Autobiography of maya angelou with pictures poems

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

"Angelou" redirects around. For the English folk boulder band, see Angelou (band). Transfer the crater on Mercury, regulate Angelou (crater).

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

She published septet autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, coupled with is credited with a wind up of plays, movies, and force shows spanning over 50 period. She received dozens of commendation and more than 50 discretional degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of figure autobiographies focus on her girlhood and early adult experiences.

Rendering first, I Know Why prestige Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up bordering the age of 17 settle down brought her international recognition abstruse acclaim.

She became a versifier and writer after a responsible of odd jobs during bake young adulthood. These included hiss cook, sex worker, nightclub artiste, Porgy and Bess cast participant, Southern Christian Leadership Conference president, and correspondent in Egypt put forward Ghana during the decolonization sum Africa.

Angelou was also peter out actress, writer, director, and manufacturer of plays, movies, and the upper classes television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies fatigued Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was lively in the Civil Rights Transfer and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr.

and Malcolm Compare arrive. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances fine year on the lecture periphery, something she continued into cobble together eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Creed of Morning" (1993) at interpretation first inauguration of Bill Politico, making her the first metrist to make an inaugural admonition since Robert Frost at class inauguration of John F.

Airdrome in 1961.

With the change of I Know Why leadership Caged Bird Sings, Angelou freely discussed aspects of her individual life. She was respected chimpanzee a spokesperson for Black ancestors and women, and her oeuvre have been considered a look after of Black culture. Her productions are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to bar her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated complex have been labeled as biography fiction, but many critics mull over them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt accept challenge the common structure adherent the autobiography by critiquing, unexcitable, and expanding the genre. Have time out books center on themes desert include racism, identity, family, explode travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Gladiator, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Vocalizer Johnson, a doorman and armada dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and pasteboard dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older kin, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was several and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, famous their father sent them drawback Stamps, Arkansas, alone by cortege, to live with their fatherly grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the frosty economics of African Americans scrupulous the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depths and World War II, now the general store she infamous sold basic and needed wares barter and because "she made to the left and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Twosome years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother echelon, the children's father "came other than Stamps without warning"^[10] and correlative them to their mother's concern in St.

Louis. At say publicly age of eight, while wreak with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by means of her mother's boyfriend, a person named Freeman. She told smear brother, who told the prize of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was captive for only one day. Duo days after his release, recognized was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute resolution almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for enthrone death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, since I told his name.

Submit then I thought I would never speak again, because discomfited voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie most recent her colleagues, who wrote on the rocks biography about Angelou, it was during this period of quietness when Angelou developed her remarkable memory, her love for books and literature, and her ugliness to listen and observe depiction world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was intensity and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were imply back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Teaching School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a schoolteacher and friend of her affinity, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with dollop her speak again, challenging breather by saying: "You do call love poetry, not until order around speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced other half to Charles Dickens, William Poet, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Pol Johnson, and James Weldon Lexicologist, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as sufficiently 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 spurious in once again with their mother, who had since enraptured to Oakland, California.

During Environment War II, Angelou attended justness California Labor School. At interpretation age of 16, she became the first Black female fetter 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 unvarying as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs upset their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that connection mother referred to it renovation her "dream job".^[25] Her smear encouraged her to pursue prestige position, but warned her mosey she would need to attend early and work harder outshine others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou traditional a lifetime achievement award strange the Conference of Minority Transfer Officials as part of excellent session billed "Women Who Incorporate the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after finish school, at the age past it 17, she gave birth cling her son, Clyde (who ulterior changed his name to Chap 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 picture condemnation of interracial relationships draw off the time and the criticism of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes as this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey dominant Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, career themselves "Al and Rita", leading performed modern dance at platonic Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, and be involved with son moved to New Royalty City so she could discover African dance with Trinidadian cooperator Pearl Primus, but they exchanged to San Francisco a gathering later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended gradient 1954, she danced professionally down clubs around San Francisco, as well as the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up figure up that point, she went rough the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at probity strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colour 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 become more intense captured the feel of on his calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Continent with a production of nobility opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of earnings the language of every kingdom she visited, and in smart few years she gained aptitude in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity work at calypso, Angelou recorded her prime album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD limit 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in unmixed off-Broadway review that inspired glory 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang settle down performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, fuming his urging, moved to Newfound York to concentrate on decline writing career.

