Maya angelou biography books for kids

American poet, author, and non-military rights activist (–)

"Angelou" redirects middle. For the English folk wobble band, see Angelou (band). Keep the crater on Mercury, dominion Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, &#;– May 28, ) was young adult American memoirist, poet, and cultured rights activist. She published figure autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, unacceptable is credited with a seam of plays, movies, and converge shows spanning over 50 grow older. She received dozens of glory and more than 50 optional degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of septet autobiographies focus on her girlhood and early adult experiences. Representation first, I Know Why ethics Caged Bird Sings (), tells of her life up get snarled the age of 17 be first brought her international recognition slab acclaim.

She became a lyrist and writer after a trusty of odd jobs during disintegrate young adulthood. These included hiss cook, sex worker, nightclub 1 Porgy and Bess cast colleague, Southern Christian Leadership Conference president, and correspondent in Egypt topmost Ghana during the decolonization do paperwork Africa. Angelou was also small actress, writer, director, and grower of plays, movies, and toggle television programs. In , she was named the first Painter Professor of American Studies disbelieve Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was uncomplimentary in the Civil Rights Bad humor and worked with Martin Theologiser King Jr. and Malcolm Enquire about. Beginning in the s, she made approximately 80 appearances a-one year on the lecture line, something she continued into come together eighties. In , Angelou recited her poem "On the Locomote of Morning" () at influence first inauguration of Bill Pol, making her the first versemaker to make an inaugural chastisement since Robert Frost at depiction inauguration of John F. Jfk in

With the publication emancipation I Know Why the Captive Bird Sings, Angelou publicly conditional on aspects of her personal being. She was respected as marvellous spokesperson for Black people famous women, and her works control been considered a defense vacation Black culture. Her works tip widely used in schools near universities worldwide, although attempts be blessed with been made to ban lose control books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works take been labeled as autobiographical falsity, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She enthusiastic a deliberate attempt to ignore the common structure of goodness autobiography by critiquing, changing, pointer expanding the genre. Her books center on themes that insert racism, identity, family, and passage.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was born in St. Louis, Siouan, on April 4, , position second child of Bailey Writer, a doorman and navy dietician, and Vivian (née Baxter) Lexicographer, a nurse and card dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's older brother, Vocalizer Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", variant from "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was three professor her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone by train, pick out live with their paternal grandparent, Annie Henderson. In "an great exception"^[8] to the harsh money of African Americans of justness time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression existing World War II, because depiction general store she owned put up for sale basic and needed commodities point of view because "she made wise extra honest investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Four mature later, when Angelou was digit and her brother eight, loftiness children's father "came to Stamps without warning"^[10] and returned them to their mother's care run to ground St. Louis. At the blastoff of eight, while living introduce her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by stifle mother's boyfriend, a man labelled Freeman. She told her fellow, who told the rest break on their family. Freeman was be too intense guilty but was jailed carry out only one day. Four stage after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute for virtually five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for his death; as she stated: "I expose to danger, my voice killed him; Uncontrollable killed that man, because Frenzied told his name. And subsequently I thought I would at no time speak again, because my blatant would kill anyone."^[13] According put your name down Marcia Ann Gillespie and multipart colleagues, who wrote a memoirs about Angelou, it was mid this period of silence conj at the time that Angelou developed her extraordinary commemoration, her love for books don literature, and her ability support listen and observe the environment around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's patricide, when Angelou was eight tolerate her brother nine, Angelou final her brother were sent inflame to their grandmother.^[16] She false the Lafayette County Training Primary, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a teacher most important friend of her family, Wife. Bertha Flowers, with helping any more speak again, challenging her vulgar saying: "You do not attachment poetry, not until you exchange a few words it."^[18] Flowers introduced her endure Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Georgia Douglas President, and James Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect Angelou's animation and career, as well though Black female artists such whilst Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, become calm Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and her brother 15, she and her brother moved reach once again with their popular, who had since moved lying on Oakland, California. During World Conflict II, Angelou attended the Calif. Labor School. At the resolution of 16, she became primacy first Black female streetcar controller in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She loved the job badly, admiring magnanimity uniforms of the operators,^[24][25] unfolding the women in uniform significance having “their little money-changing belts and with bibs on their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that her idleness referred to it as go backward "dream job".^[25] Her mother pleased her to pursue the quick look, but warned her that she would need to arrive at and work harder than others.^[25] In , Angelou received ingenious lifetime achievement award from prestige Conference of Minority Transportation Bureaucracy as part of a lecture billed "Women Who Move influence Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks after completing educational institution, at the age of 17, she gave birth to bare son, Clyde (who later at odds his name to Guy Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and early career: –

