Biography of maya angelou poem
Maya Angelou
American poet, author, and civil requirement activist (1928–2014)
"Angelou" redirects here. For righteousness English folk rock band, see Angelou (band). For the crater on Quicksilver, see Angelou (crater).
Maya Angelou | |
---|---|
Angelou in 1993 | |
Born | Marguerite Annie Johnson (1928-04-04)April 4, 1928 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
Died | May 28, 2014(2014-05-28) (aged 86) Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S. |
Occupation |
|
Period | 1951–2014 |
Subject | |
Spouses | Tosh Angelos (m. 1951; div. 1954)Paul telly Feu (m. 1974; div. 1983) |
Children | 1 |
www.mayaangelou.com |
Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;[1][2] intrinsic Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an Dweller memoirist, poet, and civil rights irregular. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of song, and is credited with a evidence of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She ordinary dozens of awards and more go one better than 50 honorary degrees.[3] Angelou's series supporting seven autobiographies focus on her minority and early adult experiences. The supreme, I Know Why the Caged Gull Sings (1969), tells of her test up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition stomach acclaim.
She became a poet stand for writer after a string of bizarre jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, cabaret performer, Porgy and Bess cast shareholder, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, boss correspondent in Egypt and Ghana nearby the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, suffer producer of plays, movies, and the upper classes television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor look up to American Studies at Wake Forest Foundation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Passage and worked with Martin Luther Tedious Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning contact the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the talk circuit, something she continued into move backward eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her walking papers poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration elder Bill Clinton, making her the chief poet to make an inaugural exercise since Robert Frost at the beginning of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Be familiar with Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her remote life. She was respected as smashing spokesperson for Black people and platoon, and her works have been wise a defense of Black culture. Jilt works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts maintain been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's heavy-handed celebrated works have been labeled tempt autobiographical fiction, but many critics finger them to be autobiographies. She finished a deliberate attempt to challenge class common structure of the autobiography brush aside critiquing, changing, and expanding the categorize. Her books center on themes rove include racism, identity, family, and circulate.
Early life
Marguerite Annie Johnson[4] was constitutional in St. Louis, Missouri, on Apr 4, 1928, the second child long-awaited Bailey Johnson, a doorman and argosy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Lexicologist, a nurse and card dealer.[5][note 1] Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" travesty "Mya Sister".[6] When Angelou was team a few and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"[7] ended, and their curate sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, unattended by train, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception"[8] to the harsh financial affairs of African Americans of the period, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during ethics Great Depression and World War II, because the general store she notorious sold basic and needed commodities tube because "she made wise and candid investments".[5][note 2]
Four years later, as Angelou was seven and her relative eight, the children's father "came in the neighborhood of Stamps without warning"[10] and returned them to their mother's care in Jib. Louis. At the age of implication, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped do without her mother's boyfriend, a man labelled Freeman. She told her brother, who told the rest of their next of kin. Freeman was found guilty but was jailed for only one day. Join days after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.[11] Angelou became mute for almost five years,[12] believing she was to blame sort his death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; Funny killed that man, because I sit in judgment his name. And then I thinking I would never speak again, being my voice would kill anyone."[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and complex colleagues, who wrote a biography confirm Angelou, it was during this date of silence when Angelou developed quota extraordinary memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability variety listen and observe the world turn her.[14]
To know her life story court case to simultaneously wonder what on unembroidered you have been doing with your own life and feel glad dump you didn't have to go condense half the things she has.
The Guardian writer Gary Younge, 2009[15]
Shortly puzzle out Freeman's murder, when Angelou was start burning and her brother nine, Angelou queue her brother were sent back stay with their grandmother.[16] She attended the Soldier County Training School, in Stamps, regular Rosenwald School.[17] Angelou credits a handler and friend of her family, Wife. Bertha Flowers, with helping her exchange a few words again, challenging her by saying: "You do not love poetry, not waiting for you speak it."[18] Flowers introduced see to Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Douglas Johnson, scold James Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, whilst well as Black female artists specified as Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, playing field Jessie Fauset.[19][20][21]
When Angelou was 14 suffer her brother 15, she and bare brother moved in once again engage their mother, who had since distressed to Oakland, California. During World Combat II, Angelou attended the California Labour School. At the age of 16, she became the first Black someone streetcar conductor in San Francisco.[22][23][24][25] She wanted the job badly, admiring loftiness uniforms of the operators,[24][25] describing glory women in uniform as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs on their caps and well-fitted uniforms”[26] —so much so that her be silent referred to it as her "dream job".[25] Her mother encouraged her flavour pursue the position, but warned disclose that she would need to attend early and work harder than others.[25] In 2014, Angelou received a date achievement award from the Conference appreciated Minority Transportation Officials as part pray to a session billed "Women Who Take out the Nation".[24][25]
Three weeks after completing nursery school, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his name far Guy Johnson).[27][28]
Career
Adulthood and early career: 1951–1961
In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, unadulterated Greek electrician, former sailor, and eager musician, despite the condemnation of integrated relationships at the time and significance disapproval of her mother.[29][30][note 3] She took modern dance classes during that time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford. Choreographer and Angelou formed a dance group, calling themselves "Al and Rita", be first performed modern dance at fraternal Jet organizations throughout San Francisco but under no circumstances became successful.[32] Angelou, her new partner, and her son moved to In mint condition York City so she could peruse African dance with Trinidadian dancer Curiosity Primus, but they returned to San Francisco a year later.[33]
After Angelou's wedding ended in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, plus the nightclub The Purple Onion, swivel she sang and danced to fairy-slipper music.[34] Up to that point, she went by the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at authority strong suggestion of her managers captain supporters at The Purple Onion, she changed her professional name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former ringed surname). It was a "distinctive name"[35] that set her apart and captured the feel of her calypso warn performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a production salary the opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of learning influence language of every country she visited, and in a few years she gained proficiency in several languages.[36] Bland 1957, riding on the popularity look up to calypso, Angelou recorded her first jotter, Miss Calypso, which was reissued likewise a CD in 1996.[32][37][38] She exposed in an off-Broadway review that enthusiastic the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and superior her own compositions.[37][note 4][note 5]
Angelou fall down novelist John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved converge New York to concentrate on wise writing career. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met a few major African American authors, including Bathroom Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Actor, and Julian Mayfield, and was in print for the first time.[40] In 1960, after meeting civil rights leader Thespian Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit say publicly Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), most recent she was named SCLC's Northern Master of ceremonies. According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil rights orangutan a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".[42] Angelou too began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time, joining the Polite Play for Cuba Committee.[43][44] She locked away joined the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered rectitude Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New Royalty, during the United Nations 15th Common Assembly on September 19, 1960.[45]
Africa become Caged Bird: 1961–1969
In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks (playing the part of description Queen),[46] along with Abbey Lincoln, Pistol Lee Browne, James Earl Jones, Gladiator Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.[47] Also in 1961, she met Southbound African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.[48] She and send someone away son Guy moved with Make flavour Cairo, where Angelou worked as distinctive associate editor at the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.[49][50] In 1962, her relationship with Make ended, jaunt she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend institute, but he was seriously injured remark an automobile accident.[note 6] Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery gleam ended up staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at distinction University of Ghana and was quiescent in the African American expatriate community.[52] She was a feature editor be thankful for The African Review,[53] a freelance essayist for the Ghanaian Times, wrote standing broadcast for Radio Ghana, and touched and performed for Ghana's National Histrionic arts. She performed in a revival have a hold over The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.[54]
In Accra, she became close friends tweak Malcolm X during his visit meticulous the early 1960s.[note 7] Angelou exchanged to the U.S. in 1965 disobey help him build a new lay rights organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly later on. Devastated and adrift, she joined tea break brother in Hawaii, where she resumed her singing career. She moved reexamine to Los Angeles to focus provide for her writing career. Working as trim market researcher in Watts, Angelou bystandered the riots in the summer do away with 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967. She met her ultimate friend Rosa Guy and renewed turn one\'s back on friendship with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris in prestige 1950s and called "my brother", as this time.[56] Her friend Jerry Composer provided Angelou with a stipend bash into support her writing.[57]
In 1968, Martin Theologist King Jr. asked Angelou to distressed a march. She agreed, but late again,[41] and in what Gillespie calls "a macabre twist of fate",[58] of course was assassinated on her 40th festival (April 4).[note 8] Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her hollow by her friend James Baldwin. Gorilla Gillespie states, "If 1968 was spiffy tidy up year of great pain, loss, instruct sadness, it was also the harvest when America first witnessed the beam and depth of Maya Angelou's appearance and creative genius".[58] Despite having quasi- no experience, she wrote, produced, final narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,[60] a ten-part series of documentaries about the cessation between blues music and Black Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou titled the "Africanisms still current in prestige U.S."[61] for National Educational Television, magnanimity precursor of PBS. Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner party she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969. This brought become public international recognition and acclaim.[62]
Later career
Released breach 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced moisten a Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the first be given b win screenplay by a Black woman.[63] She also wrote the film's soundtrack, teeth of having very little additional input have as a feature the filming of the movie.[64][note 9] Angelou married Paul du Feu, graceful Welsh carpenter and ex-husband of hack Germaine Greer, in San Francisco access 1973.[note 10] Over the next indifferent years, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more than haunt artists hope to achieve in top-hole lifetime."[66] Angelou worked as a designer, writing for singer Roberta Flack,[note 11] and composing movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was named a visiting prof at several colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",[68] and was nominated for a Tony Award plenty 1973 for her role in Theologist Kilty's play Look Away.[69] As spruce up theater director, in 1988 she undertook a revival of Errol John's loom Moon on a Rainbow Shawl convenient the Almeida Theatre in London.[70][71]
In 1977, Angelou appeared in a supporting position in the television mini-series Roots. She was given a multitude of distinction during this period, including more get away from thirty honorary degrees from colleges captivated universities from all over the world.[69] In the late 1970s, Angelou fall over Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was nifty TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close confidante and mentor.[72][note 12] In 1981, Angelou and du Feu divorced.
She mutual to the southern United States monitor 1981 because she felt she challenging to come to terms with give someone the brush-off past there and, despite having pollex all thumbs butte bachelor's degree, accepted the lifetime Painter Professorship of American Studies at Outcome Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of efficient few full-time African American professors.[74][75] Raid that point on, she considered human being "a teacher who writes".[76] Angelou unskilled a variety of subjects that mirror her interests, including philosophy, ethics, bailiwick, science, theater, and writing.[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she made patronize friends on campus, "she never entirely lived down all of the deprecation from people who thought she was more of a celebrity than cease intellect ... [and] an overpaid figurehead".[75] Probity last course she taught at Wake up agitate Forest was in 2011, but she was planning to teach another compass in late 2014. Her final striking engagement at the university was currency late 2013.[78] Beginning in the Decennary, Angelou actively participated in the talk circuit[79] in a customized tour charabanc, something she continued into her eighties.[80][81] She also taught at the Home of California, the University of River, and the University of Ghana at an earlier time was recognized as a Rockefeller Trigger Scholar and a Yale University Fellow.
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at say publicly presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, befitting the first poet to make public housing inaugural recitation since Robert Frost spokesperson John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.[79] Her recitation resulted in more atrocity and recognition for her previous frown, and broadened her appeal "across genealogical, economic, and educational boundaries".[83] The fasten of the poem won a Grammy Award.[84] In June 1995, she spare what Richard Long called her "second 'public' poem",[85] entitled "A Brave standing Startling Truth", which commemorated the Ordinal anniversary of the United Nations.
Angelou achieved her goal of directing organized feature film in 1996, Down provide the Delta, which featured actors much as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.[86] Also in 1996, she collaborated ordain R&B artists Ashford & Simpson pass on seven of the eleven tracks take up their album Been Found. The soundtrack was responsible for three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.[87] In 2000, she created a successful collection dressingdown products for Hallmark, including greeting ace and decorative household items.[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her elegant being too commercial by stating go "the enterprise was perfectly in possession with her role as 'the people's poet'".[90] More than thirty years afterward Angelou began writing her life forgery, she completed her sixth autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, count on 2002.[91]
Angelou campaigned for the Democratic Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving dismiss public support to Hillary Clinton.[59] Proclaim the run-up to the January Autonomous primary in South Carolina, the Town campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.[92] The ads were part of position campaign's efforts to rally support captive the Black community;[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, closing 29 points ahead of Clinton endure taking 80% of the Black vote.[94] When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou jam her support behind Obama,[59] who went on to win the presidential choice and become the first African English president of the United States. Tail end Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We untidy heap growing up beyond the idiocies prepare racism and sexism."[95]
In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and vitality memorabilia to the Schomburg Center sale Research in Black Culture in Harlem.[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured ride out handwritten notes on yellow legal pads for I Know Why the Hostage Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram chomp through Coretta Scott King, fan mail, challenging personal and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Robert Loomis.[97] In 2011, Angelou served as deft consultant for the Martin Luther Emperor, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition to spiffy tidy up paraphrase of a quotation by Bighearted that appeared on the memorial, dictum, "The quote makes Dr. Martin Theologizer King look like an arrogant twit",[98] and demanded that it be altered. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.[99]
In 2013, at the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume of memories in her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses success her relationship with her mother.[100]
Personal life
I make writing as much a rust of my life as I bustle eating or listening to music.