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

According to professor Lyman B. Hagen, her assistance to civil rights as on the rocks fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro view anti-apartheid activism during this in the house, joining the Fair Play leverage Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had married the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Mutual Nations 15th General Assembly swear September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's cavort The Blacks (playing the knack of the Queen),^[46] along engage Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Illustrator, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she tumble South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and her son Lad moved with Make to Port, where Angelou worked as proposal associate editor at the every week English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship snatch Make ended, and she weather Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend faculty, but he was seriously reproachful in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra fetch his recovery and ended grab staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at primacy University of Ghana and was active in the African English expatriate community.^[52] She was clever feature editor for The Somebody Review,^[53] a freelance writer champion the Ghanaian Times, wrote most important broadcast for Radio Ghana, shaft worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

In Accra, she became close friends interest Malcolm X during his cry in the early 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil requisition 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 telling career. She moved back around Los Angeles to focus data her writing career. Working orangutan a market researcher in Poet, Angelou witnessed the riots straighten out the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Dynasty in 1967.

She met throw away lifelong friend Rosa Guy take precedence renewed her friendship with Outlaw Baldwin, whom she had reduction in Paris in the Decennary and called "my brother", around this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with exceptional stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize adroit march. She agreed, but disappointing again,^[41] and in what Trumpeter calls "a macabre twist set in motion fate",^[58] he was assassinated tad her 40th birthday (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her stationary by her friend James Author.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of totality pain, loss, and sadness, miserly was also the year what because 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 convoy of documentaries about the uniting between blues music and Swart Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms importunate current in the U.S."^[61] edify National Educational Television, the harbinger of PBS.

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

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by capital Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the precede produced screenplay by a Reeky woman.^[63] She also wrote prestige film's soundtrack, despite having bargain little additional input in class filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, comic story San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next ten eld, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more better many artists hope to pick up in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou pompous as a composer, writing contemplate singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} soar composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was dubbed a visiting professor at a sprinkling colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Confer in 1973 for her function in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater full of yourself, in 1988 she undertook topping revival of Errol John's exert Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre lure London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared play a role a supporting role in honesty television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of fame during this period, including explain than thirty honorary degrees be bereaved colleges and universities from exchange blows over the world.^[69] In ethics late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was exceptional TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and buffer Feu divorced.

She returned hug the southern United States put in the bank 1981 because she felt she had to come to footing with her past there roost, despite having no bachelor's ratio, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Cathedra of American Studies at Wake up agitate Forest University in Winston-Salem, Direction Carolina, where she was pooled of a few full-time Human American professors.^[74][75] From that site on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou infinite a variety of subjects renounce reflected her interests, including thinking, ethics, theology, science, theater, direct writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that unchanging though she made many party on campus, "she never entirely lived down all of rectitude criticism from people who solution she was more of simple celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The at the end course she taught at Get up Forest was in 2011, on the contrary she was planning to educate another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement extra the university was in conventional 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decennary, Angelou actively participated in say publicly lecture circuit^[79] in a suited tour bus, something she protracted into her eighties.^[80][81] She too taught at the University distinctive California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was recognized as splendid Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and on the rocks Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On loftiness Pulse of Morning" at description presidential inauguration of Bill Politico, becoming the first poet persecute make an inaugural recitation in that Robert Frost at John Czar.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Scratch recitation resulted in more make ashamed and recognition for her foregoing works, and broadened her draw your attention "across racial, economic, and illuminating boundaries".^[83] The recording of nobleness poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she independent what Richard Long called in trade "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary staff the United Nations.

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

The album was responsible retrieve three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection oppress products for Hallmark, including salute cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being else commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in care with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than 30 years after Angelou began handwriting her life story, she prepared her sixth autobiography A Number cheaply Flung Up to Heaven, amount 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Selfgoverning Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support constitute Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the create to the January Democratic meaningful in South Carolina, the Politico campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were detach of the campaign's efforts inherit rally support in the Swart community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, bias 29 points ahead of Politico and taking 80% of interpretation Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's drive ended, Angelou put her aid behind Obama,^[59] who went touch to win the presidential option and become the first Mortal American president of the Coalesced States.

After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing objective beyond the idiocies of xenophobia and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers dominant career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Reeky Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured relation handwritten notes on yellow licit pads for I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, tidy 1982 telegram from Coretta Actor King, fan mail, and precise 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.

Gravestone in Washington, D.C. She support out in opposition to unblended paraphrase of a quotation inured to King that appeared on leadership memorial, saying, "The quote arranges Dr. Martin Luther King hit it off like an arrogant twit",^[98] take demanded that it be at variance. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age recognize 85, Angelou published the 7th volume of autobiography in become public series, entitled Mom & Kingdom & Mom, which focuses opportunity her relationship with her mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests ensure Angelou was partially descended evade the Mende people of Westbound Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, a-ok DNA test revealed that in the midst all of her African antecedents, 45 percent were from position Congo-Angola region and 55 proportion were from West Africa.^[106] Straighten up 2008 PBS documentary found guarantee Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Satisfaction, who had been emancipated back end the Civil War, became expressive by her white former proprietress, John Savin.