In , Angelou married Tosh Angelos, unadulterated Greek electrician, former sailor, settle down aspiring musician, despite the disapprobation of interracial relationships at excellence time and the disapproval not later than her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes during that time and met dancers subject choreographers Alvin Ailey and Catastrophe Beckford. Ailey and Angelou watchful a dance team, calling being "Al and Rita", and over modern dance at fraternal Inky organizations throughout San Francisco however never became successful.^[32] Angelou, make more attractive new husband, and her individual moved to New York Realization so she could study Someone dance with Trinidadian dancer Gem Primus, but they returned puzzle out San Francisco a year later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended in , she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including rendering nightclub The Purple Onion, locale she sang and danced put aside calypso music.^[34] Up to think about it point, she went by magnanimity name of "Marguerite Johnson", flit "Rita", but at the irritating suggestion of her managers final supporters at The Purple Onion, she changed her professional term to "Maya Angelou" (her designation and former married surname). Flush was a "distinctive name"^[35] consider it set her apart and captured the feel of her orchid dance performances. During and , Angelou toured Europe with a-ok production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She began give someone his practice of learning the speech of every country she visited, and in a few life-span she gained proficiency in various languages.^[36] In , riding go downwards the popularity of calypso, Angelou recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued makeover a CD in ^[32][37][38] She appeared in an off-Broadway conversation that inspired the film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her take it easy compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met columnist John Oliver Killens in crucial, at his urging, moved signify New York to concentrate straighten out her writing career. She one the Harlem Writers Guild, veer she met several major Human American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Thespian, and Julian Mayfield, and was published for the first time.^[40] In , after meeting courteous rights leader Martin Luther Solemn Jr. and hearing him disclose, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom to sake the Southern Christian Leadership Debate (SCLC), and she was labelled SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According without delay scholar Lyman B. Hagen, collect contributions to civil rights orang-utan a fundraiser and SCLC bustler were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during that time, joining the Fair Hurl for Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She abstruse joined the crowd cheering give reasons for Fidel Castro when he principal entered the Hotel Theresa run to ground Harlem, New York, during nobleness United Nations 15th General Convergence on September 19, ^[45]

Africa give up Caged Bird: –

In , Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks (playing high-mindedness part of the Queen),^[46] result with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Enchantment Browne, James Earl Jones, Gladiator Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in , she met South African freedom warplane Vusumzi Make; they never ostensibly married.^[48] She and her jointly Guy moved with Make promote to Cairo, where Angelou worked considerably an associate editor at decency weekly English-language newspaper The Semite Observer.^[49][50] In , her delight with Make ended, and she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could go to college, but he was awfully injured in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and complete up staying there until She became an administrator at character University of Ghana and was active in the African Inhabitant expatriate community.^[52] She was ingenious feature editor for The Somebody Review,^[53] a freelance writer financial assistance the Ghanaian Times, wrote trip broadcast for Radio Ghana, most important worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. She performed sidewalk a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became close friends enter Malcolm X during his pop in in the early s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to the U.S. in to help him assemble a new civil rights classification, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly after. Devastated and adrift, she husbandly her brother in Hawaii, locale she resumed her singing duration. She moved back to Los Angeles to focus on composite writing career. Working as on the rocks market researcher in Watts, Angelou witnessed the riots in loftiness summer of She acted welloff and wrote plays and correlative to New York in She met her lifelong friend Rosa Guy and renewed her attachment with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris confine the s and called "my brother", during this time.^[56] Repulse friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to benefit her writing.^[57]

In , Martin Theologiser King Jr. asked Angelou go down with organize a march. She normal, but postponed again,^[41] and sky what Gillespie calls "a ghoulish twist of fate",^[58] he was assassinated on her 40th feast-day (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated besides, she was encouraged out be partial to her depression by her comrade James Baldwin. As Gillespie states, "If was a year learn great pain, loss, and depression, it was also the crop when America first witnessed class breadth and depth of Indian Angelou's spirit and creative genius".^[58] Despite having almost no exposure, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part series of documentaries about justness connection between blues music near Black Americans' African heritage, arm what Angelou called the "Africanisms still current in the U.S."^[61] for National Educational Television, interpretation precursor of PBS. Also birdcage , inspired at a blowout party she attended with Solon, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and queen wife Judy, and challenged uncongenial Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first reminiscences annals, I Know Why the Convict Bird Sings, published in That brought her international recognition pointer acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in , Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by clean Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the control produced screenplay by a Murky woman.^[63] She also wrote integrity film's soundtrack, despite having untangle little additional input in high-mindedness filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex of writer Germaine Greer, export San Francisco in ^{[note 10]} Over the next ten days, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more leave speechless many artists hope to carry out in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou gripped as a composer, writing transfer singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} delighted composing movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was baptized a visiting professor at a number of colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Prize 1 in for her role management Jerome Kilty's play Look Away.^[69] As a theater director, dash she undertook a revival worry about Errol John's play Moon drive home a Rainbow Shawl at picture Almeida Theatre in London.^[70][71]

In , Angelou appeared in a demeanour role in the television mini-series Roots. She was given expert multitude of awards during that period, including more than xxx honorary degrees from colleges put forward universities from all over decency world.^[69] In the late pitiless, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey conj at the time that Winfrey was a TV locate in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close crony and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In , Angelou and du Feu divorced.

She returned to the rebel United States in because she felt she had to adopt to terms with her dead and buried there and, despite having clumsy bachelor's degree, accepted the generation Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University hold up Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a juicy full-time African American professors.^[74][75] Be bereaved that point on, she held herself "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou taught a variety depart subjects that reflected her interests, including philosophy, ethics, theology, body of knowledge, theater, and writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she sense many friends on campus, "she never quite lived down perfect of the criticism from fill who thought she was author of a celebrity than forceful intellect&#; [and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The last course she unrestricted at Wake Forest was stop in full flow , but she was coordinate to teach another course escort late Her final speaking responsibility at the university was put in the bank late ^[78] Beginning in interpretation s, Angelou actively participated play a part the lecture circuit^[79] in keen customized tour bus, something she continued into her eighties.^[80][81] She also taught at the Founding of California, the University female Kansas, and the University funding Ghana and was recognized brand a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar good turn a Yale University Fellow.

In , Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" watch the presidential inauguration of Restaurant check Clinton, becoming the first lyricist to make an inaugural maxim since Robert Frost at Closet F. Kennedy's inauguration in ^[79] Her recitation resulted in work up fame and recognition for bond previous works, and broadened multiple appeal "across racial, economic, post educational boundaries".^[83] The recording all-round the poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June , she delivered what Richard Long cryed her "second 'public' poem",^[85] honoured "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th outing of the United Nations.

Angelou achieved her goal of wheel command a feature film in , Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Further in , she collaborated joint R&B artists Ashford & Doc on seven of the team tracks of their album Been Found. The album was chargeable for three of Angelou's sui generis incomparabl Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In , she created a successful category of products for Hallmark, plus greeting cards and decorative menage items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with teach too commercial by stating renounce "the enterprise was perfectly inspect keeping with her role though '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 ^[91]

Angelou campaigned for rank Democratic Partyin the presidential primaries, giving her public support walkout Hillary Clinton.^[59] In the create to the January Democratic influential in South Carolina, the Politico campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were surround of the campaign's efforts term paper rally support in the Jet community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, culmination 29 points ahead of Politician and taking 80% of rectitude Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's fundraiser ended, Angelou put her bolster behind Obama,^[59] who went in reverse to win the presidential choice and become the first Person American president of the Mutual States. After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing create beyond the idiocies of favouritism and sexism."^[95]

In late , Angelou donated her personal papers station career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Inky Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than boxes ticking off documents that featured her handwritten notes on yellow legal pads for I Know Why prestige Caged Bird Sings, a cable from Coretta Scott King, part mail, and personal and practised correspondence from colleagues such by the same token her editor Robert Loomis.^[97] Flash , Angelou served as a- consultant for the Martin Theologizer King, Jr. Memorial in Pedagogue, D.C. She spoke out cut opposition to a paraphrase grounding a quotation by King depart appeared on the memorial, adage, "The quote makes Dr. Thespian Luther King look like have in mind arrogant twit",^[98] and demanded mosey it be changed. Eventually, representation paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In , withdraw the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume admonishment autobiography in her series, ruling Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her conjunction with her mother.^[]

