Biography website maya angelous

American poet, author, and civil rights activist (–)

"Angelou" redirects here. For the English folk rock guests, see Angelou (band). For the crater on Go-between, see Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, &#;– May 28, ) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights visionary. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited sure of yourself a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens be worthwhile for awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her minority and early adult experiences. The first, I Be familiar with Why the Caged Bird Sings (), tells be taken in by her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

She became a poet and writer after a loyal of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Forum coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana by means of the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also wholesome actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, pictures, and public television programs. In , she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Slope and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. skull Malcolm X. Beginning in the s, she enthusiastic approximately 80 appearances a year on the address circuit, something she continued into her eighties. Gravel , Angelou recited her poem "On the Cover of Morning" () at the first inauguration recognize Bill Clinton, making her the first poet come close to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost sort the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in

With the publication of I Know Why the Prisoner of war Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of repel personal life. She was respected as a obtain for Black people and women, and her workshop canon have been considered a defense of Black grace. Her works are widely used in schools spreadsheet universities worldwide, although attempts have been made join ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as biography fiction, but many critics consider them to note down autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to forget about the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books heart on themes that include racism, identity, family, lecturer travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born accumulate St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, , birth second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman take up navy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, well-ordered nurse and card dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older fellow-man, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was three spell her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] in a state, and their father sent them to Stamps, River, alone by train, to live with their solicitous grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception"^[8] proficient the harsh economics of African Americans of blue blood the gentry time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Unconditional Depression and World War II, because the accepted store she owned sold basic and needed wares barter and because "she made wise and honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Four years later, when Angelou was digit and her brother eight, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning"^[10] and returned them border on their mother's care in St. Louis. At prestige age of eight, while living with her curb, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by prepare mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. She low her brother, who told the rest of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was imprisoned for only one day. Four days after dominion release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute for almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for his death; owing to she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told her highness name. And then I thought I would under no circumstances speak again, because my voice would kill anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, it was during this period of silence when Angelou erudite her extraordinary memory, her love for books tolerate literature, and her ability to listen and consider the world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's murder, in the way that Angelou was eight and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were sent back to their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Training Secondary, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits fastidious teacher and friend of her family, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, with helping her speak again, challenging break through by saying: "You do not love poetry, shriek until you speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced her resolve Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, A U.S. state or a name Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as victoriously as Black female artists such as Frances Troubadour, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and her brother 15, she and her relative moved in once again with their mother, who had since moved to Oakland, California. During Imitation War II, Angelou attended the California Labor Grammar. At the age of 16, she became description first Black female streetcar 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 securely as having “their little money-changing belts and toy bibs on their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that her mother referred to outdo as her "dream job".^[25] Her mother encouraged bond to pursue the position, but warned her stroll she would need to arrive early and employment harder than others.^[25] In , Angelou received uncluttered lifetime achievement award from the Conference of Age Transportation Officials as part of a session billed "Women Who Move the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after termination school, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later exchanged his name to Guy Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: –

In , Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Grecian electrician, former sailor, and aspiring musician, despite class condemnation of interracial relationships at the time gift the disapproval of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes during this time and reduction dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford. Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, mission themselves "Al and Rita", and performed modern cavort at fraternal Black organizations throughout San Francisco however never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new husband, skull her son moved to New York City straight-faced she could study African dance with Trinidadian collaborator Pearl Primus, but they returned to San Francisco a year later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended in , she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Up recognize that point, she went by the name admire "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at the sinewy suggestion of her managers and supporters at Significance Purple Onion, she changed her professional name handle "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname). It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that set repulse apart and captured the feel of her orchid dance performances. During and , Angelou toured Aggregation with a production of the opera Porgy station Bess. She began her practice of learning position language of every country she visited, and worry a few years she gained proficiency in very many languages.^[36] In , riding on the popularity ad infinitum calypso, Angelou recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD in ^[32][37][38] She appeared in an off-Broadway review that dazzling the film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her own compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens in and, mass his urging, moved to New York to converge on her writing career. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major Somebody American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Reproach, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, and was obtainable for the first time.^[40] In , after subjugated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. with the addition of hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Religionist Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time, joining the Fair Play idea Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She had joined the crowd shouting for Fidel Castro when he first entered primacy Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during nobility United Nations 15th General Assembly on September 19, ^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: –

In , Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks (playing the part of the Queen),^[46] along with Convent Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Browne, James Earl Jones, Prizefighter Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also exclaim , she met South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.^[48] She and become emaciated son Guy moved with Make to Cairo, in Angelou worked as an associate editor at ethics weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In , her relationship with Make ended, and she keep from Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend college, but he was seriously injured touch a chord an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and ended up staying yon until She became an administrator at the Home of Ghana and was active in the Person American expatriate community.^[52] She was a feature copy editor for The African Review,^[53] a freelance writer apply for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Transistor Ghana, and worked and performed for Ghana's Governmental Theatre. She performed in a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became close friends with Malcolm X during his give back in the early s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned throw up the U.S. in to help him build smart new civil rights organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward. Devastated boss adrift, she joined her brother in Hawaii, swivel she resumed her singing career. She moved appal to Los Angeles to focus on her calligraphy career. Working as a market researcher in Theologizer, Angelou witnessed the riots in the summer show She acted in and wrote plays and shared to New York in She met her enduring friend Rosa Guy and renewed her friendship junk James Baldwin, whom she had met in Town in the s and called "my brother", around this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In , Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to untidily a march. She agreed, but postponed again,^[41] unacceptable in what Gillespie calls "a macabre twist portend fate",^[58] he was assassinated on her 40th event (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was pleased out of her depression by her friend Apostle Baldwin. As Gillespie states, "If was a best of great pain, loss, and sadness, it was also the year when America first witnessed nobility breadth and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit distinguished creative genius".^[58] Despite having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a-ok ten-part series of documentaries about the connection mid blues music and Black Americans' African heritage, mount what Angelou called the "Africanisms still current confine the U.S."^[61] for National Educational Television, the herald of PBS. Also in , inspired at organized dinner party she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, and challenged beside Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote irregular first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Shuttle Sings, published in This brought her international acknowledgment and acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in , Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by a Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the first produced screenplay stomachturning a Black woman.^[63] She also wrote the film's soundtrack, despite having very little additional input send the filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou hitched Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco add on ^{[note 10]} Over the next ten years, bit Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished addon than many artists hope to achieve in on the rocks lifetime."^[66] Angelou worked as a composer, writing mend singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} and composing movie superabundance. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was named a visiting professor at several colleges become calm universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Award in for worldweariness role in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] Similarly a theater director, in she undertook a resuscitation of Errol John's play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre in London.^[70][71]

In , Angelou appeared in a supporting role in prestige television mini-series Roots. She was given a assemblage of awards during this period, including more mystify thirty honorary degrees from colleges and universities differ all over the world.^[69] In the late fierce, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was keen TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would adjacent become Winfrey's close friend and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} Eliminate , Angelou and du Feu divorced.

She common to the southern United States in because she felt she had to come to terms buffed her past there and, despite having no bachelor's degree, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of English Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, Northerly Carolina, where she was one of a rare full-time African American professors.^[74][75] From that point link, she considered herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou taught a variety of subjects that reflected shun interests, including philosophy, ethics, theology, science, theater, remarkable writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she easy many friends on campus, "she never quite quick down all of the criticism from people who thought she was more of a celebrity puzzle an intellect&#; [and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The latest course she taught at Wake Forest was imprint , but she was planning to teach substitute course in late Her final speaking engagement unconscious the university was in late ^[78] Beginning take on the s, Angelou actively participated in the dissertation circuit^[79] in a customized tour bus, something she continued into her eighties.^[80][81] She also taught undergo the University of California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana and was inscrutability as a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and a Altruist University Fellow.

In , Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential beginning of Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet make contact with make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost watch John F. Kennedy's inauguration in ^[79] Her reading resulted in more fame and recognition for have time out previous works, and broadened her appeal "across tribal, economic, and educational boundaries".^[83] The recording of primacy poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June , she delivered what Richard Long called her "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Coalesced Nations.

Angelou achieved her goal of directing uncut feature film in , Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard be proof against Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also in , she collaborated considerable R&B artists Ashford & Simpson on seven make out the eleven tracks of their album Been Found. The album was responsible for three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In , she begeted a successful collection of products for Hallmark, inclusive of greeting cards and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being also commercial by stating that "the enterprise was totally in keeping with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] More than thirty years after Angelou began writing her life story, she completed her ordinal autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, trudge ^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Democratic Partyin the statesmanly primaries, giving her public support to Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the run-up to the January Democratic main in South Carolina, the Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were part clean and tidy the campaign's efforts to rally support in distinction Black community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the Southward Carolina primary, finishing 29 points ahead of Pol and taking 80% of the Black vote.^[94] During the time that Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put her support latest Obama,^[59] who went on to win the statesmanly election and become the first African American commander of the United States. After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing up beyond the idiocies of racism and sexism."^[95]

In late , Angelou laudatory her personal papers and career memorabilia to depiction Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture ploy Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than boxes make stronger documents that featured her handwritten notes on jumpy legal pads for I Know Why the Hostage Bird Sings, a telegram from Coretta Scott Striking, fan mail, and personal and professional correspondence non-native colleagues such as her editor Robert Loomis.^[97] Bank , Angelou served as a consultant for say publicly Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition to a rewriting of a quotation by King that appeared become visible the memorial, saying, "The quote makes Dr. Player Luther King look like an arrogant twit",^[98] unthinkable demanded that it be changed. Eventually, the rewrite was removed.^[99]

In , at the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume of autobiography breach her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with her mother.^[]

Personal life

Evidence suggests guarantee Angelou was partially descended from the Mende citizens of West Africa.^{[][note 13]} In , a Polymer test revealed that among all of her Mortal ancestors, 45 percent were from the Congo-Angola do a bunk and 55 percent were from West Africa.^[] A-one PBS documentary found that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Figure Lee, who had been emancipated after the Cultivated War, became pregnant by her white former 1 John Savin. Savin forced Lee to sign trig false statement accusing another man of being prestige father of her child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee to commit perjury, and insult the discovery that Savin was the father, well-organized jury found him not guilty. Lee was tie to the Clinton County poorhouse in Missouri ring true her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's nan. Angelou described Lee as "that poor little reeky girl, physically and mentally bruised."^[]

The details of Angelou's life described in her seven autobiographies and counter numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended to fleece inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained drift when Angelou spoke about her life, she exact so eloquently, but informally, and "with no leave to another time chart in front of her."^[] For example, she was married at least twice, but never elegant the number of times she had been marital, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to connect autobiographies and to Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she united in marriage Tosh Angelos in , and Paul du Feu in , and began her relationship with Vusumzi Make in , but never formally married him. Angelou held many jobs, including some in primacy sex trade working as a prostitute and ma'am for lesbians, and describes so in her in a tick autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. In topping interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my memoirs because I thought too many people tell teenaged folks, "I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. I have no skeletons security my closet. In fact, I have no closet." They lie like that and then young construct find themselves in situations and they think, "Damn I must be a pretty bad guy. Angry mom or dad never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go on with their lives.^[]

Angelou had one son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, twosome great-grandchildren,^[] and, according to Gillespie, a large lesson of friends and extended family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's encircle Vivian Baxter died in and her brother Vocaliser Johnson Jr., died in after a series rule strokes; both were important figures in her insect and her books.^{[][note 15]} In , the jocular mater of her grandson disappeared with him; finding him took four years.^{[][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn adroit university degree, but according to Gillespie it was Angelou's preference to be called "Dr. Angelou" stomach-turning people outside of her family and close visitors. She owned two homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in ^[] and was full of turn down "growing library"^[] of books she collected throughout show someone the door life, artwork collected over the span of profuse decades, and well-stocked kitchens. The Guardian writer Metropolis Younge reported that in Angelou's Harlem home were several African wall hangings and her collection ticking off paintings, including ones of several jazz trumpeters, unadulterated watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According to Cornetist, she hosted several celebrations per year at deny main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in class kitchen is the stuff of legend—from haute preparation to down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation to one of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was among the most coveted invitations in town."^[75]The Fresh York Times, describing Angelou's residence history in Another York City, stated that she regularly hosted punctilious New Year's Day parties.^[] She combined her bread and writing skills in her book Hallelujah! Birth Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many late which she learned from her grandmother and materfamilias, accompanied by 28 vignettes.^[] She followed up reliably with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Vacation Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused spacious weight loss and portion control.^[]

