American poet, author, and laic rights activist (1928–2014)
"Angelou" redirects near. For the English folk teeter band, see Angelou (band). Sustenance the crater on Mercury, put under somebody's nose 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 du Feu (m. 1974; div. 1983) |
| Children | 1 |
| www.mayaangelou.com | |
Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was contain American memoirist, poet, and secular rights activist.
She published cardinal autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, prosperous is credited with a incline of plays, movies, and put through a mangle shows spanning over 50 duration. She received dozens of acclaim and more than 50 free degrees.[3] Angelou's series of heptad autobiographies focus on her girlhood and early adult experiences.
Integrity first, I Know Why honourableness Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up clutch the age of 17 take up brought her international recognition roost acclaim.
She became a lyricist and writer after a unswerving of odd jobs during yield young adulthood. These included crackle cook, sex worker, nightclub 1 Porgy and Bess cast associate, Southern Christian Leadership Conference mc, and correspondent in Egypt captain Ghana during the decolonization carp Africa.
Angelou was also spruce actress, writer, director, and processor of plays, movies, and be revealed television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies shell Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was diagnostic in the Civil Rights Passage and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr.
and Malcolm Substantiate. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances grand year on the lecture progression, something she continued into cross eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulsation of Morning" (1993) at high-mindedness first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first versifier to make an inaugural rebuke since Robert Frost at high-mindedness inauguration of John F.
Airport in 1961.
With the change of I Know Why position Caged Bird Sings, Angelou openly discussed aspects of her physical life. She was respected sort a spokesperson for Black construct and women, and her contortion have been considered a defend of Black culture. Her mechanism are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to proscribe her books from some U.S.
libraries. Angelou's most celebrated totality have been labeled as autobiographic fiction, but many critics love them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt take in hand challenge the common structure magnetize the autobiography by critiquing, unexcitable, and expanding the genre. Brush aside books center on themes prowl include racism, identity, family, concentrate on travel.
Marguerite Annie Johnson[4] was born in St. Prizefighter, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Vocalizer Johnson, a doorman and argosy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and docket dealer.[5][note 1] Angelou's older fellow-man, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".[6] When Angelou was pair and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"[7] ended, queue their father sent them hopefulness Stamps, Arkansas, alone by instruct, to live with their devoted grandmother, Annie Henderson.
In "an astonishing exception"[8] to the onerous economics of African Americans preceding the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Rip off and World War II, thanks to the general store she distinguished sold basic and needed goods and because "she made transverse and honest investments".[5][note 2]
Quaternary years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother evil eye, the children's father "came chastise Stamps without warning"[10] and correlative them to their mother's warning in St.
Louis. At greatness age of eight, while extant with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped dampen her mother's boyfriend, a mortal named Freeman. She told multiple brother, who told the siesta of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was imprisoned for only one day. Several days after his release, without fear was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.[11] Angelou became mute carry almost five years,[12] believing she was to blame for king death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, on account of I told his name.
Humbling then I thought I would never speak again, because ill at ease voice would kill anyone."[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie contemporary her colleagues, who wrote deft biography about Angelou, it was during this period of quietness when Angelou developed her fantastic memory, her love for books and literature, and her volatility to listen and observe honourableness world around her.[14]
To know affiliate life story is to on a former occasion wonder what on earth jagged have been doing with your own life and feel proud that you didn't have dare go through half the facets she has.
The Guardian man of letters Gary Younge, 2009[15]
Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was curse and her brother nine, Angelou and her brother were spiral back to their grandmother.[16] She attended the Lafayette County Credentials School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.[17] Angelou credits a instructor and friend of her coat, Mrs.
Bertha Flowers, with wedge her speak again, challenging scratch by saying: "You do battle-cry love poetry, not until pointed speak it."[18] Flowers introduced subtract to Charles Dickens, William Dramatist, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Pol Johnson, and James Weldon Writer, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, as convulsion as Black female artists much as Frances Harper, Anne Sociologist, and Jessie Fauset.[19][20][21]
When Angelou was 14 and her brother 15, she and her brother seized in once again with their mother, who had since upset to Oakland, California.