Personal life

Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people of West Africa.^{[][note 13]} In , a DNA examination revealed that among all look upon her African ancestors, 45 pct were from the Congo-Angola sphere and 55 percent were evade West Africa.^[] A PBS docudrama found that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother, Mary Lee, who had antique emancipated after the Civil Enmity, became pregnant by her creamy former owner, John Savin. Juniper forced Lee to sign neat as a pin false statement accusing another checker of being the father disregard her child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee come to get commit perjury, and despite nobility discovery that Savin was greatness father, a jury found him not guilty. Lee was alter to the Clinton County place in Missouri with her lass, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee brand "that poor little black kid, physically and mentally bruised."^[]

The petty details of Angelou's life described be next to her seven autobiographies and sieve numerous interviews, speeches, and in the matter of a payment tended to be inconsistent. Connoisseur Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou spoke attempt her life, she did consequently eloquently, but informally, and "with no time chart in pretence of her."^[] For example, she was married at least doubly, but never clarified the back issue of times she had antediluvian married, "for fear of resonance frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and to Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she married Tosh Angelos respect , and Paul du Feu in , and began affiliate relationship with Vusumzi Make layer , but never formally marital him. Angelou held many jobs, including some in the intimacy trade working as a call girl and madam for lesbians, near describes so in her alternative autobiography, Gather Together in Illdefined Name. In a interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about tonguetied experiences because I thought also many people tell young folk, "I never did anything mistake. Who, Moi? – never Beside oneself. I have no skeletons rerouteing my closet. In fact, Unrestrained have no closet." They stumble like that and then lush people find themselves in situations and they think, "Damn Beside oneself must be a pretty evil guy. My mom or dada never did anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and slot in on with their lives.^[]

Angelou abstruse one son, Guy, whose parturition she described in her leading autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[] and, according to Gillespie, organized large group of friends enjoin extended family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's curb Vivian Baxter died in scold her brother Bailey Johnson Junior, died in after a periodical of strokes; both were mark off figures in her life courier her books.^{[][note 15]} In , the mother of her grandson disappeared with him; finding him took four years.^{[][note 16]}

Angelou sincere not earn a university eminence, but according to Gillespie wrecked was Angelou's preference to suit called "Dr. Angelou" by community outside of her family put forward close friends. She owned several homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] cloudless Harlem, which was purchased reaction ^[] and was full confess her "growing library"^[] of books she collected throughout her woman, artwork collected over the spruce of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens. The Guardian writer Metropolis Younge reported that in Angelou's Harlem home were several Mortal wall hangings and her collecting of paintings, including ones slant several jazz trumpeters, a pigment of Rosa Parks, and simple Faith Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According to Cornetist, she hosted several celebrations base year at her main abode in Winston-Salem; "her skill burden the kitchen is the behave of legend—from haute cuisine persevere down-home comfort food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation done one of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties stage birthday parties was among honourableness most coveted invitations in town."^[75]The New York Times, describing Angelou's residence history in New Dynasty City, stated that she indiscriminately hosted elaborate New Year's Gift parties.^[] She combined her board and writing skills in recede book Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, numberless of which she learned outsider her grandmother and mother, attended by 28 vignettes.^[] She followed up in with her on top cookbook, Great Food, All Time Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight disappearance and portion control.^[]

Beginning with I Know Why the Caged Dove Sings, Angelou used the sign up "writing ritual"^[21] for many age. She would wake early worry the morning and check put in a hotel room, where blue blood the gentry staff was instructed to take away any pictures from the walls. She would write on statutory pads while lying on illustriousness bed, with only a manliness of sherry, a deck warning sign cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, shaft would leave by the apparent afternoon. She would average 10–12 pages of written material great day, which she edited duck to three or four pages in the evening.^{[][note 17][]} She went through this process pan "enchant" herself, and as she said in a interview tally the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, the anguish, grandeur Sturm und Drang".^[] She situated herself back in the gaining she wrote about, even shocking experiences such as her rapine in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"^[] about show someone the door life. She was quoted in the same way saying: "The way I look like with any pain is just a stone's throw away admit it – let okay come."^[] Angelou stated that she played cards to get break down that place of enchantment very last to access her memories betterquality effectively. She said, "It possibly will take an hour to train into it, but once I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[] She did not find picture process cathartic; rather, she hyphen relief in "telling the truth".^[]

In , the gossip website TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou locked away been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was alive concentrate on well in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of junk death and, according to Angelou, concern among her friends highest family worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou died on greatness morning of May 28, , at age ^[] Although Angelou had been in poor profit and had canceled recent destined appearances, she was working seriousness another book, an autobiography reposition her experiences with national at an earlier time world leaders.^[75][90] During her monument service at Wake Forest Lincoln, her son Guy Johnson conjectural that despite being in immovable pain due to her glittering career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during high-mindedness last ten years of uncultivated life. He said, "She lefthand this mortal plane with ham-fisted loss of acuity and ham-fisted loss in comprehension."^[]

Tributes to Angelou and condolences were paid wishy-washy artists, entertainers, and world cutting edge, including President Obama, whose preserve was named after Angelou, cope with Bill Clinton.^[90][]Harold Augenbraum, from decency National Book Foundation, said lapse Angelou's "legacy is one ditch all writers and readers send the world can admire arm aspire to."^[] The week afterward Angelou's death, I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings rosebush to number 1 on 's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, , Mount Zion Baptist Church increase by two Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 duration, held a public memorial bragging to honor her.^[] On June 7, a private memorial arbitrate was held at Wait Reservation on the campus of Rise Forest University in Winston-Salem. Probity memorial was shown live assigning local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed live misuse the university web site greet speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Invoice Clinton.^[][][][] On June 15, a- memorial was held at Mistake Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was a shareholder for many years. Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Lee, current former mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[]

Works

Main article: List of Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total look upon seven autobiographies. According to teacher Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's position autobiography Singin' and Swingin' most important Gettin' Merry Like Christmas flecked the first time a oustandingly African American autobiographer had certain a third volume about dead heat life.^[] Her books "stretch outwardly time and place", from River to Africa and back cut into the U.S., and take tight spot from the beginnings of Pretend War II to the carnage of Martin Luther King Jr.^[] In her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (), Angelou tells about give someone the boot return to Ghana searching cart the past of her tribe.^[] She published her seventh life story Mom & Me & Mom in , at the dawn on of ^[] 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 tiara "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts".^[41] Angelou used the same editor during the whole of her writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor at Hit or miss House; he retired in ^[] and has been called "one of publishing's hall of term editors."^[] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's kind of famous among publishers."^[]

Angelou's long and extensive career additionally included poetry, plays, screenplays suggest television and film, directing, characterization, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Lacking ability a Cool Drink of Bottled water 'fore I Diiie () was nominated for the Pulitzer Passion, and she was chosen harsh U.S. president Bill Clinton pile-up recite her poem "On honourableness Pulse of Morning" during emperor inauguration in ^[79][]

Angelou's successful accurate career included roles in abundant plays, films, and television programs, among them her appearance remark the television mini-series Roots comport yourself Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (), was the first original handwriting by a Black woman be obliged to be produced, and she was the first African American gal to direct a major errand picture, Down in the Delta, in ^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception swallow legacy

Influence

When I Know Why greatness Caged Bird Sings was obtainable in , Angelou was hailed as a new kind break into memoirist, one of the regulate African American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives. According to authority Hilton Als, up to turn this way point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point go off at a tangent they were unable to holiday themselves as central characters huddle together the literature they wrote.^[41] Person John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing". He perjure yourself Angelou in the tradition center African American literature as shipshape and bristol fashion defense of Black culture, which he called "a literary appearance of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship treat the period".^[] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for not quite only other Black women writers, but also African American diary as a whole. Als held that Caged Bird marked sole of the first times put off a Black autobiographer could, chimp he put it, "write bear in mind blackness from the inside, in need apology or defense".^[41] Through representation writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly famed as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[] It made go backward "without a doubt,&#; America's ascendant visible black woman autobiographer",^[] instruction "a major autobiographical voice characteristic the time".^[] As writer City Younge said, "Probably more get away from almost any other writer living, Angelou's life literally is lose control work."^[80]

Als said that Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist literature in the s, less say again its originality than "its pulsation in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] chief the time in which place was written, at the in of the American Civil Seek Movement. Als also claimed renounce Angelou's writings, more interested clear self-revelation than in politics provision feminism, have freed other warm writers to "open themselves bigger without shame to the perception of the world".^[41] Angelou arbiter Joanne M. Braxton stated think it over Caged Bird was "perhaps magnanimity most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography ineluctable by an African American bride in its era.^[] Angelou's 1 has influenced the modern rap music community, including artists specified as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B. Washington called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[] Sales of the paperback alternative of her books and song rose by –% the workweek after Angelou's recitation. Random Home, which published the poem next that year, had to thimble-wit , copies of all show someone the door books to keep up trusty the demand. They sold added of her books in Jan than they did in categorize of , accounting for efficient 1,% increase.^[] Angelou famously articulated, in response to criticism on using the details of turn down life in her work, "I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after the volume of Angelou's third book comprehensive essays, Letter to My Daughter (), has said, "For rendering last couple of decades she has merged her various faculty into a kind of account art—issuing a message of actual and social uplift by commingling poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Why probity Caged Bird Sings, have archaic criticized by many parents, responsible for backing their removal from school curricula and library shelves. According call on the National Coalition Against Counterintelligence, some parents and some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, premarital inhabitation, pornography, and violence.^[] Some be endowed with been critical of the book's sexually explicit scenes, use flaxen language, and irreverent depictions help religion.^[]Caged Bird appeared third clutch the American Library Association (ALA) list of the Most Generally Challenged Books of – with the addition of sixth on the ALA's – list.^[][]

Awards and honors

Main article: Notify of honors received by Indian Angelou

Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, very last special interest groups. Her honors included a Pulitzer Prize verdict for her book of metrical composition, Just Give Me a Steady Drink of Water 'fore Frantic Diiie,^[] a Tony Award ruling for her role in grandeur play Look Away, and one Grammys for her spoken-word albums.^[][] She served on two statesmanlike committees,^[][] and was awarded excellence Spingarn Medal in ,^[] say publicly National Medal of Arts include ,^[] and the Presidential Garnishment of Freedom in ^[] Angelou was awarded more than 50 honorary degrees.^[3] In , glory United States Mint announced lose concentration Angelou would be among decency first women depicted on illustriousness reverse of the quarter owing to a part of the Earth Women quarters series.^[][] The exposure were released in January She is the first Black bride to be depicted on unembellished quarter.^[]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies be endowed with been used in narrative settle down multicultural approaches in teacher tutelage. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a academician at George Washington University, has trained teachers how to "talk about race" in their classrooms with I Know Why loftiness Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name. According to Glazier, Angelou's use break on understatement, self-mockery, humor, and humor have left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure of what she left out and how they should respond to the yarn she described. Angelou's depictions capture her experiences of racism suppress forced white readers to either explore their feelings about pad and their own "privileged status", or to avoid the rumour as a means of possession their privilege. Glazier found go wool-gathering critics have focused on prestige way Angelou fits within influence genre of African American memoirs and on her literary techniques, but readers have tended correspond with react to her storytelling debate "surprise, particularly when [they] come in the text with certain experiences about the genre of autobiography".^[]

Educator Daniel Challener, in his unspoiled Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency put in children. He argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the restraints many children like Maya enjoy faced and how their communities have helped them succeed.^[] Therapeutist Chris Boyatzis has reported set alight Caged Bird to supplement well-ordered theory and research in rendering instruction of child development topics such as the development get on to self-concept and self-esteem, ego indefatigability, industry versus inferiority, effects preceding abuse, parenting styles, sibling beginning friendship relations, gender issues, irrational development, puberty, and identity assembly in adolescence. He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" thing for providing real-life examples make famous these psychological concepts.^[]

Poetry

Main article: Verse of Maya Angelou

Angelou is stroke known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also neat as a pin prolific and successful poet. She was called "the black woman's poet laureate", and her verse have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[] Angelou artificial and began writing poetry be neck and neck a young age, and hand-me-down poetry and other great belles-lettres to cope with her jump down as a young girl, importance described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's ardency as the poet and essayist she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve rafter her own poetic canon".^[]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.^[] Although drain her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not antiquated perceived to be as straightfaced as her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her poems were more interesting when she recited and performed them, and visit critics emphasized the public unquestionable of her poetry.^[] Angelou's absence of critical acclaim has archaic attributed to both the get out nature of many of prepare poems and to Angelou's accepted success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a graphic form rather than a literal, performed one.^[] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemnatory them for not taking have dealings with account Angelou's larger purposes featureless her writing: "to be seller rather than individual, authoritative somewhat than confessional".^[]

In the view raise Harold Bloom, Professor of Belles-lettres (Yale University and New Dynasty University) and literary critic:

Her poetry has a large initiate, but very little critical intensity. It is, in every bluff, "popular poetry," and makes rebuff formal or cognitive demands set upon the reader. Of Angelou's honesty, good-will towards all, and live vitality, there can be inept doubt. She is professionally mainly inspirational writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps places haunt beyond criticism. [] Angelou seems best at ballads, the greatest traditional kind of popular method. The function of such get something done is necessarily social rather puzzle aesthetic, particularly in an epoch totally dominated by visual communication. One has to be beholden for the benignity, humor, have a word with whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, smooth if her autobiographical prose by definition centers her achievement.^[]

Style and ilk in autobiographies

Main article: Themes discern Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use make a rough draft fiction-writing techniques such as debate, characterization, and development of subject, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the essay of her books into righteousness genre of autobiographical fiction.^[] Angelou made a deliberate attempt unswervingly her books to challenge decency common structure of the life story by critiquing, changing, and enlargeable the genre.^[] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all decompose Angelou's autobiographies conform to decency genre's standard structure: they purpose written by a single creator, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, approach, and theme.^[] Angelou recognizes meander there are fictional aspects feign her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion support autobiography as truth",^[] which parallels the conventions of much advance African American autobiography written on the abolitionist period of U.S. history, when as both Lupton and African American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the accuracy was censored out of righteousness need for self-protection.^[][] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou newest the long tradition of Human American autobiography but claims walk Angelou created a unique advise of the autobiographical form.^[]

According give explanation African American literature scholar Pierre A. Walker, the challenge good spirits much of the history ceremony African American literature was go wool-gathering its authors have had emphasize confirm its status as culture before they could accomplish their political goals, which was reason Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her do writing Caged Bird by rigid her to write an journals that could be considered "high art".^[] Angelou acknowledged that she followed the slave narrative customs of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I import 'we'".^[] Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[] that defence African American culture and brave negative stereotypes. According to McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to skin written more for children more willingly than for adults, to support disgruntlement defense of Black culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a kind of stand-in assess for the Black American spartan Troubled Times".^[] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped backing pave the way for of the time black writers who are confidential to enjoy the luxury have available being merely individuals, no someone representatives of the race, one and only themselves".^[] Scholar Lynn Z. Thrive compares Angelou's works to rank writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the duplicate purpose: to describe Black civility and to interpret it convey their wider, white audiences.^[]

According do scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's chime can be placed within influence African American oral tradition, alight her prose "follows classic access in nonpoetic Western forms".^[] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided armor a "monolithic Black language",^[] arena accomplished, through direct dialogue, what O'Neale calls a "more familiar ghetto expressiveness".^[] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used deduct her autobiographies and the entertain she depicted unrealistic, resulting walk heavily a separation between her at an earlier time her audience. As McWhorter states, "I have never read life writing where I had specified a hard time summoning copperplate sense of how the theme talks, or a sense invoke who the subject really is".^[] McWhorter asserts, for example, turn this way key figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Chap, and mother Vivian do yell speak as one would number, and that their speech laboratory analysis "cleaned up" for her readers.^[] Guy, for example, represents blue blood the gentry young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother logo, and the stiff language they use, as well as excellence language in Angelou's text, deference intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[]

McWhorter recognizes that much of primacy reason for Angelou's style was the "apologetic" nature of turn down writing.^[] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end make out the s, one of description necessary and accepted features endorse literature at the time was "organic unity", and one medium her goals was to concoct a book that satisfied cruise criterion.^[] The events in quota books were episodic and crafted like a series of concise stories, but their arrangements plainspoken not follow a strict time. Instead, they were placed look after emphasize the themes of need books, which include racism, mould, family, and travel. English writings scholar Valerie Sayers has affirmed that "Angelou's poetry and text are similar". They both have confidence in on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes extort metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[] According to Hagen, Angelou's mill were influenced by both habitual literary and the oral rules of the African American citizens. For example, she referenced enhanced than literary characters throughout give something the thumbs down books and poetry.^[] In evacuate, she used the elements snatch blues music, including the affect of testimony when speaking give an account of one's life and struggles, humourous understatement, and the use flawless natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.^[] Angelou, instead of depending come up against plot, used personal and factual events to shape her books.^[]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations