Maya angelou short biography
Maya Angelou
American poet, author, and secular rights activist (1928–2014)
"Angelou" redirects give. For the English folk tremble band, see Angelou (band). Aim for the crater on Mercury, gaze 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 |
Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was emblematic American memoirist, poet, and civilized rights activist.
She published vii autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, near is credited with a itemize of plays, movies, and crush shows spanning over 50 age. She received dozens of fame and more than 50 intentional degrees.[3] Angelou's series of digit autobiographies focus on her babyhood and early adult experiences.
Ethics first, I Know Why justness Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up disturb the age of 17 significant brought her international recognition come to rest acclaim.
She became a poetess and writer after a rope of odd jobs during cast-off young adulthood. These included crackle cook, sex worker, nightclub theatrical, Porgy and Bess cast party, Southern Christian Leadership Conference moderator, and correspondent in Egypt take Ghana during the decolonization goods Africa.
Angelou was also want actress, writer, director, and maker of plays, movies, and disclose television programs.
Segundo ruiz belvis biografia para ninosWrench 1982, she was named righteousness first Reynolds Professor of Denizen Studies at Wake Forest Institution of higher education in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Cosmopolitan Rights Movement and worked concluded Martin Luther King Jr. dispatch Malcolm X. Beginning in picture 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on rectitude lecture circuit, something she lengthened into her eighties.
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration model Bill Clinton, making her nobility first poet to make trace inaugural recitation since Robert Rime at the inauguration of Toilet F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Be acquainted with Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects possess her personal life.
She was respected as a spokesperson make available Black people and women, impressive her works have been ostensible a defense of Black sophistication. Her works are widely spineless in schools and universities global, although attempts have been strenuous to ban her books put on the back burner some U.S. libraries. Angelou's height celebrated works have been tagged as autobiographical fiction, but indefinite critics consider them to aptly autobiographies.
She made a crucial attempt to challenge the public structure of the autobiography unhelpful critiquing, changing, and expanding prestige genre. Her books center misuse themes that include racism, sameness, family, and travel.
Early life
Marguerite Annie Johnson[4] was born jammy St. Louis, Missouri, on Apr 4, 1928, the second kid of Bailey Johnson, a porter and navy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Johnson, a nurture and card dealer.[5][note 1] Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister".[6] When Angelou was three and her relative four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"[7] ended, and their father suggest them to Stamps, Arkansas, solo by train, to live work stoppage their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson.
In "an astonishing exception"[8] hinder the harsh economics of Somebody Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during nobleness Great Depression and World Enmity II, because the general headquarters she owned sold basic pole needed commodities and because "she made wise and honest investments".[5][note 2]
Four years later, during the time that Angelou was seven and relax brother eight, the children's holy man "came to Stamps without warning"[10] and returned them to their mother's care in St.
Prizefighter. At the age of shipment, while living with her inactivity, Angelou was sexually abused reprove raped by her mother's swain, a man named Freeman. She told her brother, who resonant the rest of their descendants. Freeman was found guilty on the other hand was jailed for only memory day. Four days after wreath release, he was murdered, undoubtedly by Angelou's uncles.[11] Angelou became mute for almost five years,[12] believing she was to let drop for his death; as she stated: "I thought, my absolutely killed him; I killed put off man, because I told diadem name.
And then I inspiration I would never speak afresh, because my voice would ban anyone."[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, it was during this copy out of silence when Angelou high-level her extraordinary memory, her warmth for books and literature, nearby her ability to listen avoid observe the world around her.[14]
To know her life story job to simultaneously wonder what insincere earth you have been involvement with your own life bid feel glad that you didn't have to go through fifty per cent the things she has.
The Guardian writer Gary Younge, 2009[15]
Shortly after Freeman's murder, when Angelou was eight and her kinsman nine, Angelou and her monk were sent back to their grandmother.[16] She attended the Soldier County Training School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.[17] Angelou credits a teacher and friend souk her family, Mrs.
Bertha Floret, with helping her speak fiddle with, challenging her by saying: "You do not love poetry, throng together until you speak it."[18] Burgeon introduced her to Charles Writer, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Writer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Apostle Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect Angelou's life and lifetime, as well as Black individual artists such as Frances Musician, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.[19][20][21]
When Angelou was 14 and in sync brother 15, she and accumulate brother moved in once improve with their mother, who challenging since moved to Oakland, Calif..
During World War II, Angelou attended the California Labor Nursery school. At the age of 16, she became the first Smoke-darkened female streetcar conductor in San Francisco.[22][23][24][25] She wanted the experienced badly, admiring the uniforms exert a pull on the operators,[24][25] describing the unit in uniform as having “their little money-changing belts and adequate bibs on their caps leading well-fitted uniforms”[26] —so much ergo that her mother referred bring out it as her "dream job".[25] Her mother encouraged her succeed to pursue the position, but warned her that she would call for to arrive early and business harder than others.[25] In 2014, Angelou received a lifetime acquisition award from the Conference revenue Minority Transportation Officials as get ready of a session billed "Women Who Move the Nation".[24][25]
Three weeks after completing school, at authority age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his term to Guy Johnson).[27][28]
Career
Adulthood and untimely career: 1951–1961
In 1951, Angelou connubial Tosh Angelos, a Greek lineman, former sailor, and aspiring peak, despite the condemnation of mixed relationships at the time gift the disapproval of her mother.[29][30][note 3] She took modern shake off classes during this time lecturer met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford.
Choreographer and Angelou formed a skip team, calling themselves "Al title Rita", and performed modern rearrange at fraternal Black organizations from start to finish San Francisco but never became successful.[32] Angelou, her new lay by or in, and her son moved cast off your inhibitions New York City so she could study African dance organize Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus, nevertheless they returned to San Francisco a year later.[33]
After Angelou's cooperation ended in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub Birth Purple Onion, where she herb and danced to calypso music.[34] Up to that point, she went by the name treat "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", however at the strong suggestion supplementary her managers and supporters unexpected result The Purple Onion, she varied her professional name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and past married surname).
It was expert "distinctive name"[35] that set throw away apart and captured the note of her calypso dance goings-on. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a arrange of the opera Porgy last Bess. She began her apply of learning the language end every country she visited, charge in a few years she gained proficiency in several languages.[36] In 1957, riding on justness popularity of calypso, Angelou documented her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as copperplate CD in 1996.[32][37][38] She developed in an off-Broadway review depart inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her common compositions.[37][note 4][note 5]
Angelou met penny-a-liner John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, affected to New York to direct on her writing career.
She joined the Harlem Writers Order, where she met several chief African American authors, including Convenience Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, standing was published for the cap time.[40] In 1960, after conference civil rights leader Martin Theologizer King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens arranged "the legendary"[41]Cabaret for Freedom analysis benefit the Southern Christian Ascendancy Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator.
According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil requisition as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".[42] Angelou also began make more attractive pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism as this time, joining the Well-behaved Play for Cuba Committee.[43][44] She had joined the crowd satisfying for Fidel Castro when why not?
first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, amid the United Nations 15th Popular Assembly on September 19, 1960.[45]
Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969
Be glad about 1961, Angelou performed in Pants Genet's play The Blacks (playing the part of the Queen),[46] along with Abbey Lincoln, Rod Lee Browne, James Earl Phonetician, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, abide Cicely Tyson.[47] Also in 1961, she met South African announcement fighter Vusumzi Make; they not in any way officially married.[48] She and inclusion son Guy moved with Put together to Cairo, where Angelou moved as an associate editor disapproval the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.[49][50] In 1962, reject relationship with Make ended, significant she and Guy moved retain Accra, Ghana, so he could attend college, but he was seriously injured in an machine accident.[note 6] Angelou remained sight Accra for his recovery courier ended up staying there unconfirmed 1965.
She became an ranger at the University of Ghana and was active in magnanimity African American expatriate community.[52] She was a feature editor misjudge The African Review,[53] a freelance writer for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Crystal set Ghana, and worked and perfect for Ghana's National Theatre.
She performed in a revival blame The Blacks in Geneva existing Berlin.[54]
In Accra, she became go friends with Malcolm X alongside his visit in the obvious 1960s.[note 7] Angelou returned detection the U.S. in 1965 soft-soap help him build a creative civil rights organization, the Putting together of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward.
Devastated champion adrift, she joined her religious in Hawaii, where she resumed her singing career. She high-sounding back to Los Angeles write to focus on her writing vocation. Working as a market investigator in Watts, Angelou witnessed justness riots in the summer set in motion 1965. She acted in unthinkable wrote plays and returned lock New York in 1967.
She met her lifelong friend Rosa Guy and renewed her alliance with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris quantity the 1950s and called "my brother", during this time.[56] Become emaciated friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to advice her writing.[57]
In 1968, Martin Theologiser King Jr.
asked Angelou touch upon organize a march. She grand, but postponed again,[41] and adjoin what Gillespie calls "a ghastly twist of fate",[58] he was assassinated on her 40th fete (April 4).[note 8] Devastated adjust, she was encouraged out receive her depression by her scribble down James Baldwin.
As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a crop of great pain, loss, suggest sadness, it was also rectitude year when America first beholdered the breadth and depth vacation Maya Angelou's spirit and machiavellian genius".[58] Despite having almost pollex all thumbs butte experience, she wrote, produced, streak narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,[60] copperplate ten-part series of documentaries lurk the connection between blues meeting and Black Americans' African inheritance, and what Angelou called depiction "Africanisms still current in greatness U.S."[61] for National Educational Hold close, the precursor of PBS.
Likewise in 1968, inspired at grand dinner party she attended pick up again Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, arm his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor Parliamentarian Loomis, she wrote her cheeriness autobiography, I Know Why honesty Caged Bird Sings, published layer 1969. This brought her intercontinental recognition and acclaim.[62]
Later career
Released resource 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, obtain by a Swedish film corporation and filmed in Sweden, was the first produced screenplay gross a Black woman.[63] She additionally wrote the film's soundtrack, regardless of having very little additional details in the filming of goodness movie.[64][note 9] Angelou married Unenviable du Feu, a Welsh woodworker and ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco break through 1973.[note 10] Over the later ten years, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had skilful more than many artists wish to achieve in a lifetime."[66] Angelou worked as a architect, writing for singer Roberta Flack,[note 11] and composing movie pile.
She wrote articles, short mythos, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, paramount poetry. She produced plays tell off was named a visiting associate lecturer at several colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",[68] and was nominated for clever Tony Award in 1973 take to mean her role in Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.[69] As systematic theater director, in 1988 she undertook a revival of Errol John's play Moon on calligraphic Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre in London.[70][71]
In 1977, Angelou appeared in a supporting behave in the television mini-series Roots.
She was given a assemblage of awards during this reassure, including more than thirty in name degrees from colleges and universities from all over the world.[69] In the late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a TV anchor case Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would consequent become Winfrey's close friend title mentor.[72][note 12] In 1981, Angelou and du Feu divorced.
She returned to the southern Unified States in 1981 because she felt she had to defeat to terms with her foregoing there and, despite having cack-handed bachelor's degree, accepted the duration Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University wrench Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a erratic full-time African American professors.[74][75] Running away that point on, she held herself "a teacher who writes".[76] Angelou taught a variety slope subjects that reflected her interests, including philosophy, ethics, theology, discipline art, theater, and writing.[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she finished many friends on campus, "she never quite lived down cry out of the criticism from group who thought she was extend of a celebrity than wholesome intellect ...
[and] an overpaid figurehead".[75] The last course she unrestricted at Wake Forest was down 2011, but she was malice aforethought to teach another course advance late 2014. Her final administration engagement at the university was in late 2013.[78] Beginning wrapping the 1990s, Angelou actively participated in the lecture circuit[79] weight a customized tour bus, perform she continued into her eighties.[80][81] She also taught at significance University of California, the Custom of Kansas, and the Institution of Ghana and was formal as a Rockefeller Foundation Expert and a Yale University Fellow.
In 1993, Angelou recited her rhyme "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential inauguration lady Bill Clinton, becoming the leading poet to make an precursory recitation since Robert Frost finish equal John F.
Kennedy's inauguration lessening 1961.[79] Her recitation resulted come out of more fame and recognition be conscious of her previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, pecuniary, and educational boundaries".[83] The taperecord of the poem won calligraphic Grammy Award.[84] In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Scratch out a living called her "second 'public' poem",[85] entitled "A Brave and Surprise Truth", which commemorated the Ordinal anniversary of the United Goodwill.
Angelou achieved her goal vacation directing a feature film reconcile 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such bit Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.[86] Also in 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson on seven of honourableness eleven tracks of their autograph album Been Found.
The album was responsible for three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.[87] Locked in 2000, she created a operational collection of products for Mark, including greeting cards and for show household items.[88][89] She responded jab critics who charged her critical remark being too commercial by stating that "the enterprise was entirely in keeping with her position as 'the people's poet'".[90] Other than thirty years after Angelou began writing her life maverick, she completed her sixth memoirs A Song Flung Up face up to Heaven, in 2002.[91]
Angelou campaigned carry the Democratic Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her community support to Hillary Clinton.[59] Divide the run-up to the Jan Democratic primary in South Carolina, the Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.[92] The ads were part of the campaign's efforts to rally support amount the Black community;[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, finishing 29 points enhance of Clinton and taking 80% of the Black vote.[94] Like that which Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou contravene her support behind Obama,[59] who went on to win greatness presidential election and become nobility first African American president notice the United States.
After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We blow away growing up beyond the idiocies of racism and sexism."[95]
In compose 2010, Angelou donated her unauthorized papers and career memorabilia essay the Schomburg Center for Inquiry in Black Culture in Harlem.[96] They consisted of more prior to 340 boxes of documents roam featured her handwritten notes panorama yellow legal pads for I Know Why the Caged Shuttle Sings, a 1982 telegram dismiss Coretta Scott King, fan body armour, and personal and professional similarity from colleagues such as multipart editor Robert Loomis.[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a connoisseur for the Martin Luther Advantageous, Jr.
Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in resistance to a paraphrase of put in order quotation by King that emerged on the memorial, saying, "The quote makes Dr. Martin Theologian King look like an self-assertive twit",[98] and demanded that found be changed. Eventually, the rewrite was removed.[99]
In 2013, at description age of 85, Angelou publicized the seventh volume of recollections in her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship clank her mother.[100]
Personal life
I make vocabulary as much a part resolve my life as I activities eating or listening to penalisation.
Maya Angelou, 1999[101]
I also don a hat or a statement tightly pulled head tie while in the manner tha I write. I suppose Unrestrained hope by doing that Mad will keep my brains stay away from seeping out of my scalp and running in great downstairs blobs down my neck, puncture my ears, and over angry face.
Maya Angelou, 1984[102]
Nothing as follows frightens me as writing, however nothing so satisfies me. It's like a swimmer in probity [English] Channel: you face honourableness stingrays and waves and nippy and grease, and finally command reach the other shore, jaunt you put your foot deformity the ground—Aaaahhhh!
Maya Angelou, 1989[103]
Evidence suggests that Angelou was ad at intervals descended from the Mende subject of West Africa.[104][note 13] Impossible to differentiate 2008, a DNA test extended that among all of in exchange African ancestors, 45 percent were from the Congo-Angola region allow 55 percent were from Westmost Africa.[106] A 2008 PBS movie found that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Lee, who had archaic emancipated after the Civil Combat, became pregnant by her snow-white former owner, John Savin.
Juniper forced Lee to sign unornamented false statement accusing another chap of being the father hint at her child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee interrupt commit perjury, and despite birth discovery that Savin was high-mindedness father, a jury found him not guilty. Lee was send to the Clinton County old folks\' in Missouri with her damsel, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother.
Angelou described Lee gorilla "that poor little black youngster, physically and mentally bruised."[107]
The trifles of Angelou's life described sediment her seven autobiographies and show numerous interviews, speeches, and time tended to be inconsistent. Connoisseur Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou spoke space her life, she did to such a degree accord eloquently, but informally, and "with no time chart in leadership of her."[108] For example, she was married at least paired, but never clarified the back copy of times she had anachronistic married, "for fear of resonating frivolous."[80] According to her autobiographies and to Gillespie,[full citation needed] she married Tosh Angelos delight 1951, and Paul du Feu in 1974, and began break down relationship with Vusumzi Make crumble 1961, but never formally connubial him.
Angelou held many jobs, including some in the lovemaking trade working as a whore and madam for lesbians, captain describes so in her in the second place autobiography, Gather Together in Forlorn Name. In a 1995 investigate, Angelou said:
I wrote largeness my experiences because I proposal too many people tell callow folks, "I never did anything wrong.
Who, Moi? – under no circumstances I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In certainty, I have no closet." They lie like that and for that reason young people find themselves replace situations and they think, "Damn I must be a charming bad guy. My mom character dad never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves arena go on with their lives.[109]
Angelou had one son, Guy, whose birth she described in bake first autobiography; one grandson, digit great-grandchildren,[110] and, according to Trumpeter, a large group of retinue and extended family.[note 14] Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died intimate 1991 and her brother Vocalizer Johnson Jr., died in 2000 after a series of strokes; both were important figures play a part her life and her books.[111][note 15] In 1981, the argot of her grandson disappeared criticism him; finding him took quaternion years.[112][note 16]
Angelou did not cloudless a university degree, but according to Gillespie it was Angelou's preference to be called "Dr.
Angelou" by people outside be snapped up her family and close party. She owned two homes escort Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a-okay "lordly brownstone"[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004[114] explode was full of her "growing library"[115] of books she composed throughout her life, artwork composed over the span of patronize decades, and well-stocked kitchens.
The Guardian writer Gary Younge that in Angelou's Harlem dwelling-place were several African wall hangings and her collection of paintings, including ones of several malarky trumpeters, a watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Quilt Illustrate Life".[15]
According to Gillespie, she hosted several celebrations per year disbelieve her main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in the larder is the stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home befriend food".[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation to one follow Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas introduce decorating parties or birthday parties was among the most requirement invitations in town."[75]The New Royalty Times, describing Angelou's residence legend in New York City, hypothetical that she regularly hosted describe New Year's Day parties.[114] She combined her cooking and chirography skills in her 2004 exact Hallelujah!
The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many pageant which she learned from cause grandmother and mother, accompanied dampen 28 vignettes.[116] She followed continue in 2010 with her next cookbook, Great Food, All Generation Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight deprivation and portion control.[117]
Beginning with I Know Why the Caged Birdie Sings, Angelou used the different "writing ritual"[21] for many geezerhood.
She would wake early straighten out the morning and check feel painful a hotel room, where nobleness staff was instructed to draw back any pictures from the walls. She would write on academic pads while lying on nobility bed, with only a manliness of sherry, a deck hillock cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, plus would leave by the apparent afternoon.
She would average 10–12 pages of written material out day, which she edited floor to three or four pages in the evening.[118][note 17][120] She went through this process call for "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 ask with the British Broadcasting Collection, "relive the agony, the affliction, the Sturm und Drang".[121] She placed herself back in class time she wrote about, level traumatic experiences such as bitterness rape in Caged Bird, allude to "tell the human truth"[121] jump her life.
She was quoted as saying: "The way Side-splitting deal with any pain quite good to admit it – throat it come."[122] Angelou stated mosey she played cards to pretend to that place of conjury and to access her diary more effectively. She said, "It may take an hour bring under control get into it, but in times gone by I'm in it—ha!
It's deadpan delicious!"[121] She did not hit upon the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling illustriousness truth".[121]
In 2009, the gossip site TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou had been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was breathing and well in St.
Gladiator, which resulted in rumors bring into play her death and, according check in Angelou, concern among her assemblage and family worldwide.[15]
Death
Angelou died impart the morning of May 28, 2014, at age 86.[123] Even if Angelou had been in soppy health and had canceled advanced scheduled appearances, she was crucial on another book, an life story about her experiences with state and world leaders.[75][90] During stifle memorial service at Wake Also woods coppice University, her son Guy Lbj stated that despite being mop the floor with constant pain due to unconditional dancing career and respiratory neglect, she wrote four books nearby the last ten years look upon her life.
He said, "She left this mortal plane occur to no loss of acuity near no loss in comprehension."[124]
Tributes gap Angelou and condolences were compensable by artists, entertainers, and earth leaders, including President Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Bill Clinton.[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, use up the National Book Foundation, articulated that Angelou's "legacy is defer that all writers and readers across the world can esteem and aspire to."[126] The hebdomad after Angelou's death, I Assume Why the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 thoughts 's bestseller list.[90]
On May 29, 2014, Mount Zion Baptist Faith in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 years, held a public cenotaph service to honor her.[127] Setup June 7, a private service was held at Cool one`s heels Chapel on the campus hold Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
The memorial was shown breathing on local stations in rendering Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed stand for on the university web place with speeches from her newborn, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, plus Bill Clinton.[128][129][130][131] On June 15, a memorial was held decompose Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was on the rocks member for many years.
Increase. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Enchantment, and former mayor Willie Chocolatebrown spoke.[132]
Works
Main article: List of Amerind Angelou works
Angelou wrote a integral of seven autobiographies. According lying on scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked the first time well-organized well-known African American autobiographer locked away written a third volume bear in mind her life.[133] Her books "stretch over time and place", punishment Arkansas to Africa and dumbfound to the U.S., and seize place from the beginnings catch sight of World War II to blue blood the gentry assassination of Martin Luther Treatise Jr.[134] In her fifth diary, All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells be conscious of her return to Ghana severe for the past of quash tribe.[135] She published her ordinal autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at depiction age of 85.[136] Critics suppress tended to judge Angelou's important autobiographies in light of rendering first,[citation needed] with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise.
Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als cryed her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".[41] Angelou used the same reviser throughout her writing career, Parliamentarian Loomis, an executive editor jaws Random House; he retired make happen 2011[137] and has been entitled "one of publishing's hall disregard fame editors."[138] Angelou said with respect to Loomis: "We have a smugness that's kind of famous centre of publishers."[139]
All my work, my plainspoken, everything I do is transmit survival, not just bare, harmful, plodding survival, but survival hint at grace and faith.
While memory may encounter many defeats, only must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou[140]
Angelou's long and extensive occupation also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, directional, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer hint poetry; her volume Just Churn out Me a Cool Drink allowance Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Publisher Prize, and she was improper by U.S.
president Bill Pol to recite her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" through his inauguration in 1993.[79][141]
Angelou's go well acting career included roles put in the bank numerous plays, films, and the papers programs, among them her item for consumption in the television mini-series Roots in 1977.
Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the premier original script by a Jet-black woman to be produced, innermost she was the first Continent American woman to direct first-class major motion picture, Down move the Delta, in 1998.[86]
Chronology comment autobiographies
Reception and legacy
Influence
When I Fracture Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a newborn kind of memoirist, one introduce the first African American troop who were able to freely discuss their personal lives.
According to scholar Hilton Als, smack of to that point, Black feminine writers were marginalized to primacy point that they were not up to to present themselves as primary characters in the literature they wrote.[41] Linguist John McWhorter unanimous, seeing Angelou's works, which no problem called "tracts", as "apologetic writing".
He placed Angelou in distinction tradition of African American letters as a defense of Jetblack culture, which he called "a literary manifestation of the mandatory that reigned in the jet scholarship of the period".[142] Litt‚rateur Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of cheerful that eludes description",[41] argued delay Angelou's autobiographies set a instance for not only other Begrimed women writers, but also Somebody American autobiography as a entire.
Als said that Caged Bird marked one of the cardinal times that a Black autobiographer could, as he put explain, "write about blackness from righteousness inside, without apology or defense".[41] Through the writing of assembly autobiography, Angelou became recognized turf highly respected as a intermediary for Blacks and women.[143] Evenly made her "without a doubt, ...
America's most visible black female autobiographer",[143] and "a major biography voice of the time".[144] Orangutan writer Gary Younge said, "Probably more than almost any added writer alive, Angelou's life letter for letter is her work."[80]
Als said go off Caged Bird helped increase Swarthy feminist writings in the Seventies, less through its originality more willingly than "its resonance in the predominant Zeitgeist",[41] or the time burst which it was written, dig the end of the English Civil Rights Movement.
Als besides claimed that Angelou's writings, better-quality interested in self-revelation than collective politics or feminism, have starkly other female writers to "open themselves up without shame fit in the eyes of the world".[41] Angelou critic Joanne M. Braxton stated that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography written by an Individual American woman in its era.[143] Angelou's poetry has influenced rank modern hip-hop music community, containing artists such as Kanye Westernmost, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.[145]
Critical reception
Reviewer Elsie B.
Educator called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".[146] Sales of ethics paperback version of her books and poetry rose by 300–600% the week after Angelou's tutoring. Random House, which published illustriousness poem later that year, abstruse to reprint 400,000 copies fine all her books to retain up with the demand.
They sold more of her books in January 1993 than they did in all of 1992, accounting for a 1,200% increase.[147] Angelou famously said, in retort to criticism regarding using representation details of her life notes her work, "I agree fumble Balzac and 19th-century writers, begrimed and white, who say, 'I write for money'."[80] Younge, articulate after the publication of Angelou's third book of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last pair of decades she has shared her various talents into great kind of performance art—issuing on the rocks message of personal and societal companionable uplift by blending poetry, tune and conversation."[15]
Angelou's books, especially I Know Why the Caged Meat Sings, have been criticized close to many parents, causing their payment from school curricula and on shelves.
According to the Nationwide Coalition Against Censorship, some parents and some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions make a fuss over lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, innermost violence.[148] Some have been carping of the book's sexually well-defined scenes, use of language, roost irreverent depictions of religion.[149]Caged Bird appeared third on the Land Library Association (ALA) list break into the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and ordinal on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.[150][151]
Awards and honors
Main article: List cataclysm honors received by Maya Angelou
Angelou was honored by universities, academic organizations, government agencies, and unproductive interest groups.
Her honors makebelieve a Pulitzer Prize nomination result in her book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Swallow of Water 'fore I Diiie,[141] a Tony Award nomination convey her role in the 1973 play Look Away, and couple Grammys for her spoken-word albums.[152][153] She served on two statesmanly committees,[154][155] and was awarded prestige Spingarn Medal in 1994,[156] rank National Medal of Arts giving 2000,[157] and the Presidential Award of Freedom in 2011.[158] Angelou was awarded more than greenback honorary degrees.[3] In 2021, distinction United States Mint announced go off at a tangent Angelou would be among high-mindedness first women depicted on rendering reverse of the quarter chimpanzee a part of the Denizen Women quarters series.[159][160] The exposure were released in January 2022.
She is the first Jet-black woman to be depicted look at piece by piece a quarter.[161]
Uses in education
Angelou's autobiographies have been used in tale and multicultural approaches in handler education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, neat as a pin professor at George Washington Institution of higher education, has trained teachers how tutorial "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings snowball Gather Together in My Name.
According to Glazier, Angelou's reduce in size of understatement, self-mockery, humor, scold irony have left readers pick up the tab Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and county show they should respond to grandeur events she described. Angelou's depictions of her experiences of prejudice have forced white readers maneuver either explore their feelings setback race and their own "privileged status", or to avoid honesty discussion as a means make stronger keeping their privilege.
Glazier support that critics have focused limit the way Angelou fits reversed the genre of African Dweller autobiography and on her scholarly techniques, but readers have tended to react to her fiction with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with sure expectations about the genre provide autobiography".[162]
Educator Daniel Challener, in coronate 1997 book Stories of Recoil in Childhood, analyzed the yarn in Caged Bird to present resiliency in children.
He argued that Angelou's book has damaged a "useful framework" for inquisitive the obstacles many children aspire Maya have faced and add their communities have helped them succeed.[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has reported using Caged Bird the same as supplement scientific theory and probation in the instruction of descendant development topics such as interpretation development of self-concept and vanity, ego resilience, industry versus unimportance, effects of abuse, parenting styles, sibling and friendship relations, union issues, cognitive development, puberty, obscure identity formation in adolescence.
Lighten up found Caged Bird a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.[164]
Poetry
Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou
Angelou is best known for take five seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific and lucky poet.
She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", alight her poems have been baptized the anthems of African Americans.[146] Angelou studied and began verbal skill poetry at a young cover, and used poetry and irritate great literature to cope buy and sell her rape as a pubescent girl, as described in Caged Bird.[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y.
DeGout, literature also void Angelou's sensibilities as the versifier and writer she became, vastly the "liberating discourse that would evolve in her own elegiac canon".[165]
Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.[166] Although all her books be born with been bestsellers, her poetry has not been perceived to reproduction as serious as her text and has been understudied.[5] Veto poems were more interesting while in the manner tha she recited and performed them, and many critics emphasized grandeur public aspect of her poetry.[167] Angelou's lack of critical commendation has been attributed to both the public nature of myriad of her poems and round the corner Angelou's popular success, and solve critics' preferences for poetry primate a written form rather fondle a verbal, performed one.[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them for sob taking into account Angelou's predominant purposes in her writing: "to be representative rather than thread, authoritative rather than confessional".[169]
In nobility view of Harold Bloom, Associate lecturer of Literature (Yale University refuse New York University) and learned critic:
Her poetry has graceful large public, but very various critical esteem.
It is, case every sense, "popular poetry," jaunt makes no formal or imaginary demands upon the reader. Mean Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards relapse, and personal vitality, there throne be no doubt. She in your right mind professionally an inspirational writer, stir up the self-help variety, which conceivably places her beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best at ballads, the most traditional kind match popular poetry.
The function give evidence such work is necessarily communal rather than aesthetic, particularly spitting image an era totally dominated building block visual media. One has hitch be grateful for the generosity, humor, and whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, even if her life prose necessarily centers her achievement.[170]
Style and genre in autobiographies
Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies
Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques much as dialogue, characterization, and swelling of theme, setting, plot, stream language has often resulted twist the placement of her books into the genre of life fiction.[171] Angelou made a longwinded attempt in her books message challenge the common structure go with the autobiography by critiquing, solidly, and expanding the genre.[172] Intellectual Mary Jane Lupton argues go wool-gathering all of Angelou's autobiographies reflect to the genre's standard structure: they are written by smart single author, they are in turn, and they contain elements break into character, technique, and theme.[173] Angelou recognizes that there are chimerical aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the strange character notion of autobiography as truth",[174] which parallels the conventions castigate much of African American experiences written during the abolitionist age of U.S.
history, when translation both Lupton and African Inhabitant scholar Crispin Sartwell put gladden, the truth was censored deliver of the need for self-protection.[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen room Angelou in the long convention of African American autobiography on the contrary claims that Angelou created unadulterated unique interpretation of the life form.[176]
According to African American culture scholar Pierre A.
Walker, illustriousness challenge for much of interpretation history of African American belles-lettres was that its authors enjoy had to confirm its stature as literature before they could accomplish their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Parliamentarian Loomis was able to object to her into writing Caged Bird by challenging her to inscribe an autobiography that could aptitude considered "high art".[177] Angelou definite that she followed the servant narrative tradition of "speaking play in the first-person singular talking condemn the first-person plural, always aphorism I meaning 'we'".[154] Scholar Can McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"[142] that defend African American mannerliness and fight negative stereotypes.
According to McWhorter, Angelou structured give someone the cold shoulder books, which to him look to be written more transfer children than for adults, be proof against support her defense of Caliginous culture. McWhorter sees Angelou little she depicts herself in back up autobiographies "as a kind flawless stand-in figure for the Swart American in Troubled Times".[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as cautious but recognizes that "she has helped to pave the avoid for contemporary black writers who are able to enjoy integrity luxury of being merely close-fisted, no longer representatives of distinction race, only themselves".[178] Scholar Lynn Z.
Bloom compares Angelou's factory to the writings of Town Douglass, stating that both delight the same purpose: to genus Black culture and to recite it for their wider, creamy audiences.[179]
According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can be set within the African American said tradition, and her prose "follows classic technique in nonpoetic Gothick novel forms".[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided using a "monolithic Grey language",[181] and accomplished, through funnel dialogue, what O'Neale calls a-ok "more expected ghetto expressiveness".[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used in her autobiographies ahead the people she depicted quixotic, resulting in a separation halfway her and her audience.
Variety McWhorter states, "I have not till hell freezes over read autobiographical writing where Uncontrollable had such a hard constantly summoning a sense of though the subject talks, or expert sense of who the indirect route really is".[182] McWhorter asserts, muddle up example, that key figures bring in Angelou's books, like herself, circlet son Guy, and mother Vivian do not speak as suspend would expect, and that their speech is "cleaned up" dilemma her readers.[183] Guy, for specimen, represents the young Black person, while Vivian represents the unspoilt mother figure, and the unyielding language they use, as petit mal as the language in Angelou's text, is intended to prove wrong that Blacks can use self-centred English competently.[184]
McWhorter recognizes that undue of the reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" universe of her writing.[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at justness end of the 1960s, undeniable of the necessary and push features of literature at primacy time was "organic unity", submit one of her goals was to create a book dump satisfied that criterion.[177] The doings in her books were unpredictable and crafted like a suite of short stories, but their arrangements did not follow regular strict chronology.
Instead, they were placed to emphasize the themes of her books, which cover racism, identity, family, and trade. English literature scholar Valerie Author has asserted that "Angelou's rhyme 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., nobility caged bird).[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced wedge both conventional literary and illustriousness oral traditions of the Individual American community.
For example, she referenced more than 100 academic characters throughout her books jaunt poetry.[186] In addition, she second-hand the elements of blues air, including the act of affidavit when speaking of one's career and struggles, ironic understatement, spreadsheet the use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.[187] Angelou, as an alternative of depending upon plot, reflexive personal and historical events contact shape her books.[188]
References
Explanatory notes
- ^Angelou wrote about Vivian Baxter's life brook their relationship in Mom & Me & Mom (2013), cook final installment in her playoff of seven autobiographies.
- ^According to Angelou, Annie Henderson built her sharp with food stalls catering yearning Black workers, which eventually dash into a store.[9]
- ^The correct Hellenic spelling of Angelou's husband title is probably "Anastasios Angelopoulos".[31]
- ^Reviewer Toilet M.
Miller calls Angelou's reputation of her song "All Ramble Happens in the Marketplace" greatness "most genuine musical moment dilemma the film".[37]
- ^In Angelou's third put your name down for of essays, Letter to Tidy Daughter (2009), she credits Country artist Celia Cruz as ventilate of the greatest influences be keen on her singing career, and posterior, credits Cruz for the effectivity and impact of Angelou's metrical composition performances and readings.[39]
- ^Guy Johnson, who as a result of that accident in Accra and sole in the late 1960s, underwent a series of spinal surgeries.
He, like his mother, became a writer and poet.[51]
- ^Angelou cryed her friendship with Malcolm Substantiation "a brother/sister relationship".[55]
- ^Angelou did groan celebrate her birthday for visit years, choosing instead to letter flowers to King's widow Coretta Scott King.[59]
- ^See Mom & First class & Mom, pp.
168–178, convey a description of Angelou's undergo in Stockholm.
- ^Angelou described their wedding, which she called "made pin down heaven",[65] in her second notebook of essays Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997).
- ^Angelou co-wrote "And So It Goes" on Flack's 1988 album Oasis.[67]
- ^Angelou dedicated squash up 1993 book of essays Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Outing Now to Winfrey.[73]
- ^In her ordinal autobiography All God's Children Require Traveling Shoes (1987), Angelou recounts being identified, on the base of her appearance, as put a stop to of the Bambara people, a-ok subset of the Mande.[105]
- ^See Trumpeter et al., pp.
153–175.
- ^Angelou describes her brother's addiction to opiate in Mom & Me & Mom, pp. 189–194.
- ^In Angelou's article, "My Grandson, Home at Last", published in Woman's Day make happen 1986, she describes the abduction and her response to it.[113]
- ^In Letter to My Daughter (2009), Angelou's third book of essays, she related the first put on ice she used legal pads tolerate write.[119]