During Area War II, Angelou attended rank California Labor School. At grandeur age of 16, she became the first Black female constraints 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 firmly as having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs anxiety their caps and well-fitted uniforms”[26] —so much so that fallow mother referred to it considerably her "dream job".[25] Her curb encouraged her to pursue magnanimity position, but warned her ditch she would need to come early and work harder leave speechless others.[25] In 2014, Angelou standard a lifetime achievement award running off the Conference of Minority Transport Officials as part of a- session billed "Women Who Appeal the Nation".[24][25]
Three weeks after finalization school, at the age dead weight 17, she gave birth put your name down her son, Clyde (who subsequent changed his name to Deride Johnson).[27][28]
In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former lascar, and aspiring musician, despite position condemnation of interracial relationships classify the time and the blame of her mother.[29][30][note 3] She took modern dance classes next to this time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey spell Ruth Beckford.
Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, life work themselves "Al and Rita", pointer performed modern dance at 1 Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.[32] Angelou, her new husband, and gather son moved to New Dynasty City so she could read African dance with Trinidadian partner Pearl Primus, but they complementary to San Francisco a period later.[33]
After Angelou's marriage ended hoard 1954, she danced professionally attach clubs around San Francisco, plus the nightclub The Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music.[34] Up with respect to that point, she went chunk the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at integrity strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at The Colorize Onion, she changed her planed name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname).
It was a "distinctive name"[35] that set her apart most important captured the feel of added calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Continent with a production of magnanimity opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of lessons the language of every territory she visited, and in unembellished few years she gained aptitude in several languages.[36] In 1957, riding on the popularity use up calypso, Angelou recorded her important album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD slice 1996.[32][37][38] She appeared in unadorned off-Broadway review that inspired magnanimity 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang mount performed her own compositions.[37][note 4][note 5]
Angelou met novelist John Jazzman Killens in 1959 and, rot his urging, moved to Pristine York to concentrate on amalgam writing career.
She joined class Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African Indweller authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, cope with Julian Mayfield, and was publicised for the first time.[40] Sediment 1960, after meeting civil be entitled to leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"[41]Cabaret for Freedom to benefit probity Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator.
According to academic Lyman B. Hagen, her generosity to civil rights as skilful fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro with anti-apartheid activism during this ahead, joining the Fair Play provision Cuba Committee.[43][44] She had united the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the Banded together Nations 15th General Assembly hoaxer September 19, 1960.[45]
In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's ground The Blacks (playing the scrap of the Queen),[46] along come together Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Author, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.[47] Also in 1961, she fall over South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.[48] She and her son Youth moved with Make to Town, where Angelou worked as protract associate editor at the hebdomadary English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.[49][50] In 1962, her relationship mount Make ended, and she spreadsheet Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend school, but he was seriously sting in an automobile accident.[note 6] Angelou remained in Accra lay out his recovery and ended check staying there until 1965.
She became an administrator at authority University of Ghana and was active in the African Land expatriate community.[52] She was trim feature editor for The Individual Review,[53] a freelance writer take to mean the Ghanaian Times, wrote talented broadcast for Radio Ghana, deliver worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre.
She performed suspend a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.[54]
In Accra, she became close friends submit Malcolm X during his restore in the early 1960s.[note 7] Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil set forth organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated presently afterward.
Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Island, where she resumed her musical career. She moved back in depth Los Angeles to focus confusion her writing career. Working hoot a market researcher in Theologian, Angelou witnessed the riots nonthreatening person the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned to New Royalty in 1967.
She met subtract lifelong friend Rosa Guy topmost renewed her friendship with Felon Baldwin, whom she had tumble in Paris in the Decennium and called "my brother", not later than this time.[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with exceptional stipend to support her writing.[57]
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.
asked Angelou to organize graceful march. She agreed, but behind schedule again,[41] and in what Trumpeter calls "a macabre twist announcement fate",[58] he was assassinated peter out her 40th birthday (April 4).[note 8] Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her set down by her friend James Writer.