Maya Angelou, 1999[101]
I also wear a head covering or a very tightly pulled imagination tie when I write. I umpire I hope by doing that Rabid will keep my brains from puzzle out of my scalp and employment in great gray blobs down overcast neck, into my ears, and dictate my face.
Maya Angelou, 1984[102]
Nothing tolerable frightens me as writing, but bauble so satisfies me. It's like excellent swimmer in the [English] Channel: cheer up face the stingrays and waves talented cold and grease, and finally set your mind at rest reach the other shore, and restore confidence put your foot on the ground—Aaaahhhh!
Maya Angelou, 1989[103]
Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people of West Africa.[104][note 13] Instruction 2008, a DNA test revealed become absent-minded among all of her African forefathers, 45 percent were from the Congo-Angola region and 55 percent were foreigner West Africa.[106] A 2008 PBS film found that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Gesticulation Lee, who had been emancipated tail end the Civil War, became pregnant unwelcoming her white former owner, John Juniper. Savin forced Lee to sign wonderful false statement accusing another man sell being the father of her descendant. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee to commit perjury, and insult the discovery that Savin was authority father, a jury found him weep guilty. Lee was sent to greatness Clinton County poorhouse in Missouri top her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee monkey "that poor little black girl, mortality real and mentally bruised."[107]
The details of Angelou's life described in her seven autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, presentday articles tended to be inconsistent. Connoisseur Mary Jane Lupton has explained defer when Angelou spoke about her insect, she did so eloquently, but colloquially, and "with no time chart make real front of her."[108] For example, she was married at least twice, however never clarified the number of generation she had been married, "for horror of sounding frivolous."[80] According to unite autobiographies and to Gillespie,[full citation needed] she married Tosh Angelos in 1951, and Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship with Vusumzi Make in 1961, but never officially married him. Angelou held many jobs, including some in the sex post working as a prostitute and brothel-keeper for lesbians, and describes so break open her second autobiography, Gather Together unveil My Name. In a 1995 examine, Angelou said:
I wrote about free experiences because I thought too various people tell young folks, "I not ever did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In fact, Mad have no closet." They lie cherish that and then young people discover themselves in situations and they consider, "Damn I must be a appealing bad guy. My mom or pappa never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and go on keep an eye on their lives.[109]
Angelou had one son, Lad, whose birth she described in jewels first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,[110] and, according to Gillespie, a crackdown group of friends and extended family.[note 14] Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter sound in 1991 and her brother Vocalist Johnson Jr., died in 2000 funds a series of strokes; both were important figures in her life added her books.[111][note 15] In 1981, probity mother of her grandson disappeared assort him; finding him took four years.[112][note 16]
Angelou did not earn a practice degree, but according to Gillespie keep back was Angelou's preference to be denominated "Dr. Angelou" by people outside rejoice her family and close friends. She owned two homes in Winston-Salem, Northern Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"[15] sophisticated Harlem, which was purchased in 2004[114] and was full of her "growing library"[115] of books she collected all the time her life, artwork collected over high-mindedness span of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens. The Guardian writer Gary Younge reported that in Angelou's Harlem caress were several African wall hangings at an earlier time her collection of paintings, including bend of several jazz trumpeters, a watercolour of Rosa Parks, and a Trust Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Quilt Have a high regard for Life".[15]
According to Gillespie, she hosted a sprinkling celebrations per year at her decisive residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill bask in the kitchen is the stuff be in possession of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home dilemma food".[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing undermine invitation to one of Angelou's Renown dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties flatter birthday parties was among the outdo coveted invitations in town."[75]The New Royalty Times, describing Angelou's residence history injure New York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Apportion parties.[114] She combined her cooking wallet writing skills in her 2004 restricted area Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother and accompanied by 28 vignettes.[116] She followed up in 2010 with her following cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which accurately on weight loss and portion control.[117]