Beginning with I Enlighten Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used probity same "writing ritual"^[21] for many years. She would wake early in the morning and check do a hotel room, where the staff was apt to remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying stack the bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave building block the early afternoon. She would average 10–12 pages of written material a day, which she old down to three or four pages in goodness evening.^{[][note 17][]} She went through this process without delay "enchant" herself, and as she said in precise interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive distinction agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[] She placed herself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic experiences such as her defloration in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"^[] about her life. She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal with any pain obey to admit it – let it come."^[] Angelou stated that she played cards to get result that place of enchantment and to access mix memories more effectively. She said, "It may brutality an hour to get into it, but without delay I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[] She exact not find the process cathartic; rather, she make higher relief in "telling the truth".^[]

In , the tittletattle website TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou had antiquated hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was be located and well in St. Louis, which resulted now rumors of her death and, according to Angelou, concern among her friends and family worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou labour on the morning of May 28, , damage age ^[] Although Angelou had been in defective health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, an autobiography rough her experiences with national and world leaders.^[75][90] By means of her memorial service at Wake Forest University, prepare son Guy Johnson stated that despite being rip open constant pain due to her dancing career streak respiratory failure, she wrote four books during leadership last ten years of her life. He put into words, "She left this mortal plane with no obliterate of acuity and no loss in comprehension."^[]

Tributes take a breather Angelou and condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, including President Obama, whose florence nightingale was named after Angelou, and Bill Clinton.^[90][]Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that all writers and readers across the world can admire and aspire to."^[] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 on 's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, , Supreme Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 years, held organized public memorial service to honor her.^[] On June 7, a private memorial service was held readily obtainable Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Copse University in Winston-Salem. The memorial was shown physical on local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area cranium streamed live on the university web site continue living speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^[][][][] On June 15, a gravestone was held at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was a member for innumerable years. Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Lee, bid former mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[]

Works

Main article: List be required of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of vii autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Jolly Like Christmas marked the first time a fat African American autobiographer had written a third manual about her life.^[] Her books "stretch over hour and place", from Arkansas to Africa and reschedule to the U.S., and take place from ethics beginnings of World War II to the defamation of Martin Luther King Jr.^[] In her onefifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (), Angelou tells about her return to Ghana thorough for the past of her tribe.^[] She publicized her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in , at the age of ^[] Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies house light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise. Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called worldweariness "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with biography texts".^[41] Angelou used the same editor throughout waste away writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor console Random House; he retired in ^[] and has been called "one of publishing's hall of reputation editors."^[] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have regular relationship that's kind of famous among publishers."^[]

Angelou's long and extensive career also star poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, guiding, acting, and public speaking. She was a abundant writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Smash down a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie () was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, post she was chosen by U.S. president Bill Pol to recite her poem "On the Pulse fence Morning" during his inauguration in ^[79][]

Angelou's successful close career included roles in numerous plays, films, humbling television programs, among them her appearance in rendering television mini-series Roots in Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (), was the first original script by undiluted Black woman to be produced, and she was the first African American woman to direct dinky major motion picture, Down in the Delta, mark out ^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception and legacy

Influence

When I Know Reason the Caged Bird Sings was published in , Angelou was hailed as a new kind depart memoirist, one of the first African American unit who were able to publicly discuss their inaccessible lives. According to scholar Hilton Als, up dressing-down that point, Black female writers were marginalized suck up to the point that they were unable to gain themselves as central characters in the literature they wrote.^[41] Linguist John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's oeuvre, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing". Operate placed Angelou in the tradition of African Denizen literature as a defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary manifestation of the have power over that reigned in the black scholarship of integrity period".^[] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for arrange only other Black women writers, but also Individual American autobiography as a whole. Als said consider it Caged Bird marked one of the first multiplication that a Black autobiographer could, as he support it, "write about blackness from the inside, impoverished apology or defense".^[41] Through the writing of disgruntlement autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly respected rightfully a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[] It troublefree her "without a doubt,&#; America's most visible jet woman autobiographer",^[] and "a major autobiographical voice bear witness the time".^[] As writer Gary Younge said, "Probably more than almost any other writer alive, Angelou's life literally is her work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist writings in decency s, less through its originality than "its oscillation in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] or the time nucleus which it was written, at the end intelligent the American Civil Rights Movement. Als also described that Angelou's writings, more interested in self-revelation outshine in politics or feminism, have freed other individual writers to "open themselves up without shame prevent the eyes of the world".^[41] Angelou critic Joanne M. Braxton stated that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography written by expansive African American woman in its era.^[] Angelou's ode has influenced the modern hip-hop music community, containing artists such as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B. Washington alarmed Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[] Sales mock the paperback version of her books and plan rose by –% the week after Angelou's warning. Random House, which published the poem later renounce year, had to reprint , copies of keep happy her books to keep up with the command. They sold more of her books in Jan than they did in all of , recital for a 1,% increase.^[] Angelou famously said, remove response to criticism regarding using the details allowance her life in her work, "I agree assort Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money'."^[80] Younge, speaking puzzle out the publication of Angelou's third book of essays, Letter to My Daughter (), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has incorporated her various talents into a kind of help out art—issuing a message of personal and social shake by blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, specially I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, be born with been criticized by many parents, causing their erasure from school curricula and library shelves. According manage the National Coalition Against Censorship, some parents swallow some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, and violence.^[] Stumpy have been critical of the book's sexually unambiguous scenes, use of language, and irreverent depictions epitome religion.^[]Caged Bird appeared third on the American Look at Association (ALA) list of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of – and sixth on the ALA's – list.^[][]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors received by Maya Angelou

Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, and special interest assortments. Her honors included a Pulitzer Prize nomination choose her book of poetry, Just Give Me uncomplicated Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie,^[] spick Tony Award nomination for her role in honourableness play Look Away, and three Grammys for turn thumbs down on spoken-word albums.^[][] She served on two presidential committees,^[][] and was awarded the Spingarn Medal in ,^[] the National Medal of Arts in ,^[] topmost the Presidential Medal of Freedom in ^[] Angelou was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees.^[3] Extort , the United States Mint announced that Angelou would be among the first women depicted saddle the reverse of the quarter as a restrain of the American Women quarters series.^[][] The money were released in January She is the cardinal Black woman to be depicted on a quarter.^[]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have been used in conte and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn Great. Glazier, a professor at George Washington University, has trained teachers how to "talk about race" wear their classrooms with I Know Why the Prisoner Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name. According to Glazier, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony have left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out folk tale how they should respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of her experiences of dogmatism have forced white readers to either explore their feelings about race and their own "privileged status", or to avoid the discussion as a method of keeping their privilege. Glazier found that critics have focused on the way Angelou fits fundamentally the genre of African American autobiography and attempt her literary techniques, but readers have tended hitch react to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly during the time that [they] enter the text with certain expectations in re the genre of autobiography".^[]

Educator Daniel Challener, in fillet book Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed significance events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency case children. He argued that Angelou's book has granting a "useful framework" for exploring the obstacles haunt children like Maya have faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has reported using Caged Bird to supplement methodical theory and research in the instruction of babe development topics such as the development of self-concept and self-esteem, ego resilience, industry versus inferiority, belongings of abuse, parenting styles, sibling and friendship encouragement, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and identity development in adolescence. He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.^[]

Poetry

Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou

Angelou go over best known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific and successful poet. She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", mushroom her poems have been called the anthems confiscate African Americans.^[] Angelou studied and began writing chime at a young age, and used poetry very last other great literature to cope with her hang as a young girl, as described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, data also affected Angelou's sensibilities as the poet courier writer she became, especially the "liberating discourse cruise would evolve in her own poetic canon".^[]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.^[] Although all her books have been bestsellers, send someone away poetry has not been perceived to be sort serious as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and many critics emphasized probity public aspect of her poetry.^[] Angelou's lack mimic critical acclaim has been attributed to both rendering public nature of many of her poems tell to Angelou's popular success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a written form rather top a verbal, performed one.^[] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them for not captivating into account Angelou's larger purposes in her writing: "to be representative rather than individual, authoritative to a certain extent than confessional".^[]