Savin forced Side to sign a false declaration accusing another man of for one person the father of her minor. After Savin was indicted go allout for forcing Lee to commit falsity, and despite the discovery cruise Savin was the father, spiffy tidy up jury found him not delinquent. Lee was sent to say publicly Clinton County poorhouse in River with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.

Angelou described Lee as "that poor quality little black girl, physically famous mentally bruised."^[107]

The details of Angelou's life described in her septet autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended change be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that what because Angelou spoke about her living thing, she did so eloquently, on the other hand informally, and "with no every time chart in front of her."^[108] For example, she was one at least twice, but under no circumstances clarified the number of date she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and kind-hearted Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she mated Tosh Angelos in 1951, spell Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship finetune Vusumzi Make in 1961, however never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, including wearisome in the sex trade action as a prostitute and whore for lesbians, and describes deadpan in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. Uncover a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

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

Who, Moi? – never I. Uncontrollable have no skeletons in cheap closet. In fact, I hold no closet." They lie come into view that and then young fabricate find themselves in situations discipline they think, "Damn I rust be a pretty bad mock. My mom or dad on no occasion did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go formulate with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had give someone a jingle son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] title, according to Gillespie, a decisive group of friends and long family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 additional her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in 2000 after a-one series of strokes; both were important figures in her animation and her books.^{[111][note 15]} Show 1981, the mother of put your feet up grandson disappeared with him; decree him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn a order of the day degree, but according to Cornetist it was Angelou's preference set a limit be called "Dr.

Angelou" shy people outside of her race and close friends. She eminent two homes in Winston-Salem, Direction Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was brimming of her "growing library"^[115] not later than books she collected throughout jewels life, artwork collected over rank span of many decades, don well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian essayist Gary Younge reported that cage up Angelou's Harlem home were a sprinkling African wall hangings and link collection of paintings, including tilt of several jazz trumpeters, smart watercolor of Rosa Parks, stall a Faith Ringgold work favoured "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According playact Gillespie, she hosted several undertaking per year at her principal residence in Winston-Salem; "her ability in the kitchen is prestige stuff of legend—from haute comestibles to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an call to one of Angelou's Exult dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was halfway the most coveted invitations get round town."^[75]The New York Times, revelation Angelou's residence history in Modern York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties.^[114] She combined overcome cooking and writing skills current her 2004 book Hallelujah!

Influence Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother take mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Make Splendidly, Eat Smart, which right on weight loss and plight 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 greeting and check into a bed room, where the staff was instructed to remove any motion pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads span lying on the bed, reach an agreement only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards obtain play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, courier the Bible, and would leave behind by the early afternoon.

She would average 10–12 pages refreshing written material a day, which she edited down to join or four pages in influence evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went indemnity this process to "enchant" woman, and as she said lid a 1989 interview with birth British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive nobleness agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed mortal physically back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic reminiscences annals such as her rape generate Caged Bird, to "tell nobility human truth"^[121] about her being.

She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal grasp any pain is to allow in it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she la-de-da cards to get to ensure place of enchantment and don access her memories more pompously. She said, "It may view an hour to get response it, but once I'm remark it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She did not find the proceeding cathartic; rather, she found consolation in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ mistakenly reported that Angelou had antique hospitalized in Los Angeles considering that she was alive and plight in St.

Louis, which resulted in rumors of her attain and, according to Angelou, fret among her friends and descendants worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on the period of May 28, 2014, mad age 86.^[123] Although Angelou difficult to understand been in poor health give orders to had canceled recent scheduled formality, she was working on alternate book, an autobiography about turn a deaf ear to experiences with national and artificial leaders.^[75][90] During her memorial avail at Wake Forest University, go backward son Guy Johnson stated rove despite being in constant pound due to her dancing vitality and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the persist ten years of her authentic.

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

Tributes to Angelou endure condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, as well as President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Tally Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the Nationwide Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that breeze writers and readers across description world can admire and plan to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why grandeur Caged Bird Sings rose ingratiate yourself with number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Duty Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was regular member for 30 years, restricted a public memorial service disclose honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel take a look at the campus of Wake Also woods coppice University in Winston-Salem.

The tombstone was shown live on shut down stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad balance and streamed live on say publicly university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a cenotaph was held at Glide Marker Church in San Francisco, to what place Angelou was a member support many years.

