![]() Angelou became mute for almost five years, believing, as she has stated, "I thought, my voice killed him I killed that man, because I told his name. Four days after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles. Freeman was found guilty, but was jailed for only one day. She confessed it to her brother, who told the rest of their family. ![]() At the age of eight, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. In "an astonishing exception" to the harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression and World War II because the general store she owned sold needed basic commodities and because "she made wise and honest investments”.įour years later, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning" and returned them to their mother's care in St. Their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas alone by train to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. When Angelou was three, and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage" ended. The first 17 years of Angelou's life are documented in her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", shortened from "my-a-sister". ![]() Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a navy dietitian, and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer. Angelou is best known for her autobiographies, but she is also an established poet, although her poems have received mixed reviews. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family, and travel. She has made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Angelou's major works have been labelled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics have characterized them as autobiographies. Although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries, her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide. She is highly respected as a spokesperson of Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou was heralded as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African American women who was able to publicly discuss her personal life. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Since 1991, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of seventeen, and brought her international recognition and acclaim.Īngelou's long list of occupations has included pimp, prostitute, night-club dancer and performer, cast-member of the musical Porgy and Bess, coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, author, journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization, and actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. She received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson Ap– May 28, 2014) was an American author and poet.
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