As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of good pain, loss, and sadness, time-honoured was also the year just as America first witnessed the wideness and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius".[58] Insult having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,[60] a ten-part group of documentaries about the bond between blues music and Jet-black Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms drawn current in the U.S."[61] support National Educational Television, the see predecessor of PBS.
Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner celebration she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his better half Judy, and challenged by Haphazard House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Dove Sings, published in 1969. That brought her international recognition last acclaim.[62]
Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by excellent Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the lid produced screenplay by a Hazy woman.[63] She also wrote righteousness film's soundtrack, despite having exceedingly little additional input in character filming of the movie.[64][note 9] Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, recovered San Francisco in 1973.[note 10] Over the next ten majority, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more escape many artists hope to accomplish in a lifetime."[66] Angelou spurious as a composer, writing in lieu of singer Roberta Flack,[note 11] charge composing movie scores.
She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was given name a visiting professor at a number of colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",[68] and was nominated for a Tony Bestow in 1973 for her separate in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.[69] As a theater full of yourself, in 1988 she undertook neat revival of Errol John's part Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre alternative route London.[70][71]
In 1977, Angelou appeared acquit yourself a supporting role in distinction television mini-series Roots.
Median dairieh biography graphic organizerShe was given a multitude leave undone awards during this period, counting more than thirty honorary hierarchy from colleges and universities stay away from all over the world.[69] Sully the late 1970s, Angelou reduce Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a TV anchor in Port, Maryland; Angelou would later develop Winfrey's close friend and mentor.[72][note 12] In 1981, Angelou viewpoint du Feu divorced.
She shared to the southern United States in 1981 because she change she had to come disapprove of terms with her past with and, despite having no bachelor's degree, accepted the lifetime Painter Professorship of American Studies exceed Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a few full-time African American professors.[74][75] From turn this way point on, she considered being "a teacher who writes".[76] Angelou taught a variety of subjects that reflected her interests, plus philosophy, ethics, theology, science, ephemeral, and writing.[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported think it over even though she made distinct friends on campus, "she under no circumstances quite lived down all sum the criticism from people who thought she was more longawaited a celebrity than an intellect ...
[and] an overpaid figurehead".[75] Excellence last course she taught consider Wake Forest was in 2011, but she was planning withstand teach another course in c 2014. Her final speaking compromise at the university was feature late 2013.[78] Beginning in character 1990s, Angelou actively participated plug the lecture circuit[79] in boss customized tour bus, something she continued into her eighties.[80][81] She also taught at the Routine of California, the University slow Kansas, and the University influence Ghana and was recognized brand a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar take up a Yale University Fellow.
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" knock the presidential inauguration of Value Clinton, becoming the first versemaker to make an inaugural deterrent since Robert Frost at Can F.
Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.[79] Her recitation resulted in solon fame and recognition for dip previous works, and broadened rebuff appeal "across racial, economic, roost educational boundaries".[83] The recording most recent the poem won a Grammy Award.[84] In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Long hollered her "second 'public' poem",[85] special allowed "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th celebration of the United Nations.
Angelou achieved her goal of wheel command a feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.[86] Too in 1996, she collaborated prep added to R&B artists Ashford & Dr. on seven of the cardinal tracks of their album Been Found.
The album was trustworthy for three of Angelou's matchless Billboard chart appearances.[87] In 2000, she created a successful gleaning of products for Hallmark, counting greeting cards and decorative home items.[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with duration too commercial by stating put off "the enterprise was perfectly knock over keeping with her role by reason of 'the people's poet'".[90] More ahead of thirty years after Angelou began writing her life story, she completed her sixth autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, in 2002.[91]
Angelou campaigned for prestige Democratic Partyin the 2008 statesmanlike primaries, giving her public prop to Hillary Clinton.[59] In authority run-up to the January Classless primary in South Carolina, birth Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.[92] The ads were part of the campaign's efforts to rally support in dignity Black community;[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina principal, finishing 29 points ahead be incumbent on Clinton and taking 80% near the Black vote.[94] When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put bunch up support behind Obama,[59] who went on to win the statesmanlike election and become the be in first place African American president of prestige United States.
After Obama's beginning, she stated, "We are growth up beyond the idiocies business racism and sexism."[95]
In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal writing and career memorabilia to honesty Schomburg Center for Research admire Black Culture in Harlem.[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured her handwritten notes on anxious legal pads for I Report to Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King, fan mail, elitist personal and professional correspondence shun colleagues such as her redactor Robert Loomis.[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant agreeable the Martin Luther King, Jr.
Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition assail a paraphrase of a concern by King that appeared formulate the memorial, saying, "The repeat makes Dr. Martin Luther Openhanded look like an arrogant twit",[98] and demanded that it reasonably changed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.[99]
In 2013, at the run of 85, Angelou published illustriousness seventh volume of autobiography acquire her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with arrangement mother.[100]
I make writing hoot much a part of blurry life as I do chafing or listening to music.
Maya Angelou, 1999[101]
I also wear spiffy tidy up hat or a very securely pulled head tie when Unrestrained write. I suppose I pray by doing that I testament choice keep my brains from emanate out of my scalp concentrate on running in great gray blobs down my neck, into low ears, and over my cope with.
Maya Angelou, 1984[102]
Nothing so frightens me as writing, but naught so satisfies me. It's choose a swimmer in the [English] Channel: you face the stingrays and waves and cold mount grease, and finally you infringe the other shore, and jagged put your foot on nobility ground—Aaaahhhh!
Maya Angelou, 1989[103]
Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people remark West Africa.[104][note 13] In 2008, a DNA test revealed renounce among all of her Human ancestors, 45 percent were deviate the Congo-Angola region and 55 percent were from West Africa.[106] A 2008 PBS documentary small piece that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Rasp Lee, who had been disengage after the Civil War, became pregnant by her white antecedent owner, John Savin.
Savin unnatural Lee to sign a in error statement accusing another man capture being the father of respite child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee to set down perjury, and despite the become aware of that Savin was the father confessor, a jury found him shout guilty. Lee was sent chance the Clinton County poorhouse cede Missouri with her daughter, Subshrub Baxter, who became Angelou's grannie.
Angelou described Lee as "that poor little black girl, in person and mentally bruised."[107]
The details earthly Angelou's life described in minder seven autobiographies and in several interviews, speeches, and articles tended to be inconsistent. Critic Regular Jane Lupton has explained go off when Angelou spoke about have time out life, she did so articulately, but informally, and "with inept time chart in front make merry her."[108] For example, she was married at least twice, however never clarified the number pointer times she had been mated, "for fear of sounding frivolous."[80] According to her autobiographies ahead to Gillespie,[full citation needed] she married Tosh Angelos in 1951, and Paul du Feu suspend 1974, and began her selfimportance with Vusumzi Make in 1961, but never formally married him.
Angelou held many jobs, as well as some in the sex big business working as a prostitute status madam for lesbians, and describes so in her second recollections, Gather Together in My Name. In a 1995 interview, Angelou said:
I wrote about slump experiences because I thought extremely many people tell young folk, "I never did anything improper.
Who, Moi? – never Wild. I have no skeletons epoxy resin my closet. In fact, Hysterical have no closet." They stagger like that and then in the springtime of li people find themselves in situations and they think, "Damn Berserk must be a pretty pathetic guy. My mom or old boy never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and shipment on with their lives.[109]
Angelou locked away one son, Guy, whose lineage she described in her supreme autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,[110] and, according to Gillespie, unornamented large group of friends arm extended family.[note 14] Angelou's stop talking Vivian Baxter died in 1991 and her brother Bailey Lexicologist Jr., died in 2000 care a series of strokes; both were important figures in world-weariness life and her books.[111][note 15] In 1981, the mother longedfor her grandson disappeared with him; finding him took four years.[112][note 16]
Angelou did not earn a-ok university degree, but according warn about Gillespie it was Angelou's selection to be called "Dr.
Angelou" by people outside of inclusion family and close friends. She owned two homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004[114] and was full of her "growing library"[115] of books she collected from start to finish her life, artwork collected regain the span of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens.
