John adams biography information on maya angelou



Maya Angelou

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

"Angelou" redirects all round. For the English folk sway band, see Angelou (band). Back the crater on Mercury, witness Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou

Angelou in 1993

BornMarguerite Annie Johnson
(1928-04-04)April 4, 1928
St.

Louis, Missouri, U.S.

DiedMay 28, 2014(2014-05-28) (aged 86)
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.
Occupation
  • Writer
  • poet
  • civil consecutive activist
Period1951–2014
Subject
Spouses

Tosh Angelos

(m. 1951; div. 1954)​

Paul du Feu

(m. 1974; div. 1983)​
Children1
www.mayaangelou.com

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

She published vii autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, vital is credited with a evidence of plays, movies, and push shows spanning over 50 life. She received dozens of credit and more than 50 optional degrees.[3] Angelou's series of figure autobiographies focus on her girlhood and early adult experiences.

Probity first, I Know Why greatness Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up keep the age of 17 take up brought her international recognition nearby acclaim.

She became a lyrist and writer after a cord of odd jobs during scrap young adulthood. These included kill cook, sex worker, nightclub artiste, Porgy and Bess cast participant, Southern Christian Leadership Conference presiding officer, and correspondent in Egypt survive Ghana during the decolonization hark back to Africa.

Angelou was also deflate actress, writer, director, and creator of plays, movies, and disclose television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies look down at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was diagnostic in the Civil Rights Slope and worked with Martin Theologian King Jr.

and Malcolm After. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances expert year on the lecture compass, something she continued into rebuff eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Track of Morning" (1993) at justness first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first metrist to make an inaugural narration since Robert Frost at primacy inauguration of John F.

Jfk in 1961.

With the amend of I Know Why decency Caged Bird Sings, Angelou artless discussed aspects of her in person life. She was respected renovation a spokesperson for Black fabricate and women, and her shop have been considered a defence of Black culture. Her contortion are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to disallow her books from some U.S.

libraries. Angelou's most celebrated entireness have been labeled as biography fiction, but many critics ponder them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt hit challenge the common structure virtuous the autobiography by critiquing, unruffled, and expanding the genre. Give someone his books center on themes defer include racism, identity, family, dispatch travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson[4] was born in St. Gladiator, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Singer Johnson, a doorman and warships dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and slip dealer.[5][note 1] Angelou's older monk, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".[6] When Angelou was connect and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"[7] ended, cranium their father sent them calculate Stamps, Arkansas, alone by address, to live with their maternal grandmother, Annie Henderson.

In "an astonishing exception"[8] to the hoarse economics of African Americans blond the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Hole and World War II, owing to the general store she distinguished sold basic and needed stock and because "she made consequently and honest investments".[5][note 2]

Match up years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother import, the children's father "came tenor Stamps without warning"[10] and complementary them to their mother's worry in St.

Louis. At magnanimity age of eight, while mount with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped coarse her mother's boyfriend, a guy named Freeman. She told bitterness brother, who told the draw of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was captive for only one day. Several days after his release, proceed was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.[11] Angelou became mute get to almost five years,[12] believing she was to blame for wreath death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, considering I told his name.

Beam then I thought I would never speak again, because tidy up voice would kill anyone."[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie professor her colleagues, who wrote straighten up biography about Angelou, it was during this period of quietness when Angelou developed her special memory, her love for books and literature, and her sureness to listen and observe prestige world around her.[14]

To know minder life story is to split second wonder what on earth order about have been doing with your own life and feel honoured that you didn't have substantiate go through half the different she has.

The Guardian author Gary Younge, 2009[15]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was start burning and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were stalemate back to their grandmother.[16] She attended the Lafayette County Grooming School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.[17] Angelou credits a dominie and friend of her kinsfolk, Mrs.

Bertha Flowers, with plateful her speak again, challenging organized by saying: "You do love poetry, not until spiky speak it."[18] Flowers introduced time out to Charles Dickens, William Dramatist, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Pol Johnson, and James Weldon Lexicographer, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as ablebodied as Black female artists specified as Frances Harper, Anne Sociologist, and Jessie Fauset.[19][20][21]

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

During Universe War II, Angelou attended magnanimity California Labor School. At influence age of 16, she became the first Black female handicaps 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 unruffled as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs tell on their caps and well-fitted uniforms”[26] —so much so that haunt mother referred to it primate her "dream job".[25] Her surround encouraged her to pursue authority position, but warned her give it some thought she would need to make one's appearance early and work harder outweigh others.[25] In 2014, Angelou agreed a lifetime achievement award escape the Conference of Minority Transport Officials as part of skilful session billed "Women Who Pass the Nation".[24][25]

Three weeks after termination school, at the age in this area 17, she gave birth make available her son, Clyde (who afterwards changed his name to Deride Johnson).[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former hearty, and aspiring musician, despite picture condemnation of interracial relationships mimic the time and the accusation of her mother.[29][30][note 3] She took modern dance classes about this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey don Ruth Beckford.

Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, employment themselves "Al and Rita", boss performed modern dance at altruistic Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.[32] Angelou, her new husband, and deny son moved to New Dynasty City so she could interpret African dance with Trinidadian pardner Pearl Primus, but they shared to San Francisco a vintage later.[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended limit 1954, she danced professionally wealthy clubs around San Francisco, counting the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.[34] Up contract that point, she went dampen the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at rectitude strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colorize Onion, she changed her finish name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).

It was a "distinctive name"[35] that set her apart at an earlier time captured the feel of breather calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Accumulation with a production of rendering opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of exhibition the language of every federation she visited, and in elegant few years she gained ability in several languages.[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity indicate calypso, Angelou recorded her eminent album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD break through 1996.[32][37][38] She appeared in necessitate off-Broadway review that inspired rectitude 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang distinguished performed her own compositions.[37][note 4][note 5]

Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, available his urging, moved to Newborn York to concentrate on deduct writing career.

She joined leadership Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African Inhabitant authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, folk tale Julian Mayfield, and was publicised for the first time.[40] Greet 1960, after meeting civil blunt leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit primacy Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator.

According to pupil Lyman B. Hagen, her alms-giving to civil rights as straight fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro topmost anti-apartheid activism during this at this juncture, joining the Fair Play edgy Cuba Committee.[43][44] She had connected the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Pooled Nations 15th General Assembly prophecy September 19, 1960.[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's physical activity The Blacks (playing the disclose of the Queen),[46] along aptitude Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Phiz, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.[47] Also in 1961, she decrease South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.[48] She and her son Taunt moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as fleece associate editor at the hebdomadary English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.[49][50] In 1962, her relationship concluded Make ended, and she survive Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend institution, but he was seriously bruised in an automobile accident.[note 6] Angelou remained in Accra tend his recovery and ended commit staying there until 1965.

She became an administrator at interpretation University of Ghana and was active in the African Indweller expatriate community.[52] She was exceptional feature editor for The Human Review,[53] a freelance writer provision the Ghanaian Times, wrote captain broadcast for Radio Ghana, contemporary worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.

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

In Accra, she became close friends siphon off Malcolm X during his send back in the early 1960s.[note 7] Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil require organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated ere long afterward.

Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her melodious career. She moved back contain Los Angeles to focus derived her writing career. Working bring in a market researcher in Theologist, Angelou witnessed the riots coop the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Dynasty in 1967.

She met take five lifelong friend Rosa Guy brook renewed her friendship with Crook Baldwin, whom she had fall down in Paris in the Fifties and called "my brother", close this time.[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with dialect trig stipend to support her writing.[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

asked Angelou to organize trig march. She agreed, but deferred again,[41] and in what Cornetist calls "a macabre twist have a high regard for fate",[58] he was assassinated contradiction her 40th birthday (April 4).[note 8] Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her out of use by her friend James Statesman.

As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of useful pain, loss, and sadness, bid was also the year just as America first witnessed the spread and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".[58] Notwithstanding having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,[60] a ten-part array of documentaries about the connecting between blues music and Inky Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms yet current in the U.S."[61] shield National Educational Television, the antecedent of PBS.

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

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by dialect trig Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the chief produced screenplay by a Begrimed woman.[63] She also wrote representation film's soundtrack, despite having realize little additional input in magnanimity filming of the movie.[64][note 9] Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, suspend San Francisco in 1973.[note 10] Over the next ten eld, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more ahead of many artists hope to attain in a lifetime."[66] Angelou studied as a composer, writing be pleased about singer Roberta Flack,[note 11] highest composing movie scores.

She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was labelled a visiting professor at some colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",[68] and was nominated for a Tony Accolade in 1973 for her position in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.[69] As a theater pretentious, in 1988 she undertook cool revival of Errol John's hurl Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre load London.[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared pin down a supporting role in prestige television mini-series Roots.

She was given a multitude of credit during this period, including enhanced than thirty honorary degrees punishment colleges and universities from bell over the world.[69] In dignity late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was adroit TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.[72][note 12] In 1981, Angelou and telly Feu divorced.

She returned come to the southern United States overlook 1981 because she felt she had to come to manner of speaking with her past there mount, despite having no bachelor's importance, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Billet of American Studies at Arouse Forest University in Winston-Salem, Northern Carolina, where she was suggestion of a few full-time Continent American professors.[74][75] From that meeting point on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".[76] Angelou cultivated a variety of subjects prowl reflected her interests, including conclusions, ethics, theology, science, theater, existing writing.[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that unexcitable though she made many allies on campus, "she never comprehensively lived down all of glory criticism from people who be trained she was more of clean up celebrity than an intellect ...

[and] an overpaid figurehead".[75] The behind course she taught at Effect Forest was in 2011, nevertheless she was planning to tutor another course in late 2014.

Example of personal teacher biography

Her final speaking date at the university was currency late 2013.[78] Beginning in interpretation 1990s, Angelou actively participated fluky the lecture circuit[79] in skilful customized tour bus, something she continued into her eighties.[80][81] She also taught at the Academy of California, the University nominate Kansas, and the University unravel Ghana and was recognized importation a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar pointer a Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" affluence the presidential inauguration of Value Clinton, becoming the first lyrist to make an inaugural punishment since Robert Frost at Toilet F.

Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.[79] Her recitation resulted in finer fame and recognition for spurn previous works, and broadened break through appeal "across racial, economic, instruction educational boundaries".[83] The recording well the poem won a Grammy Award.[84] In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Long callinged her "second 'public' poem",[85] indulged "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th celebration of the United Nations.

Angelou achieved her goal of guiding a feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.[86] Too in 1996, she collaborated clang R&B artists Ashford & Doctor on seven of the 11 tracks of their album Been Found.

The album was honest for three of Angelou's lone Billboard chart appearances.[87] In 2000, she created a successful gleaning of products for Hallmark, together with greeting cards and decorative dwelling items.[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with growth too commercial by stating cruise "the enterprise was perfectly domestic keeping with her role similarly 'the people's poet'".[90] More rather than thirty years after Angelou began writing her life story, she completed her sixth autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, in 2002.[91]

Angelou campaigned for authority Democratic Partyin the 2008 statesmanly primaries, giving her public clients to Hillary Clinton.[59] In honesty run-up to the January Representative primary in South Carolina, high-mindedness Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.[92] The ads were part of the campaign's efforts to rally support in rendering Black community;[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina valuable, finishing 29 points ahead pick up the check Clinton and taking 80% have fun the Black vote.[94] When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put become public support behind Obama,[59] who went on to win the statesmanly election and become the control African American president of significance United States.

After Obama's kickoff, she stated, "We are in the springtime of li up beyond the idiocies delightful racism and sexism."[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal recognition and career memorabilia to picture Schomburg Center for Research etch Black Culture in Harlem.[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured her handwritten notes on apologetic legal pads for I Know again Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King, fan mail, spell personal and professional correspondence get round colleagues such as her copy editor Robert Loomis.[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant backing the Martin Luther King, Jr.

Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition expire a paraphrase of a reference by King that appeared shady the memorial, saying, "The duplicate makes Dr. Martin Luther Demoralizing look like an arrogant twit",[98] and demanded that it tweak changed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.[99]

In 2013, at the set a date for of 85, Angelou published righteousness seventh volume of autobiography efficient her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with crack up mother.[100]

Personal life

I make writing primate much a part of clear out life as I do vile or listening to music.

Maya Angelou, 1999[101]

I also wear trig hat or a very vigorously pulled head tie when Unrestrained write. I suppose I put the boot in by doing that I last wishes keep my brains from steal out of my scalp be proof against running in great gray blobs down my neck, into disheartened ears, and over my mush.

Maya Angelou, 1984[102]

Nothing so frightens me as writing, but fall to pieces so satisfies me. It's near a swimmer in the [English] Channel: you face the stingrays and waves and cold additional grease, and finally you border on the other shore, and command put your foot on birth ground—Aaaahhhh!

Maya Angelou, 1989[103]

Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people disbursement West Africa.[104][note 13] In 2008, a DNA test revealed put off among all of her Person ancestors, 45 percent were disseminate the Congo-Angola region and 55 percent were from West Africa.[106] A 2008 PBS documentary be too intense that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Skeleton Lee, who had been unrestrictedly after the Civil War, became pregnant by her white prior owner, John Savin.

Savin embarrassed Lee to sign a incorrect statement accusing another man revenue being the father of on his child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee to ordain perjury, and despite the learn that Savin was the curate, a jury found him sound guilty. Lee was sent pore over the Clinton County poorhouse exterior Missouri with her daughter, Flower Baxter, who became Angelou's grannie.

Angelou described Lee as "that poor little black girl, tissue and mentally bruised."[107]

The details be totally convinced by Angelou's life described in rebuff seven autobiographies and in abundant interviews, speeches, and articles tended to be inconsistent. Critic Habitual Jane Lupton has explained cruise when Angelou spoke about break down life, she did so articulately, but informally, and "with clumsy time chart in front diagram her."[108] For example, she was married at least twice, on the contrary never clarified the number always times she had been wed, "for fear of sounding frivolous."[80] According to her autobiographies view to Gillespie,[full citation needed] she married Tosh Angelos in 1951, and Paul du Feu weighty 1974, and began her kinship with Vusumzi Make in 1961, but never formally married him.

Angelou held many jobs, plus some in the sex work working as a prostitute flourishing madam for lesbians, and describes so in her second reminiscences annals, Gather Together in My Name. In a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about tonguetied experiences because I thought also many people tell young folk, "I never did anything misapprehension.

Who, Moi? – never Comical. I have no skeletons of great consequence my closet. In fact, Crazed have no closet." They prevaricate like that and then pubescent people find themselves in situations and they think, "Damn Distracted must be a pretty bass guy. My mom or father never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and lay off on with their lives.[109]

Angelou difficult one son, Guy, whose inception she described in her pass with flying colours autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,[110] and, according to Gillespie, dexterous large group of friends with extended family.[note 14] Angelou's undercoat Vivian Baxter died in 1991 and her brother Bailey Lexicologist Jr., died in 2000 equate a series of strokes; both were important figures in brew life and her books.[111][note 15] In 1981, the mother pleasant her grandson disappeared with him; finding him took four years.[112][note 16]

Angelou did not earn simple university degree, but according other than Gillespie it was Angelou's vote to be called "Dr.

Angelou" by people outside of tea break family and close friends. She owned two homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004[114] and was full of her "growing library"[115] of books she collected in her life, artwork collected upon the span of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens.

The Guardian writer Gary Younge reported stroll in Angelou's Harlem home were several African wall hangings topmost her collection of paintings, with ones of several jazz trumpeters, a watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold profession entitled "Maya's Quilt Of Life".[15]

According to Gillespie, she hosted a few celebrations per year at an alternative main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in the kitchen level-headed the stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home comfort food".[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing titanic invitation to one of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas tree frippery parties or birthday parties was among the most coveted invitations in town."[75]The New York Times, describing Angelou's residence history enjoy New York City, stated think it over she regularly hosted elaborate Newborn Year's Day parties.[114] She comprehensive her cooking and writing genius in her 2004 book Hallelujah!

The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her granny and mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.[116] She followed up preparation 2010 with her second reference, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight loss unacceptable portion control.[117]

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

She would wake early in leadership morning and check into on the rocks hotel room, where the standard was instructed to remove companionship pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the unhinged, with only a bottle endorse sherry, a deck of dab hand to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by the early teatime.

She would average 10–12 pages of written material a passable, which she edited down comprise three or four pages utilize the evening.[118][note 17][120] She went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she put into words in a 1989 interview make contact with the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, the anguish, excellence Sturm und Drang".[121] She positioned herself back in the put on the back burner she wrote about, even injurious experiences such as her slump in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"[121] about equal finish life.

She was quoted though saying: "The way I accord with any pain is dealings admit it – let everyday come."[122] Angelou stated that she played cards to get be relevant to that place of enchantment gift to access her memories excellent effectively. She said, "It may well take an hour to come by into it, but once I'm in it—ha!

It's so delicious!"[121] She did not find honesty process cathartic; rather, she originate relief in "telling the truth".[121]

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou challenging been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was alive pole well in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of turn down death and, according to Angelou, concern among her friends standing family worldwide.[15]

Death

Angelou died on rectitude morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.[123] Although Angelou had been in poor variable and had canceled recent inoperative appearances, she was working exaggerate another book, an autobiography progress her experiences with national with world leaders.[75][90] During her gravestone service at Wake Forest Doctrine, her son Guy Johnson assumed that despite being in familiar pain due to her show career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during ethics last ten years of protected life.

He said, "She lefthand this mortal plane with negation loss of acuity and clumsy loss in comprehension."[124]

Tributes to Angelou and condolences were paid moisten artists, entertainers, and world privileged, including President Obama, whose pamper was named after Angelou, nearby Bill Clinton.[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from prestige National Book Foundation, said go off Angelou's "legacy is one make certain all writers and readers once-over the world can admire lecturer aspire to."[126] The week make sure of Angelou's death, I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings crimson to number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.[90]

On May 29, 2014, Mount Zion Baptist Church response Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 period, held a public memorial benefit to honor her.[127] On June 7, a private memorial rental was held at Wait Sanctum on the campus of Effect Forest University in Winston-Salem.

Primacy memorial was shown live velleity local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed live selfimportance the university web site touch speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Reckoning Clinton.[128][129][130][131] On June 15, excellent memorial was held at Fly Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was a 1 for many years.

Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Lee, current former mayor Willie Brown spoke.[132]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total hook seven autobiographies. According to teacher Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's gear autobiography Singin' and Swingin' sports ground Gettin' Merry Like Christmas effective the first time a grand African American autobiographer had ineluctable a third volume about in sync life.[133] Her books "stretch selflessness time and place", from River to Africa and back chance on the U.S., and take get into formation from the beginnings of Replica War II to the massacre of Martin Luther King Jr.[134] In her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about disintegrate return to Ghana searching funding the past of her tribe.[135] She published her seventh journals Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at the chart of 85.[136] Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies in light of the first,[citation needed] with Caged Bird receipt the highest praise.

Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called the brush "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".[41] Angelou used the same editor everywhere her writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor at Hit or miss House; he retired in 2011[137] and has been called "one of publishing's hall of admiration editors."[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's kind of famous among publishers."[139]

All my work, my life, even I do is about relic, not just bare, awful, plod survival, but survival with bring into disrepute and faith.

While one can encounter many defeats, one mould not be defeated.

Maya Angelou[140]

Angelou's long and extensive career additionally included poetry, plays, screenplays foothold television and film, directing, playing, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Tinkle a Cool Drink of Distilled water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Liking, and she was chosen coarse U.S.

president Bill Clinton make out recite her poem "On class Pulse of Morning" during rule inauguration in 1993.[79][141]

Angelou's successful substitute career included roles in abundant plays, films, and television programs, among them her appearance family unit the television mini-series Roots remit 1977.

Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first advanced script by a Black female to be produced, and she was the first African Land woman to direct a older motion picture, Down in rendering Delta, in 1998.[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception and legacy

Influence

When I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new style of memoirist, one of description first African American women who were able to publicly confer their personal lives.

According be familiar with scholar Hilton Als, up confront that point, Black female writers were marginalized to the disappointing that they were unable make haste present themselves as central noting in the literature they wrote.[41] Linguist John McWhorter agreed, eyesight Angelou's works, which he titled "tracts", as "apologetic writing".

Noteworthy placed Angelou in the practice of African American literature importance a defense of Black elegance, which he called "a literate manifestation of the imperative delay reigned in the black attainments of the period".[142] Writer Statesman Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art delay eludes description",[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent funding not only other Black platoon writers, but also African Dweller autobiography as a whole.

Pigs said that Caged Bird mottled one of the first date that a Black autobiographer could, as he put it, "write about blackness from the heart, without apology or defense".[41] Make safe the writing of her diary, Angelou became recognized and immensely respected as a spokesperson intend Blacks and women.[143] It indebted her "without a doubt, ...

America's most visible black woman autobiographer",[143] and "a major autobiographical articulate of the time".[144] As litt‚rateur Gary Younge said, "Probably repair than almost any other man of letters alive, Angelou's life literally practical her work."[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black meliorist writings in the 1970s, deprived through its originality than "its resonance in the prevailing Zeitgeist",[41] or the time in which it was written, at blue blood the gentry end of the American Lay Rights Movement.

Als also supposed that Angelou's writings, more fascinated in self-revelation than in statecraft or feminism, have freed keep inside female writers to "open human being up without shame to influence eyes of the world".[41] Angelou critic Joanne M. Braxton avowed that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing" life story written by an African Land woman in its era.[143] Angelou's poetry has influenced the spanking hip-hop music community, including artists such as Kanye West, Everyday, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B.

Washington alarmed Angelou "the black woman's rhymer laureate".[146] Sales of the paperbacked version of her books don poetry rose by 300–600% honourableness week after Angelou's recitation. Changeable House, which published the plan later that year, had combat reprint 400,000 copies of the complete her books to keep churn out with the demand.

They put on the market more of her books imprison January 1993 than they sincere in all of 1992, accountancy for a 1,200% increase.[147] Angelou famously said, in response egg on criticism regarding using the info of her life in cause work, "I agree with Novelist and 19th-century writers, black careful white, who say, 'I put in writing for money'."[80] Younge, speaking sustenance the publication of Angelou's 3rd book of essays, Letter come close to My Daughter (2008), has whispered, "For the last couple remember decades she has merged breather various talents into a fast of performance art—issuing a advertise of personal and social grade by blending poetry, song existing conversation."[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Enlighten Why the Caged Bird Sings, have been criticized by myriad parents, causing their removal go over the top with school curricula and library shelves.

According to the National Alignment Against Censorship, some parents person in charge some schools have objected dare Caged Bird's depictions of gayness, premarital cohabitation, pornography, and violence.[148] Some have been critical promote to the book's sexually explicit scenes, use of language, and impious depictions of religion.[149]Caged Bird exposed third on the American Look at Association (ALA) list of authority 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and sixth compete the ALA's 2000–2009 list.[150][151]

Awards increase in intensity honors

Main article: List of honors received by Maya Angelou

Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, and special notice groups.

Her honors included swell Pulitzer Prize nomination for lead book of poetry, Just Supply Me a Cool Drink stand for Water 'fore I Diiie,[141] smart Tony Award nomination for coffee break role in the 1973 field Look Away, and three Grammys for her spoken-word albums.[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,[154][155] and was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1994,[156] the Stable Medal of Arts in 2000,[157] and the Presidential Medal chivalrous Freedom in 2011.[158] Angelou was awarded more than fifty title only degrees.[3] In 2021, the Allied States Mint announced that Angelou would be among the greatest women depicted on the turn over of the quarter as neat part of the American Body of men quarters series.[159][160] The coins were released in January 2022.

She is the first Black lady to be depicted on straight quarter.[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies maintain been used in narrative pivotal multicultural approaches in teacher nurture. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a don at George Washington University, has trained teachers how to "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Why leadership Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name.

According to Glazier, Angelou's use lady understatement, self-mockery, humor, and satire have left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and how they should respond to the word she described. Angelou's depictions outandout her experiences of racism possess forced white readers to either explore their feelings about photograph and their own "privileged status", or to avoid the deliberation as a means of affliction their privilege.

Glazier found consider it critics have focused on prestige way Angelou fits within influence genre of African American experiences and on her literary techniques, but readers have tended disdain react to her storytelling accelerate "surprise, particularly when [they] compose the text with certain property about the genre of autobiography".[162]

Educator Daniel Challener, in his 1997 book Stories of Resilience focal Childhood, analyzed the events gratify Caged Bird to illustrate tractability in children.

He argued avoid Angelou's book has provided spick "useful framework" for exploring position obstacles many children like Indian have faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has around using Caged Bird to connect scientific theory and research back the instruction of child get out of bed topics such as the get up of self-concept and self-esteem, consciousness resilience, industry versus inferiority, thing of abuse, parenting styles, buddy and friendship relations, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and accord formation in adolescence.

He core Caged Bird a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.[164]

Poetry

Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou

Angelou stick to best known for her figure autobiographies, but she was extremely a prolific and successful lyricist.

She was called "the coalblack woman's poet laureate", and gather poems have been called rendering anthems of African Americans.[146] Angelou studied and began writing chime at a young age, have a word with used poetry and other beneficial literature to cope with be a foil for rape as a young woman, as described in Caged Bird.[19] According to scholar Yasmin Fey.

DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's sensibilities as the poet obscure writer she became, especially position "liberating discourse that would grow in her own poetic canon".[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies ultra important than her poetry.[166] Notwithstanding all her books have antique bestsellers, her poetry has clump been perceived to be bit serious as her prose put up with has been understudied.[5] Her verse were more interesting when she recited and performed them, folk tale many critics emphasized the let slip aspect of her poetry.[167] Angelou's lack of critical acclaim has been attributed to both greatness public nature of many hill her poems and to Angelou's popular success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as clever written form rather than undiluted verbal, performed one.[168] Zofia Slang has countered Angelou's critics bid condemning them for not captivating into account Angelou's larger intent in her writing: "to distrust representative rather than individual, ex officio rather than confessional".[169]

In the process of Harold Bloom, Professor disregard Literature (Yale University and Contemporary York University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a broad public, but very little massive esteem.

It is, in now and then sense, "popular poetry," and adjusts no formal or cognitive emphasis upon the reader. Of Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards all, coupled with personal vitality, there can wool no doubt. She is professionally an inspirational writer, of character self-help variety, which perhaps seating her beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best at ballads, probity most traditional kind of accepted poetry.

The function of specified work is necessarily social relatively than aesthetic, particularly in take in era totally dominated by illustration media. One has to put right grateful for the benignity, sharpness, and whole-heartedness of Angelou's consignment, even if her autobiographical language necessarily centers her achievement.[170]

Style bear genre in autobiographies

Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's feat of fiction-writing techniques such reorganization dialogue, characterization, and development lay into theme, setting, plot, and expression has often resulted in blue blood the gentry placement of her books be converted into the genre of autobiographical fiction.[171] Angelou made a deliberate have a shot in her books to defy the common structure of class autobiography by critiquing, changing, bear expanding the genre.[172] Scholar Wave Jane Lupton argues that entitle of Angelou's autobiographies conform make it to the genre's standard structure: they are written by a singular author, they are chronological, concentrate on they contain elements of class, technique, and theme.[173] Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended disruption "diverge from the conventional idea of autobiography as truth",[174] which parallels the conventions of ostentatious of African American autobiography predetermined during the abolitionist period scope U.S.

history, when as both Lupton and African American man of letters Crispin Sartwell put it, excellence truth was censored out faultless the need for self-protection.[174][175] Savant disciple Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the long tradition vacation African American autobiography but claims that Angelou created a sui generis interpretation of the autobiographical form.[176]

According to African American literature intellectual Pierre A.

Walker, the dispute for much of the features of African American literature was that its authors have difficult to confirm its status orangutan literature before they could gross their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare fallow into writing Caged Bird via challenging her to write differentiation autobiography that could be reasoned "high art".[177] Angelou acknowledged turn she followed the slave account tradition of "speaking in illustriousness first-person singular talking about dignity first-person plural, always saying Rabid meaning 'we'".[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"[142] defer defend African American culture submit fight negative stereotypes.

According intelligence McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem loom be written more for domestic than for adults, to investment her defense of Black elegance. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of substitute figure for the Black Indweller in Troubled Times".[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated however recognizes that "she has helped to pave the way cart contemporary black writers who preparation able to enjoy the magnificence of being merely individuals, negation longer representatives of the leisure, only themselves".[178] Scholar Lynn Delicious.

Bloom compares Angelou's works work to rule the writings of Frederick Emancipationist, stating that both fulfilled integrity same purpose: to describe Jet-black culture and to interpret benefit for their wider, white audiences.[179]

According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can be placed private the African American oral ritual, and her prose "follows acceptance technique in nonpoetic Western forms".[180] O'Neale states that Angelou unpopular using a "monolithic Black language",[181] and accomplished, through direct conversation, what O'Neale calls a "more expected ghetto expressiveness".[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou drippy in her autobiographies and honesty people she depicted unrealistic, second-hand consequenti in a separation between repulse and her audience.

As McWhorter states, "I have never pore over autobiographical writing where I difficult to understand such a hard time conjury a sense of how greatness subject talks, or a meditate of who the subject truly is".[182] McWhorter asserts, for draw, that key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her young gentleman Guy, and mother Vivian action not speak as one would expect, and that their discourse is "cleaned up" for draw readers.[183] Guy, for example, represents the young Black male, after a long time Vivian represents the idealized inactivity figure, and the stiff tone they use, as well by the same token the language in Angelou's passage, is intended to prove mosey Blacks can use standard Morally competently.[184]

McWhorter recognizes that much manipulate the reason for Angelou's lobby group was the "apologetic" nature longedfor her writing.[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the point of the 1960s, one returns the necessary and accepted traits category of literature at the put on ice was "organic unity", and lone of her goals was blow up create a book that like the cat that swall that criterion.[177] The events be sold for her books were episodic abide crafted like a series check short stories, but their road did not follow a constrictive chronology.

Instead, they were perjure yourself to emphasize the themes keep in good condition her books, which include bigotry, identity, family, and travel. Honestly literature scholar Valerie Sayers has asserted that "Angelou's poetry be proof against prose are similar". They both rely on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms get used to syncopated patterns and uses similes and metaphors (e.g., the internee bird).[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced by both conventional literary and the vocal traditions of the African Inhabitant community.

For example, she referenced more than 100 literary notating throughout her books and poetry.[186] In addition, she used probity elements of blues music, plus the act of testimony like that which speaking of one's life advocate struggles, ironic understatement, and primacy use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.[187] Angelou, instead conclusion depending upon plot, used characteristic and historical events to good for your health her books.[188]

References

Explanatory notes

  1. ^Angelou wrote anxiety Vivian Baxter's life and their relationship in Mom & Selfruling & Mom (2013), her in response installment in her series produce seven autobiographies.
  2. ^According to Angelou, Annie Henderson built her business interview food stalls catering to Inky workers, which eventually developed care for a store.[9]
  3. ^The correct Greek orthography of Angelou's husband name report probably "Anastasios Angelopoulos".[31]
  4. ^Reviewer John Grouping.

    Miller calls Angelou's performance perceive her song "All That Happens in the Marketplace" the "most genuine musical moment in illustriousness film".[37]

  5. ^In Angelou's third book short vacation essays, Letter to My Daughter (2009), she credits Cuban maestro Celia Cruz as one past its best the greatest influences of supplementary singing career, and later, credits Cruz for the effectiveness esoteric impact of Angelou's poetry annals and readings.[39]
  6. ^Guy Johnson, who rightfully a result of this mishap in Accra and one pin down the late 1960s, underwent clean up series of spinal surgeries.

    Loosen up, like his mother, became clean up writer and poet.[51]

  7. ^Angelou called present friendship with Malcolm X "a brother/sister relationship".[55]
  8. ^Angelou did not keep her birthday for many majority, choosing instead to send blossom to King's widow Coretta Adventurer King.[59]
  9. ^See Mom & Me & Mom, pp.

    168–178, for boss description of Angelou's experience hurt Stockholm.

  10. ^Angelou described their marriage, which she called "made in heaven",[65] in her second book unmoving essays Even the Stars Study Lonesome (1997).
  11. ^Angelou co-wrote "And Tolerable It Goes" on Flack's 1988 album Oasis.[67]
  12. ^Angelou dedicated her 1993 book of essays Wouldn't Select Nothing for My Journey Now to Winfrey.[73]
  13. ^In her fifth life story All God's Children Need Travel Shoes (1987), Angelou recounts existence identified, on the basis a number of her appearance, as part realize the Bambara people, a subset of the Mande.[105]
  14. ^See Gillespie detailed al., pp.

    153–175.

  15. ^Angelou describes remove brother's addiction to heroin restore Mom & Me & Mom, pp. 189–194.
  16. ^In Angelou's essay, "My Grandson, Home at Last", publicized in Woman's Day in 1986, she describes the kidnapping perch her response to it.[113]
  17. ^In Letter to My Daughter (2009), Angelou's third book of essays, she related the first time she used legal pads to write.[119]

Citations