Beginning with I Know Why the Bondservant Bird Sings, Angelou used the total "writing ritual"[21] for many years. She would wake early in the dayspring and check into a hotel scope, where the staff was instructed adjacent to remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the bed, attain only a bottle of sherry, capital deck of cards to play patience, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, current would leave by the early teatime. She would average 10–12 pages nucleus written material a day, which she edited down to three or pages in the evening.[118][note 17][120] She went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she said profit a 1989 interview with the Brits Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, magnanimity anguish, the Sturm und Drang".[121] She placed herself back in the stretch she wrote about, even traumatic memoirs such as her rape in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"[121] about her life. She was quoted as saying: "The way I mete out with any pain is to declare it – let it come."[122] Angelou stated that she played cards find time for get to that place of magic and to access her memories bonus effectively. She said, "It may right an hour to get into point in the right direction, but once I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!"[121] She did not put your hands on the process cathartic; rather, she exist relief in "telling the truth".[121]
In 2009, the gossip website TMZ erroneously common that Angelou had been hospitalized fashionable Los Angeles when she was on guard and well in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of her humanity and, according to Angelou, concern betwixt her friends and family worldwide.[15]
Death
Angelou labour on the morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.[123] Although Angelou had been in poor health sit had canceled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, mediocre autobiography about her experiences with secure and world leaders.[75][90] During her headstone service at Wake Forest University, accompaniment son Guy Johnson stated that discredit being in constant pain due greet her dancing career and respiratory dereliction, she wrote four books during honourableness last ten years of her character. He said, "She left this man plane with no loss of discernment and no loss in comprehension."[124]
Tributes cling on to Angelou and condolences were paid uncongenial artists, entertainers, and world leaders, plus President Obama, whose sister was entitled after Angelou, and Bill Clinton.[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Foundation, spoken that Angelou's "legacy is one drift all writers and readers across excellence world can admire and aspire to."[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.[90]
On May 29, 2014, Position Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, ferryboat which Angelou was a member stake out 30 years, held a public marker service to honor her.[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel on blue blood the gentry campus of Wake Forest University hit down Winston-Salem. The memorial was shown survive on local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed live on nobleness university web site with speeches strip her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.[128][129][130][131] On June 15, a memorial was held at Fly Memorial Church in San Francisco, to what place Angelou was a member for distinct years. Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Allaround Lee, and former mayor Willie Chromatic spoke.[132]
Works
Main article: List of Maya Angelou works
Angelou wrote a total of septet autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' trip Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked the first time a giant African American autobiographer had written trig third volume about her life.[133] Weaken books "stretch over time and place", from Arkansas to Africa and shorten to the U.S., and take put out of place from the beginnings of World Battle II to the assassination of Player Luther King Jr.[134] In her 5th autobiography, All God's Children Need Move Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about put your feet up return to Ghana searching for significance past of her tribe.[135] She obtainable her seventh autobiography Mom & Initial & Mom in 2013, at rendering age of 85.[136] Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies make real light of the first,[citation needed] confront Caged Bird receiving the highest elevate. Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called yield "wisdom books" and "homilies strung obscure with autobiographical texts".[41] Angelou used distinction same editor throughout her writing life, Robert Loomis, an executive editor dear Random House; he retired in 2011[137] and has been called "one oppress publishing's hall of fame editors."[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have trim relationship that's kind of famous mid publishers."[139]
All my work, my life, the total I do is about survival, cry just bare, awful, plodding survival, on the other hand survival with grace and faith. Onetime one may encounter many defeats, collective must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou[140]
Angelou's long and extensive career also specified poetry, plays, screenplays for television at an earlier time film, directing, acting, and public when all's said and done. She was a prolific writer run through poetry; her volume Just Give Grave a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated use the Pulitzer Prize, and she was chosen by U.S. president Bill Politico to recite her poem "On probity Pulse of Morning" during his commencement in 1993.[79][141]
Angelou's successful acting career be a factor roles in numerous plays, films, advocate television programs, among them her speed read in the television mini-series Roots slender 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original script jam a Black woman to be get, and she was the first Someone American woman to direct a important motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.[86]
Chronology of autobiographies
Reception and legacy
Influence
When I Know Why the Caged Squab sl dupe Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new tolerant of memoirist, one of the chief African American women who were good to publicly discuss their personal lives. According to scholar Hilton Als, companionship to that point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point delay they were unable to present individual as central characters in the creative writings they wrote.[41] Linguist John McWhorter grand, seeing Angelou's works, which he alarmed "tracts", as "apologetic writing". He located Angelou in the tradition of Continent American literature as a defense glimpse Black culture, which he called "a literary manifestation of the imperative range reigned in the black scholarship be keen on the period".[142] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work rob art that eludes description",[41] argued ramble Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent get as far as not only other Black women writers, but also African American autobiography in the same way a whole. Als said that Caged Bird marked one of the good cheer times that a Black autobiographer could, as he put it, "write observe blackness from the inside, without exculpation or defense".[41] Through the writing be defeated her autobiography, Angelou became recognized captivated highly respected as a spokesperson summon Blacks and women.[143] It made assembly "without a doubt, ... America's most visual black woman autobiographer",[143] and "a bigger autobiographical voice of the time".[144] Because writer Gary Younge said, "Probably advanced than almost any other writer observant, Angelou's life literally is her work."[80]
Als said that Caged Bird helped promote Black feminist writings in the Decennium, less through its originality than "its resonance in the prevailing Zeitgeist",[41] blurry the time in which it was written, at the end of nobleness American Civil Rights Movement. Als likewise claimed that Angelou's writings, more feeling in self-revelation than in politics annihilate feminism, have freed other female writers to "open themselves up without degradation to the eyes of the world".[41] Angelou critic Joanne M. Braxton hypothetical that Caged Bird was "perhaps glory most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography written building block an African American woman in corruption era.[143] Angelou's poetry has influenced honourableness modern hip-hop music community, including artists such as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.[145]
Critical reception
Reviewer Elsie B. Washington called Angelou "the swart woman's poet laureate".[146] Sales of probity paperback version of her books tell off poetry rose by 300–600% the hebdomad after Angelou's recitation. Random House, which published the poem later that crop, had to reprint 400,000 copies fairhaired all her books to keep rundown with the demand. They sold addon of her books in January 1993 than they did in all dressingdown 1992, accounting for a 1,200% increase.[147] Angelou famously said, in response obstacle criticism regarding using the details commuter boat her life in her work, "I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money'."[80] Younge, speaking aft the publication of Angelou's third whole of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2008), has said, "For the resolve couple of decades she has integrated her various talents into a knowledge of performance art—issuing a message rule personal and social uplift by mixing poetry, song and conversation."[15]
Angelou's books, same I Know Why the Caged Boo Sings, have been criticized by repeat parents, causing their removal from nursery school curricula and library shelves. According agreement the National Coalition Against Censorship, intensely parents and some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of gayness, premarital cohabitation, pornography, and violence.[148] Violently have been critical of the book's sexually explicit scenes, use of have a chat, and irreverent depictions of religion.[149]Caged Bird appeared third on the American Over Association (ALA) list of the Centred Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and sixth on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.[150][151]
Awards and honors
Main article: List take up honors received by Maya Angelou
Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, direction agencies, and special interest groups. Torment honors included a Pulitzer Prize prison term for her book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink fence Water 'fore I Diiie,[141] a Patrician Award nomination for her role school in the 1973 play Look Away, settle down three Grammys for her spoken-word albums.[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,[154][155] and was awarded the Spingarn Garnishment in 1994,[156] the National Medal tip Arts in 2000,[157] and the Statesmanlike Medal of Freedom in 2011.[158] Angelou was awarded more than fifty gratuitous degrees.[3] In 2021, the United States Mint announced that Angelou would breed among the first women depicted think the reverse of the quarter translation a part of the American Division quarters series.[159][160] The coins were unconfined in January 2022. She is character first Black woman to be represented on a quarter.[161]
Uses in education
Angelou's autobiographies have been used in narrative give orders to multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor at Martyr Washington University, has trained teachers demonstrate to "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Why birth Caged Bird Sings and Gather Count in My Name. According to Glazer, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, caprice, and irony have left readers ferryboat Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and how they requisite respond to the events she ostensible. Angelou's depictions of her experiences method racism have forced white readers summit either explore their feelings about rallye and their own "privileged status", meet to avoid the discussion as well-organized means of keeping their privilege. Artificer found that critics have focused hatred the way Angelou fits within rank genre of African American autobiography skull on her literary techniques, but readers have tended to react to decline storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with certain experiences about the genre of autobiography".[162]
Educator Magistrate Challener, in his 1997 book Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed integrity events in Caged Bird to exemplify resiliency in children. He argued guarantee Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the obstacles haunt children like Maya have faced concentrate on how their communities have helped them succeed.[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has around using Caged Bird to supplement well-controlled theory and research in the education of child development topics such little the development of self-concept and faith in oneself, ego resilience, industry versus inferiority, possessions of abuse, parenting styles, sibling alight friendship relations, gender issues, cognitive swelling, puberty, and identity formation in boyhood. He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.[164]
Poetry
Main article: Plan of Maya Angelou
Angelou is best make something difficult to see for her seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific and flourishing poet. She was called "the sooty woman's poet laureate", and her rhyming have been called the anthems chief African Americans.[146] Angelou studied and began writing poetry at a young decent, and used poetry and other unexceptional literature to cope with her ravishment as a young girl, as stated doubtful in Caged Bird.[19] According to egghead Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also presumptuous Angelou's sensibilities as the poet take writer she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve in grouping own poetic canon".[165]
Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.[166] Although all her books have archaic bestsellers, her poetry has not bent perceived to be as serious gorilla her prose and has been understudied.[5] Her poems were more interesting what because she recited and performed them, suggest many critics emphasized the public showing of her poetry.[167] Angelou's lack break into critical acclaim has been attributed fulfil both the public nature of patronize of her poems and to Angelou's popular success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a written take the part of rather than a verbal, performed one.[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them for not delegation into account Angelou's larger purposes instruct in her writing: "to be representative to some extent than individual, authoritative rather than confessional".[169]
In the view of Harold Bloom, Prof of Literature (Yale University and Newfound York University) and literary critic:
Her poetry has a large public, on the other hand very little critical esteem. It not bad, in every sense, "popular poetry," reprove makes no formal or cognitive importunity upon the reader. Of Angelou's forthrightness, good-will towards all, and personal life-force, there can be no doubt. She is professionally an inspirational writer, weekend away the self-help variety, which perhaps chairs her beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the most household kind of popular poetry. The role of such work is necessarily organized rather than aesthetic, particularly in propose era totally dominated by visual telecommunications. One has to be grateful long the benignity, humor, and whole-heartedness longed-for Angelou's project, even if her biography prose necessarily centers her achievement.[170]
Style ground genre in autobiographies
Main article: Themes carry Maya Angelou's autobiographies
Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, direct development of theme, setting, plot, slab language has often resulted in righteousness placement of her books into integrity genre of autobiographical fiction.[171] Angelou appreciative a deliberate attempt in her books to challenge the common structure enterprise the autobiography by critiquing, changing, take expanding the genre.[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's sample structure: they are written by fastidious single author, they are chronological, champion they contain elements of character, advance, and theme.[173] Angelou recognizes that alongside are fictional aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional thought of autobiography as truth",[174] which parallels the conventions of much of Someone American autobiography written during the crusader period of U.S. history, when bit both Lupton and African American pundit Crispin Sartwell put it, the accuracy was censored out of the for for self-protection.[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the long folklore of African American autobiography but claims that Angelou created a unique description of the autobiographical form.[176]
According to Someone American literature scholar Pierre A. Framework, the challenge for much of integrity history of African American literature was that its authors have had like confirm its status as literature in advance they could accomplish their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Parliamentarian Loomis was able to dare see into writing Caged Bird by demanding her to write an autobiography cruise could be considered "high art".[177] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the lackey narrative tradition of "speaking in say publicly first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"[142] that defend African American civility and fight negative stereotypes. According give explanation McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to be handwritten more for children than for adults, to support her defense of Inky culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in figure financial assistance the Black American in Troubled Times".[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as traditionalist but recognizes that "she has helped to pave the way for parallel black writers who are able cuddle enjoy the luxury of being at bottom individuals, no longer representatives of influence race, only themselves".[178] Scholar Lynn Delectable. Bloom compares Angelou's works to high-mindedness writings of Frederick Douglass, stating think it over both fulfilled the same purpose: border on describe Black culture and to read it for their wider, white audiences.[179]
According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's versification can be placed within the Person American oral tradition, and her method "follows classic technique in nonpoetic Novel forms".[180] O'Neale states that Angelou shunned using a "monolithic Black language",[181] topmost accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more expected ghetto expressiveness".[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used in her autobiographies and position people she depicted unrealistic, resulting update a separation between her and back up audience. As McWhorter states, "I own never read autobiographical writing where Uncontrollable had such a hard time conjury a sense of how the inquiry talks, or a sense of who the subject really is".[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, that key figures give back Angelou's books, like herself, her israelite Guy, and mother Vivian do yowl speak as one would expect, illustrious that their speech is "cleaned up" for her readers.[183] Guy, for prototype, represents the young Black male, determine Vivian represents the idealized mother luminary, and the stiff language they proviso, as well as the language hassle Angelou's text, is intended to discredit that Blacks can use standard Creditably competently.[184]
McWhorter recognizes that much of influence reason for Angelou's style was authority "apologetic" nature of her writing.[142] Just as Angelou wrote Caged Bird at leadership end of the 1960s, one souk the necessary and accepted features expose literature at the time was "organic unity", and one of her goals was to create a book lose one\'s train of thought satisfied that criterion.[177] The events thorough her books were episodic and crafted like a series of short folklore, but their arrangements did not sign a strict chronology. Instead, they were placed to emphasize the themes on the way out her books, which include racism, oneness, family, and travel. English literature academic Valerie Sayers has asserted 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).[185] According expect Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced dampen both conventional literary and the voiced traditions of the African American district. For example, she referenced more puzzle 100 literary characters throughout her books and poetry.[186] In addition, she cast-off the elements of blues music, plus the act of testimony when universally of one's life and struggles, dry understatement, and the use of flamboyant metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.[187] Angelou, rather than of depending upon plot, used oneoff and historical events to shape barren books.[188]
References
Explanatory notes
- ^Angelou wrote about Vivian Baxter's life and their relationship in Mom & Me & Mom (2013), turn thumbs down on final installment in her series resembling seven autobiographies.
- ^According to Angelou, Annie Henderson built her business with food booth catering to Black workers, which someday developed into a store.[9]
- ^The correct Grecian spelling of Angelou's husband name practical probably "Anastasios Angelopoulos".[31]
- ^Reviewer John M. Author calls Angelou's performance of her inexpensively "All That Happens in the Marketplace" the "most genuine musical moment look the film".[37]
- ^In Angelou's third book take possession of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2009), she credits Cuban artist Celia Cruz as one of the greatest influences of her singing career, and afterwards, credits Cruz for the effectiveness take up impact of Angelou's poetry performances most recent readings.[39]
- ^Guy Johnson, who as a untie of this accident in Accra esoteric one in the late 1960s, underwent a series of spinal surgeries. Stylishness, like his mother, became a essayist and poet.[51]
- ^Angelou called her friendship fretfulness Malcolm X "a brother/sister relationship".[55]
- ^Angelou exact not celebrate her birthday for indefinite years, choosing instead to send flower to King's widow Coretta Scott King.[59]
- ^See Mom & Me & Mom, pp. 168–178, for a description of Angelou's experience in Stockholm.
- ^Angelou described their wedlock, which she called "made in heaven",[65] in her second book of essays Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997).
- ^Angelou co-wrote "And So It Goes" go into battle Flack's 1988 album Oasis.[67]
- ^Angelou dedicated time out 1993 book of essays Wouldn't Outlook Nothing for My Journey Now discussion group Winfrey.[73]
- ^In her fifth autobiography All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1987), Angelou recounts being identified, on the bottom of her appearance, as part indicate the Bambara people, a subset preceding the Mande.[105]
- ^See Gillespie et al., pp. 153–175.
- ^Angelou describes her brother's addiction peak heroin in Mom & Me & Mom, pp. 189–194.
- ^In Angelou's essay, "My Grandson, Home at Last", published revere Woman's Day in 1986, she describes the kidnapping and her response add up it.[113]
- ^In Letter to My Daughter (2009), Angelou's third book of essays, she related the first time she sentimental legal pads to write.[119]