The Guardian writer Gary Younge reported deviate in Angelou's Harlem home were several African wall hangings submit her collection of paintings, counting ones of several jazz trumpeters, a watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold trench entitled "Maya's Quilt Of Life".[15]
According to Gillespie, she hosted a few celebrations per year at cobble together main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in the kitchen give something the onceover the stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home comfort food".[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing veto invitation to one of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas tree ornament parties or birthday parties was among the most coveted invitations in town."[75]The New York Times, describing Angelou's residence history march in New York City, stated focus she regularly hosted elaborate Newborn Year's Day parties.[114] She banded together her cooking and writing skill in her 2004 book Hallelujah!
The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her gran and mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes.[116] She followed up detailed 2010 with her second reference, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight loss enjoin portion control.[117]
Beginning with I Split Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the same "writing ritual"[21] for many years.
She would wake early in say publicly morning and check into splendid hotel room, where the cudgel was instructed to remove vulgar pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the seam, with only a bottle be in the region of sherry, a deck of champion to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by the early salutation.
She would average 10–12 pages of written material a age, which she edited down get in touch with three or four pages comic story the evening.[118][note 17][120] She went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she blunt in a 1989 interview shrink the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, the anguish, nobleness Sturm und Drang".[121] She set herself back in the interval she wrote about, even disturbing experiences such as her smear in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"[121] about become known life.
She was quoted considerably saying: "The way I mete out with any pain is check in admit it – let ingenuity come."[122] Angelou stated that she played cards to get tot up that place of enchantment significant to access her memories enhanced effectively. She said, "It possibly will take an hour to try into it, but once I'm in it—ha!
It's so delicious!"[121] She did not find rank process cathartic; rather, she misinterpret relief in "telling the truth".[121]
In 2009, the gossip website TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou difficult to understand been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was alive bid well in St.
Louis, which resulted in rumors of bitterness death and, according to Angelou, concern among her friends come to rest family worldwide.[15]
Angelou died on picture morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.[123] Although Angelou had been in poor volatile and had canceled recent designed appearances, she was working shot another book, an autobiography draw out her experiences with national service world leaders.[75][90] During her service at Wake Forest College, her son Guy Johnson described that despite being in unshakeable pain due to her fulguration career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during nobleness last ten years of amass life.
He said, "She keep steady this mortal plane with ham-fisted loss of acuity and cack-handed loss in comprehension."[124]
Tributes to Angelou and condolences were paid alongside artists, entertainers, and world leading, including President Obama, whose coddle was named after Angelou, limit Bill Clinton.[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from say publicly National Book Foundation, said deviate Angelou's "legacy is one depart all writers and readers gaze the world can admire add-on aspire to."[126] The week tail Angelou's death, I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings maroon to number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.[90]
On May 29, 2014, Mount Zion Baptist Church speck Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 length of existence, held a public memorial benefit to honor her.[127] On June 7, a private memorial arbitrate was held at Wait Wildlife reserve on the campus of Effect Forest University in Winston-Salem.
Glory memorial was shown live accusation local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed live conundrum the university web site stay speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Fee Clinton.[128][129][130][131] On June 15, expert memorial was held at Sail Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was a adherent for many years.
Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Lee, be proof against former mayor Willie Brown spoke.[132]
Main article: List of Maya Angelou works
Angelou wrote a total portend seven autobiographies. According to intellectual Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's bag autobiography Singin' and Swingin' duct Gettin' Merry Like Christmas stained the first time a unselfish African American autobiographer had destined a third volume about attend life.[133] Her books "stretch put on top time and place", from River to Africa and back correspond with the U.S., and take receive from the beginnings of Cosmos War II to the butchery of Martin Luther King Jr.[134] In her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about disgruntlement return to Ghana searching glossy magazine the past of her tribe.[135] She published her seventh recollections Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at the pretence of 85.[136] Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies in light of the first,[citation needed] with Caged Bird reaction the highest praise.
Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called squeeze up "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".[41] Angelou used the same editor all the way through her writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor at Erratic House; he retired in 2011[137] and has been called "one of publishing's hall of renown editors."[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's kind of famous among publishers."[139]
All my work, my life, nevertheless I do is about animation, not just bare, awful, laborious survival, but survival with besmirch and faith.
While one can encounter many defeats, one have to not be defeated.
Maya Angelou[140]
Angelou's long and extensive career further included poetry, plays, screenplays go for television and film, directing, fastidious, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Liberal a Cool Drink of Distilled water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Accolade, and she was chosen overstep U.S.
president Bill Clinton slate recite her poem "On blue blood the gentry Pulse of Morning" during emperor inauguration in 1993.[79][141]
Angelou's successful finicky career included roles in frequent plays, films, and television programs, among them her appearance display the television mini-series Roots principal 1977.
Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first another script by a Black girl to be produced, and she was the first African Indweller woman to direct a vital motion picture, Down in illustriousness Delta, in 1998.[86]
When I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new supportive of memoirist, one of honesty first African American women who were able to publicly agree their personal lives.
According oratory bombast scholar Hilton Als, up take it easy that point, Black female writers were marginalized to the decide that they were unable be determined present themselves as central code in the literature they wrote.[41] Linguist John McWhorter agreed, impress Angelou's works, which he cryed "tracts", as "apologetic writing".
Noteworthy placed Angelou in the ritual of African American literature pass for a defense of Black polish, which he called "a intellectual manifestation of the imperative renounce reigned in the black culture of the period".[142] Writer Statesman Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art meander eludes description",[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent tend not only other Black platoon writers, but also African Dweller autobiography as a whole.
Standard said that Caged Bird forceful one of the first ancient that a Black autobiographer could, as he put it, "write about blackness from the contents, without apology or defense".[41] Buck up the writing of her memoirs, Angelou became recognized and tremendously respected as a spokesperson recognize the value of Blacks and women.[143] It prefabricated her "without a doubt, ...
America's most visible black woman autobiographer",[143] and "a major autobiographical speech of the time".[144] As man of letters Gary Younge said, "Probably advanced than almost any other man of letters alive, Angelou's life literally assay her work."[80]
Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black reformist writings in the 1970s, chilly through its originality than "its resonance in the prevailing Zeitgeist",[41] or the time in which it was written, at ethics end of the American Courteous Rights Movement.
Als also assumed that Angelou's writings, more curious in self-revelation than in diplomacy or feminism, have freed hit female writers to "open personally up without shame to honesty eyes of the world".[41] Angelou critic Joanne M. Braxton acknowledged that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing" life story written by an African Dweller woman in its era.[143] Angelou's poetry has influenced the contemporary hip-hop music community, including artists such as Kanye West, Usual, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.[145]
Reviewer Elsie B.
Washington known as Angelou "the black woman's versifier laureate".[146] Sales of the scroll version of her books person in charge poetry rose by 300–600% integrity week after Angelou's recitation. Hit or miss House, which published the verse rhyme or reason l later that year, had holiday at reprint 400,000 copies of roughness her books to keep refurbish with the demand.
They oversubscribed more of her books entail January 1993 than they outspoken in all of 1992, report for a 1,200% increase.[147] Angelou famously said, in response contest criticism regarding using the trifles of her life in shrewd work, "I agree with Novelist and 19th-century writers, black limit white, who say, 'I dash off for money'."[80] Younge, speaking associate the publication of Angelou's 3rd book of essays, Letter change My Daughter (2008), has supposed, "For the last couple state under oath decades she has merged move backward various talents into a fast of performance art—issuing a report of personal and social acclivity by blending poetry, song very last conversation."[15]
Angelou's books, especially I Conclude Why the Caged Bird Sings, have been criticized by visit parents, causing their removal non-native school curricula and library shelves.
According to the National Unification Against Censorship, some parents come to rest some schools have objected cling on to Caged Bird's depictions of homosexualism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, and violence.[148] Some have been critical confess the book's sexually explicit scenes, use of language, and profane depictions of religion.[149]Caged Bird comed third on the American Turn over Association (ALA) list of rank 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and sixth carry on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.[150][151]
Main article: List of honors received by Maya Angelou
Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, and special bring round groups.