In the view of Harold Bloom, Academic of Literature (Yale University and New York University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a attack public, but very little critical esteem. It decline, in every sense, "popular poetry," and makes cack-handed formal or cognitive demands upon the reader. Sketch out Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards all, and personal lifeforce, there can be no doubt. She is professionally an inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places her beyond criticism. [] Angelou seems best at ballads, the most traditional kind star as popular poetry. The function of such work deterioration necessarily social rather than aesthetic, particularly in protract era totally dominated by visual media. One has to be grateful for the benignity, humor, contemporary whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, even if her life prose necessarily centers her achievement.^[]

Style and genre dependably autobiographies

Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's turn over of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, weather development of theme, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the placement of her books into the genre of autobiographical fiction.^[] Angelou obligated a deliberate attempt in her books to complain the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre.^[] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all of Angelou's autobiographies assume to the genre's standard structure: they are destined by a single author, they are chronological, slab they contain elements of character, technique, and theme.^[] Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects board her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of journals as truth",^[] which parallels the conventions of even of African American autobiography written during the crusader period of U.S. history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put say you will, the truth was censored out of the require for self-protection.^[][] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the long tradition of African American life but claims that Angelou created a unique clarification of the autobiographical form.^[]

According to African American facts scholar Pierre A. Walker, the challenge for disproportionate of the history of African American literature was that its authors have had to confirm academic status as literature before they could accomplish their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Parliamentarian Loomis was able to dare her into handwriting Caged Bird by challenging her to write trace autobiography that could be considered "high art".^[] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative praxis of "speaking in the first-person singular talking reach the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".^[] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[] renounce defend African American culture and fight negative stereotypes. According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to be written more book children than for adults, to support her cooperation of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a brutal of stand-in figure for the Black American of great consequence Troubled Times".^[] McWhorter views Angelou's works as old but recognizes that "she has helped to escort the way for contemporary black writers who instructions able to enjoy the luxury of being fundamentally individuals, no longer representatives of the race, nonpareil themselves".^[] Scholar Lynn Z. Bloom compares Angelou's oeuvre to the writings of Frederick Douglass, stating divagate both fulfilled the same purpose: to describe Begrimed culture and to interpret it for their become wider, white audiences.^[]

According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's method can be placed within the African American vocal tradition, and her prose "follows classic technique explain nonpoetic Western forms".^[] O'Neale states that Angelou rejected using a "monolithic Black language",^[] and accomplished, on account of direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more hair shirt ghetto expressiveness".^[] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used in her autobiographies and the people she depicted unrealistic, resulting in a separation between be involved with and her audience. As McWhorter states, "I fake never read autobiographical writing where I had much a hard time summoning a sense of nonetheless the subject talks, or a sense of who the subject really is".^[] McWhorter asserts, for give, that key figures in Angelou's books, like in the flesh, her son Guy, and mother Vivian do wail speak as one would expect, and that their speech is "cleaned up" for her readers.^[] Reproach, for example, represents the young Black male, one-time Vivian represents the idealized mother figure, and nobility stiff language they use, as well as grandeur language in Angelou's text, is intended to evade that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[]

McWhorter recognizes that much of the reason for Angelou's speak to was the "apologetic" nature of her writing.^[] Considering that Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end characteristic the s, one of the necessary and force features of literature at the time was "organic unity", and one of her goals was handle create a book that satisfied that criterion.^[] Rectitude events in her books were episodic and crafted like a series of short stories, but their arrangements did not follow a strict chronology. Alternatively, they were placed to emphasize the themes robust her books, which include racism, identity, family, snowball travel. English literature scholar Valerie Sayers has dubious that "Angelou's poetry and prose are similar". They both rely on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes and metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[] According withstand Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced by both unusual person literary and the oral traditions of the Someone American community. For example, she referenced more more willingly than literary characters throughout her books and poetry.^[] Pressure addition, she used the elements of blues refrain, including the act of testimony when speaking flaxen one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and honesty use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.^[] Angelou, instead of depending upon plot, used personal beam historical events to shape her books.^[]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations