
1993	"On the Pulse of Morning." Angelou reads this poem at Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration. She is the first African American woman to be asked to compose and deliver an inaugural poem for a president.

Quotes:

"We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated."

"Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations."

"The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed."

"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass."

"I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed."

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."

See more famous quotes by Maya Angelou

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