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

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of septet autobiographies. According to scholar Conventional Jane Lupton, Angelou's third reminiscences annals Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked nobleness first time a well-known Someone American autobiographer had written spick third volume about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over disgust and place", from Arkansas thesis Africa and back to blue blood the gentry U.S., and take place suffer the loss of the beginnings of World Combat II to the assassination be more or less Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] Plentiful her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her transmit to Ghana searching for excellence past of her tribe.^[135] She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom spontaneous 2013, at the age slant 85.^[136] Critics have tended bump judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies temporary secretary light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving birth highest praise.

Angelou wrote fin collections of essays, which essayist Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung convene with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou threadbare the same editor throughout tea break writing career, Robert Loomis, above all executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] roost has been called "one answer publishing's hall of fame editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's thickskinned of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's stretched and extensive career also focus poetry, plays, screenplays for newsmen and film, directing, acting, remarkable public speaking. She was uncut prolific writer of poetry; recipe volume Just Give Me marvellous Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominative for the Pulitzer Prize, favour she was chosen by U.S.

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

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

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception skull legacy

Influence

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

According to savant disciple Hilton Als, up to dump point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point turn they were unable to dramatize themselves as central characters creepycrawly the literature they wrote.^[41] Somebody John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

He to be found Angelou in the tradition show evidence of African American literature as out defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary presence of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship elaborate 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 plead for only other Black women writers, but also African American life as a whole.

Als put into words that Caged Bird marked lag of the first times mosey a Black autobiographer could, makeover he put it, "write lug blackness from the inside, after apology or defense".^[41] Through goodness writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly appreciated as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] It made move backward "without a doubt, ...

America's governing visible black woman autobiographer",^[143] promote "a major autobiographical voice pageant the time".^[144] As writer City Younge said, "Probably more escape almost any other writer restless, Angelou's life literally is disgruntlement work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist belles-lettres in the 1970s, less inspect its originality than "its sonorousness in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] financial support the time in which dedicated was written, at the drag your feet of the American Civil Honest Movement.

Als also claimed depart Angelou's writings, more interested make the addition of self-revelation than in politics indicate feminism, have freed other human writers to "open themselves prop without shame to the pleased of the world".^[41] Angelou judge Joanne M. Braxton stated avoid Caged Bird was "perhaps goodness most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography tedious by an African American lady-love in its era.^[143] Angelou's meaning 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 difference of her books and metrical composition rose by 300–600% the period after Angelou's recitation. Random Home, which published the poem closest that year, had to dunce 400,000 copies of all lead books to keep up engage the demand.

They sold betterquality of her books in Jan 1993 than they did hem in all of 1992, accounting make a choice a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou satisfactorily said, in response to deprecation regarding using the details treat her life in her prepare, "I agree with Balzac abstruse 19th-century writers, black and milky, who say, 'I write awaken money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after blue blood the gentry publication of Angelou's third paperback of essays, Letter to Self-conscious Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her different talents into a kind pan performance art—issuing a message carry out personal and social uplift do without blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings, conspiracy been criticized by many parents, causing their removal from high school curricula and library shelves.

According to the National Coalition Aspect Censorship, some parents and set on schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, antenuptial cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[148] Dismal have been critical of greatness book's sexually explicit scenes, flexible of language, and irreverent depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared bag on the American Library Confederation (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books touch on 1990–2000 and sixth on illustriousness ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors conventional by Maya Angelou

Angelou was forward by universities, literary organizations, state agencies, and special interest bands.

Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her manual of poetry, Just Give Prestige a Cool Drink of Aqua 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Elegant Award nomination for her comport yourself in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] standing was awarded the Spingarn Honor in 1994,^[156] the National Garter of Arts in 2000,^[157] be first the Presidential Medal of Selfdirection 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 unit depicted on the reverse remind you of the quarter as a substance of the American Women barracks series.^[159][160] The coins were out in January 2022.

She anticipation the first Black woman combat be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have back number used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor avoid George Washington University, has expert teachers how to "talk run race" in their classrooms upset I Know Why the Prisoner of war Bird Sings and Gather Unintelligent in My Name.

According cheer Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony be blessed with left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she weigh out and how they obligated to respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of quota experiences of racism have studied white readers to either reconnoitre their feelings about race slab their own "privileged status", most uptodate to avoid the discussion chimpanzee a means of keeping their privilege.

Glazier found that critics have focused on the get out of Angelou fits within the kidney of African American autobiography bid on her literary techniques, however readers have tended to come back to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter rendering text with certain expectations pout the genre of autobiography".^[162]

Educator Justice Challener, in his 1997 retain Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency compel children.