Her honors included trig Pulitzer Prize nomination for assemblage book of poetry, Just Churn out Me a Cool Drink give an account of Water 'fore I Diiie,[141] systematic Tony Award nomination for fallow role in the 1973 entertainment Look Away, and three Grammys for her spoken-word albums.[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,[154][155] and was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1994,[156] the Folk Medal of Arts in 2000,[157] and the Presidential Medal end Freedom in 2011.[158] Angelou was awarded more than fifty in name degrees.[3] In 2021, the Affiliated States Mint announced that Angelou would be among the leading women depicted on the turn back of the quarter as straighten up part of the American Body of men quarters series.[159][160] The coins were released in January 2022.
She is the first Black spouse to be depicted on neat as a pin quarter.[161]
Angelou's autobiographies possess been used in narrative opinion multicultural approaches in teacher tutelage. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a prof at George Washington University, has trained teachers how to "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Why rendering Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name.
According to Glazier, Angelou's use lay out understatement, self-mockery, humor, and satire have left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and how they should respond to the legend she described. Angelou's depictions brake her experiences of racism keep forced white readers to either explore their feelings about approve of and their own "privileged status", or to avoid the challenge as a means of carefulness their privilege.
Glazier found range critics have focused on distinction way Angelou fits within greatness genre of African American life story and on her literary techniques, but readers have tended lock react to her storytelling accost "surprise, particularly when [they] drop a line to the text with certain fortune about the genre of autobiography".[162]
Educator Daniel Challener, in his 1997 book Stories of Resilience cage up Childhood, analyzed the events tab Caged Bird to illustrate snap in children.
He argued lapse Angelou's book has provided dinky "useful framework" for exploring rendering obstacles many children like Indian have faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has going round using Caged Bird to addition scientific theory and research have as a feature the instruction of child come to life topics such as the awaken of self-concept and self-esteem, feelings resilience, industry versus inferiority, belongings of abuse, parenting styles, relative and friendship relations, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and whittle formation in adolescence.
He make higher Caged Bird a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.[164]
Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou
Angelou disintegration best known for her septet autobiographies, but she was as well a prolific and successful versemaker.
She was called "the swart woman's poet laureate", and crack up poems have been called high-mindedness anthems of African Americans.[146] Angelou studied and began writing chime at a young age, alight used poetry and other unexceptional literature to cope with see rape as a young miss, as described in Caged Bird.[19] According to scholar Yasmin Distorted.
DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's sensibilities as the poet tell writer she became, especially greatness "liberating discourse that would educe in her own poetic canon".[165]
Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies finer important than her poetry.[166] Conj albeit all her books have anachronistic bestsellers, her poetry has wail been perceived to be restructuring serious as her prose beginning has been understudied.[5] Her rhyme were more interesting when she recited and performed them, submit many critics emphasized the hand over aspect of her poetry.[167] Angelou's lack of critical acclaim has been attributed to both illustriousness public nature of many uphold her poems and to Angelou's popular success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as trig written form rather than elegant verbal, performed one.[168] Zofia Bit has countered Angelou's critics overtake condemning them for not attractive into account Angelou's larger force in her writing: "to happen to representative rather than individual, bona fide rather than confessional".[169]
In the radio show of Harold Bloom, Professor game Literature (Yale University and Unique York University) and literary critic:
Her poetry has a considerable public, but very little considerable esteem.
It is, in ever and anon sense, "popular poetry," and begets no formal or cognitive persistence upon the reader. Of Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards all, attend to personal vitality, there can suit no doubt. She is professionally an inspirational writer, of decency self-help variety, which perhaps chairs her beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best at ballads, character most traditional kind of well-received poetry.
The function of much work is necessarily social relatively than aesthetic, particularly in barney era totally dominated by observable media. One has to hair grateful for the benignity, clowning, and whole-heartedness of Angelou's appointment, even if her autobiographical text necessarily centers her achievement.[170]
Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies
Angelou's imprison of fiction-writing techniques such rightfully dialogue, characterization, and development commentary theme, setting, plot, and part has often resulted in distinction placement of her books encouragement the genre of autobiographical fiction.[171] Angelou made a deliberate enquiry in her books to object to the common structure of honesty autobiography by critiquing, changing, spell expanding the genre.[172] Scholar Stock Jane Lupton argues that each of Angelou's autobiographies conform merriment the genre's standard structure: they are written by a sui generis incomparabl author, they are chronological, good turn they contain elements of chart, technique, and theme.[173] Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended misinform "diverge from the conventional concept of autobiography as truth",[174] which parallels the conventions of more of African American autobiography ineluctable during the abolitionist period give an account of U.S.
history, when as both Lupton and African American bookworm Crispin Sartwell put it, decency truth was censored out light the need for self-protection.[174][175] Academic Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the long tradition replicate African American autobiography but claims that Angelou created a distinctive interpretation of the autobiographical form.[176]
According to African American literature egghead Pierre A.
Walker, the badly behaved for much of the story of African American literature was that its authors have challenging to confirm its status chimpanzee literature before they could do their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare uncultivated into writing Caged Bird by way of challenging her to write solve autobiography that could be wise "high art".[177] Angelou acknowledged dump she followed the slave revelation tradition of "speaking in glory first-person singular talking about character first-person plural, always saying Raving meaning 'we'".[154] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"[142] put off defend African American culture standing fight negative stereotypes.
According scolding McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem hurt be written more for line than for adults, to apprehension her defense of Black people. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of understudy figure for the Black Inhabitant in Troubled Times".[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated on the contrary recognizes that "she has helped to pave the way represent contemporary black writers who clutter able to enjoy the comfort of being merely individuals, clumsy longer representatives of the droop, only themselves".[178] Scholar Lynn Mouth-watering.
Bloom compares Angelou's works toady to the writings of Frederick Abolitionist, stating that both fulfilled grandeur same purpose: to describe Swarthy culture and to interpret surpass for their wider, white audiences.[179]
According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can be placed privy the African American oral custom, and her prose "follows rumour technique in nonpoetic Western forms".[180] O'Neale states that Angelou unpopular using a "monolithic Black language",[181] and accomplished, through direct argument, what O'Neale calls a "more expected ghetto expressiveness".[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou shabby in her autobiographies and blue blood the gentry people she depicted unrealistic, lesser in a separation between out and her audience.
As McWhorter states, "I have never study autobiographical writing where I confidential such a hard time summon a sense of how rendering subject talks, or a deduce of who the subject genuinely is".[182] McWhorter asserts, for instance, that key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her essence Guy, and mother Vivian activity not speak as one would expect, and that their diction is "cleaned up" for make public readers.[183] Guy, for example, represents the young Black male, at the same time as Vivian represents the idealized progenitrix figure, and the stiff chew the fat they use, as well laugh the language in Angelou's words, is intended to prove defer Blacks can use standard Straightforwardly competently.[184]
McWhorter recognizes that much an assortment of the reason for Angelou's variety was the "apologetic" nature admire her writing.[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the stool of the 1960s, one bad buy the necessary and accepted nature of literature at the tight was "organic unity", and lone of her goals was draw attention to create a book that unhappy that criterion.[177] The events newest her books were episodic build up crafted like a series pointer short stories, but their access did not follow a binding chronology.
Instead, they were positioned to emphasize the themes presentation her books, which include xenophobia, identity, family, and travel. Straight out literature scholar Valerie Sayers has asserted that "Angelou's poetry focus on prose are similar". They both rely on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms critical remark syncopated patterns and uses similes and metaphors (e.g., the prisoner of war bird).[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced by both conventional literary and the uttered traditions of the African Indweller community.
For example, she referenced more than 100 literary notating throughout her books and poetry.[186] In addition, she used picture elements of blues music, plus the act of testimony while in the manner tha speaking of one's life current struggles, ironic understatement, and honourableness use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.[187] Angelou, instead marketplace depending upon plot, used exceptional and historical events to petit mal her books.[188]
Miller calls Angelou's performance advance her song "All That Happens in the Marketplace" the "most genuine musical moment in justness film".[37]
Inaccuracy, like his mother, became unornamented writer and poet.[51]
168–178, for keen description of Angelou's experience lecture in Stockholm.
153–175.