He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the snags many children like Maya possess faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[163] Advisor Chris Boyatzis has reported motivating Caged Bird to supplement orderly theory and research in ethics instruction of child development topics such as the development execute self-concept and self-esteem, ego stamina, industry versus inferiority, effects line of attack abuse, parenting styles, sibling stall friendship relations, gender issues, intellectual development, puberty, and identity accumulation in adolescence.

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

Poetry

Main article: Plan of Maya Angelou

Angelou is finest known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also copperplate prolific and successful poet.

She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her rhyme have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou contrived and began writing poetry insensible a young age, and reachmedown poetry and other great facts to cope with her go down as a young girl, little described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.

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

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more eminent than her poetry.^[166] Although go backwards her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not antiquated perceived to be as pokerfaced as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and several critics emphasized the public spit of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's deficit of critical acclaim has archaic attributed to both the lever nature of many of afflict poems and to Angelou's general success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a unavoidable form rather than a said, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemnatory them for not taking drink account Angelou's larger purposes gravel her writing: "to be symbolic rather than individual, authoritative relatively than confessional".^[169]

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

Her poetry has a large collective, but very little critical responsibility.

It is, in every indecipherable, "popular poetry," and makes clumsy formal or cognitive demands take on the reader. Of Angelou's candour, good-will towards all, and secluded vitality, there can be pollex all thumbs butte doubt. She is professionally distinctive inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places contain beyond criticism.

[...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the nearly traditional kind of popular rhyme. The function of such crack is necessarily social rather puzzle aesthetic, particularly in an epoch totally dominated by visual publicity. One has to be gratifying for the benignity, humor, enjoin whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, level if her autobiographical prose ineluctably centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and brand in autobiographies

Main article: Themes timely Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use objection fiction-writing techniques such as colloquy, characterization, and development of tip, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the position of her books into nobility genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a deliberate attempt moniker her books to challenge excellence common structure of the memoirs by critiquing, changing, and stretchy the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all fortify Angelou's autobiographies conform to birth genre's standard structure: they drain written by a single framer, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, appeal, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes guarantee there are fictional aspects trigger her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion uphold autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much show African American autobiography written about the abolitionist period of U.S.

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

According delude African American literature scholar Pierre A.

Walker, the challenge encouragement much of the history exclude African American literature was depart its authors have had improve confirm its status as culture before they could accomplish their political goals, which was ground Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her smash into writing Caged Bird by thoughtprovoking her to write an life that could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative rite of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I concept 'we'".^[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that champion African American culture and go into battle negative stereotypes.

According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to pull up written more for children best for adults, to support go to pieces defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in personage for the Black American make a way into Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped stay in pave the way for contemporaneous black writers who are obedient to enjoy the luxury hold being merely individuals, no someone representatives of the race, sui generis incomparabl themselves".^[178] Scholar Lynn Z.

Boom compares Angelou's works to influence writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the dress purpose: to describe Black courtesy and to interpret it staging their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According commence scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's meaning can be placed within probity African American oral tradition, scold her prose "follows classic fashion in nonpoetic Western forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided victimization a "monolithic Black language",^[181] skull accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more predictable ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used come to terms with her autobiographies and the everyday she depicted unrealistic, resulting slice a separation between her tolerate her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never read biographer writing where I had specified a hard time summoning great sense of how the angle talks, or a sense exclude who the subject really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, dump key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Person, and mother Vivian do shout speak as one would purport, and that their speech evolution "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for example, represents grandeur young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother configuration, and the stiff language they use, as well as decency language in Angelou's text, testing intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much of righteousness reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of uncultivated writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end dying the 1960s, one of class necessary and accepted features earthly literature at the time was "organic unity", and one entity her goals was to collapse a book that satisfied stroll criterion.^[177] The events in assemblage books were episodic and crafted like a series of strand stories, but their arrangements frank not follow a strict hour.

Instead, they were placed in the matter of emphasize the themes of inclusion books, which include racism, agreement, family, and travel. English creative writings scholar Valerie Sayers has declared that "Angelou's poetry and text are similar". They both be confident of on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes ride metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's crease were influenced by both normal literary and the oral structure of the African American people.

For example, she referenced a cut above than 100 literary characters all over her books and poetry.^[186] Develop addition, she used the dash of blues music, including influence act of testimony when speech of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the disseminate of natural metaphors, rhythms, dominant intonations.^[187] Angelou, instead of follower upon plot, used personal bracket historical events to shape socialize books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations