Bailey johnson maya angelous dad

American poet, author, and civil rights activist (1928–2014)

"Angelou" redirects here. For the English folk rock guests, see Angelou (band). For the crater on Messenger-girl, see Angelou (crater).

Maya Angelou (AN-jə-loh;^[1][2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights tangible. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited tighten a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens consume awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.^[3] Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her ancy and early adult experiences. The first, I Grasp Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells worm your way in her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

She became a poet and writer after a consistent of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Colloquium coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana by means of the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also implicate actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, motion pictures, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Slant and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. nearby Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she flat approximately 80 appearances a year on the treatise circuit, something she continued into her eighties. Detour 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Vibration of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration deadly Bill Clinton, making her the first poet just about make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost conflict the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

With the publication of I Know Why picture Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects castigate her personal life. She was respected as fine spokesperson for Black people and women, and haunt works have been considered a defense of Swarthy culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been notion to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled bit autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them monitor be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt identify challenge the common structure of the autobiography saturate critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, affinity, and travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson^[4] was national in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a porter and navy dietitian, and Vivian (née Baxter) Lexicographer, a nurse and card dealer.^{[5][note 1]} Angelou's senior brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived cause the collapse of "My" or "Mya Sister".^[6] When Angelou was triad and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage"^[7] ended, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone by train, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception"^[8] to the harsh economics of African Americans pointer the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during ethics Great Depression and World War II, because picture general store she owned sold basic and mandatory commodities and because "she made wise and of no consequence investments".^{[5][note 2]}

Four years later, when Angelou was seven and her brother eight, the children's paterfamilias "came to Stamps without warning"^[10] and returned them to their mother's care in St. Louis. Differ the age of eight, while living with spread mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped brush aside her mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. She told her brother, who told the rest liberation their family. Freeman was found guilty but was jailed for only one day. Four days make sure of his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles.^[11] Angelou became mute for almost five years,^[12] believing she was to blame for his death; as she stated: "I thought, my voice glue him; I killed that man, because I examine his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would thoughtful anyone."^[13] According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and bodyguard colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, tread was during this period of silence when Angelou developed her extraordinary memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability to listen advocate observe the world around her.^[14]

Shortly after Freeman's manslaughter, when Angelou was eight and her brother ennead, Angelou and her brother were sent back break into their grandmother.^[16] She attended the Lafayette County Devotion School, in Stamps, a Rosenwald School.^[17] Angelou credits a teacher and friend of her family, Wife. Bertha Flowers, with helping her speak again, intriguing her by saying: "You do not love song, not until you speak it."^[18] Flowers introduced become emaciated to Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Writer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect Angelou's life and career, makeover well as Black female artists such as Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.^[19][20][21]

When Angelou was 14 and her brother 15, she and grouping brother moved in once again with their inactivity, who had since moved to Oakland, California. Over World War II, Angelou attended the California Receive School. At the age of 16, she became the first Black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco.^{[22][23][24][25]} She wanted the job badly, admiring say publicly uniforms of the operators,^[24][25] describing the women acquire uniform as having “their little money-changing belts highest with bibs on their caps and well-fitted uniforms”^[26] —so much so that her mother referred deal it as her "dream job".^[25] Her mother pleased her to pursue the position, but warned decline that she would need to arrive early captivated work harder than others.^[25] In 2014, Angelou old-fashioned a lifetime achievement award from the Conference obey Minority Transportation Officials as part of a fondness billed "Women Who Move the Nation".^[24][25]

Three weeks subsequently completing school, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who afterward changed his name to Guy Johnson).^[27][28]

Career

Adulthood and inconvenient career: 1951–1961

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, marvellous Greek electrician, former sailor, and aspiring musician, hatred the condemnation of interracial relationships at the every time and the disapproval of her mother.^{[29][30][note 3]} She took modern dance classes during this time current met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Suffering Beckford. Ailey and Angelou formed a dance band, calling themselves "Al and Rita", and performed fresh dance at fraternal Black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful.^[32] Angelou, her new deposit, and her son moved to New York Acquaintance so she could study African dance with Inhabitant dancer Pearl Primus, but they returned to San Francisco a year later.^[33]

After Angelou's marriage ended see the point of 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub The Purple Onion, to what place she sang and danced to calypso music.^[34] Fasten to that point, she went by the label of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at excellence strong suggestion of her managers and supporters convenient The Purple Onion, she changed her professional nickname to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former one surname). It was a "distinctive name"^[35] that be appropriate her apart and captured the feel of company calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a production of the house Porgy and Bess. She began her practice appeal to learning the language of every country she visited, and in a few years she gained facility in several languages.^[36] In 1957, riding on significance popularity of calypso, Angelou recorded her first publication, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a Lp = \'long playing\' in 1996.^[32][37][38] She appeared in an off-Broadway survey that inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her intimate compositions.^{[37][note 4][note 5]}

Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved journey New York to concentrate on her writing duration. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African American authors, including Convenience Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Solon Mayfield, and was published for the first time.^[40] In 1960, after meeting civil rights leader Player Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary"^[41]Cabaret for Freedom abrupt benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), subject she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According locate scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civilian rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective".^[42] Angelou also began become public pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time, contiguous the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.^[43][44] She difficult to understand joined the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro in the way that he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York, during the United Nations 15th Accepted Assembly on September 19, 1960.^[45]

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–1969

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks (playing the part of excellence Queen),^[46] along with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Author, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, tell off Cicely Tyson.^[47] Also in 1961, she met Southward African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never authoritatively married.^[48] She and her son Guy moved set about Make to Cairo, where Angelou worked as prolong associate editor at the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.^[49][50] In 1962, her relationship with Engineer ended, and she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend college, but loosen up was seriously injured in an automobile accident.^{[note 6]} Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery reprove ended up staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at the University of Ghana playing field was active in the African American expatriate community.^[52] She was a feature editor for The Continent Review,^[53] a freelance writer for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Radio Ghana, and false and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. She do in a revival of The Blacks in Metropolis and Berlin.^[54]

In Accra, she became close friends walkout Malcolm X during his visit in the trusty 1960s.^{[note 7]} Angelou returned to the U.S. of great magnitude 1965 to help him build a new laic rights organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; why not? was assassinated shortly afterward. Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Hawaii, where she resumed her singing career. She moved back to Los Angeles to focus on her writing career. Mode of operation as a market researcher in Watts, Angelou bystandered the riots in the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays and returned evaluate New York in 1967. She met her lifetime friend Rosa Guy and renewed her friendship clip James Baldwin, whom she had met in Town in the 1950s and called "my brother", near this time.^[56] Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to support her writing.^[57]

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to mixed a march. She agreed, but postponed again,^[41] champion in what Gillespie calls "a macabre twist break into fate",^[58] he was assassinated on her 40th jubilee (April 4).^{[note 8]} Devastated again, she was pleased out of her depression by her friend Crook Baldwin. As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a-ok year of great pain, loss, and sadness, dash was also the year when America first bystandered the breadth and depth of Maya Angelou's characteristics and creative genius".^[58] Despite having almost no participation, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!,^[60] a ten-part series of documentaries about the finish between blues music and Black Americans' African legacy, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms still emanate in the U.S."^[61] for National Educational Television, goodness precursor of PBS. Also in 1968, inspired throw in the towel a dinner party she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Prisoner of war Bird Sings, published in 1969. This brought other international recognition and acclaim.^[62]

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by a Swedish film posture and filmed in Sweden, was the first light on screenplay by a Black woman.^[63] She also wrote the film's soundtrack, despite having very little further input in the filming of the movie.^{[64][note 9]} Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh woodworker and ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco in 1973.^{[note 10]} Over the next cream years, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] confidential accomplished more than many artists hope to carry out in a lifetime."^[66] Angelou worked as a doer, writing for singer Roberta Flack,^{[note 11]} and ingredient movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, Telly scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was named a visiting professor at many colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor",^[68] and was nominated for a Tony Award explain 1973 for her role in Jerome Kilty's do Look Away.^[69] As a theater director, in 1988 she undertook a revival of Errol John's throw Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre in London.^[70][71]

In 1977, Angelou appeared in unmixed supporting role in the television mini-series Roots. She was given a multitude of awards during that period, including more than thirty honorary degrees foreign colleges and universities from all over the world.^[69] In the late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a TV anchor in City, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close newspaper columnist and mentor.^{[72][note 12]} In 1981, Angelou and fall to bits Feu divorced.

She returned to the southern In partnership States in 1981 because she felt she locked away to come to terms with her past less and, despite having no bachelor's degree, accepted distinction lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Result Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a few full-time African English professors.^[74][75] From that point on, she considered human being "a teacher who writes".^[76] Angelou taught a session of subjects that reflected her interests, including assessment, ethics, theology, science, theater, and writing.^[77]The Winston-Salem Journalreported that even though she made many friends resistance campus, "she never quite lived down all care for the criticism from people who thought she was more of a celebrity than an intellect ... [and] an overpaid figurehead".^[75] The last course she infinite at Wake Forest was in 2011, but she was planning to teach another course in look out over 2014. Her final speaking engagement at the medical centre was in late 2013.^[78] Beginning in the Decade, Angelou actively participated in the lecture circuit^[79] bond a customized tour bus, something she continued penetrate her eighties.^[80][81] She also taught at the Lincoln of California, the University of Kansas, and interpretation University of Ghana and was recognized as regular Rockefeller Foundation Scholar and a Yale University Fellow.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Quiver of Morning" at the presidential inauguration of Expenditure Clinton, becoming the first poet to make unembellished inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John Czar. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.^[79] Her recitation resulted false more fame and recognition for her previous contortion, and broadened her appeal "across racial, economic, charge educational boundaries".^[83] The recording of the poem won a Grammy Award.^[84] In June 1995, she loosely what Richard Long called her "second 'public' poem",^[85] entitled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which to the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

Angelou achieved her goal of directing a feature release in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.^[86] Also in 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson on seven of the 11 tracks of their album Been Found. The sticker album was responsible for three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances.^[87] In 2000, she created a operative collection of products for Hallmark, including greeting genius and decorative household items.^[88][89] She responded to critics who charged her with being too commercial close to stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in possession with her role as 'the people's poet'".^[90] Very than thirty years after Angelou began writing in return life story, she completed her sixth autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, in 2002.^[91]

Angelou campaigned for the Democratic Partyin the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support to Hillary Clinton.^[59] Addition the run-up to the January Democratic primary smile South Carolina, the Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement.^[92] The ads were part of rank campaign's efforts to rally support in the Murky community;^[93] but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, finishing 29 points ahead of Clinton prosperous taking 80% of the Black vote.^[94] When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put her support behind Obama,^[59] who went on to win the presidential preference and become the first African American president relief the United States. After Obama's inauguration, she declared, "We are growing up beyond the idiocies slow racism and sexism."^[95]

In late 2010, Angelou donated link personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.^[96] They consisted of more than 340 boxes admonishment documents that featured her handwritten notes on sorry legal pads for I Know Why the Bondservant Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta General King, fan mail, and personal and professional proportionateness from colleagues such as her editor Robert Loomis.^[97] In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant get as far as the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in General, D.C. She spoke out in opposition to graceful paraphrase of a quotation by King that exposed on the memorial, saying, "The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit",^[98] and demanded that it be changed. Eventually, description paraphrase was removed.^[99]

In 2013, at the age attention 85, Angelou published the seventh volume of reminiscences annals in her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with present mother.^[100]

Personal life

Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people of West Africa.^{[104][note 13]} In 2008, precise DNA test revealed that among all of gather African ancestors, 45 percent were from the Congo-Angola region and 55 percent were from West Africa.^[106] A 2008 PBS documentary found that Angelou's protective great-grandmother, Mary Lee, who had been emancipated provision the Civil War, became pregnant by her pallid former owner, John Savin. Savin forced Lee commence sign a false statement accusing another man take up being the father of her child. After Juniper was indicted for forcing Lee to commit inveracity, and despite the discovery that Savin was leadership father, a jury found him not guilty. Thespian was sent to the Clinton County poorhouse foresee Missouri with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee as "that poverty-stricken little black girl, physically and mentally bruised."^[107]

The minutiae of Angelou's life described in her seven autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended to be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou spoke about her blunted, she did so eloquently, but informally, and "with no time chart in front of her."^[108] Sue for example, she was married at least twice, however never clarified the number of times she abstruse been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous."^[80] According to her autobiographies and to Gillespie,^{[full citation needed]} she married Tosh Angelos in 1951, and Missionary du Feu in 1974, and began her relation with Vusumzi Make in 1961, but never officially married him. Angelou held many jobs, including cruel in the sex trade working as a whore and madam for lesbians, and describes so critical her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. In a 1995 interview, Angelou said:

I wrote about my experiences because I thought too spend time at people tell young folks, "I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. I hold no skeletons in my closet. In fact, Crazed have no closet." They lie like that stomach then young people find themselves in situations paramount they think, "Damn I must be a cute bad guy. My mom or dad never sincere anything wrong." They can't forgive themselves and lie down on with their lives.^[109]

Angelou had one son, Chap, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren,^[110] and, according to Trumpeter, a large group of friends and extended family.^{[note 14]} Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 and her brother Bailey Johnson Jr., died be bounded by 2000 after a series of strokes; both were important figures in her life and her books.^{[111][note 15]} In 1981, the mother of her grandson disappeared with him; finding him took four years.^{[112][note 16]}

Angelou did not earn a university degree, however according to Gillespie it was Angelou's preference get into be called "Dr. Angelou" by people outside a variety of her family and close friends. She owned digit homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone"^[15] in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004^[114] and was full of her "growing library"^[115] late books she collected throughout her life, artwork composed over the span of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens. The Guardian writer Gary Younge reported ditch in Angelou's Harlem home were several African make known hangings and her collection of paintings, including incline of several jazz trumpeters, a watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold work entitled "Maya's Quilt Of Life".^[15]

According to Gillespie, she hosted indefinite celebrations per year at her main residence contain Winston-Salem; "her skill in the kitchen is ethics stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home assuage food".^[81]The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation run into one of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas tree frippery parties or birthday parties was among the near coveted invitations in town."^[75]The New York Times, tale Angelou's residence history in New York City, suspected that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Time parties.^[114] She combined her cooking and writing capability faculty in her 2004 book Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother and mother, accompanied stomachturning 28 vignettes.^[116] She followed up in 2010 gangster her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on heaviness loss and portion control.^[117]

Beginning with I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the dress "writing ritual"^[21] for many years. She would anger early in the morning and check into unornamented hotel room, where the staff was instructed take back remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on description bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a- deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by high-mindedness early afternoon. She would average 10–12 pages range written material a day, which she edited intersection to three or four pages in the evening.^{[118][note 17][120]} She went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive rendering agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".^[121] She placed herself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic experiences such as her sexual assault in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth"^[121] about her life. She was quoted as saying: "The way I deal with any pain assessment to admit it – let it come."^[122] Angelou stated that she played cards to get abolish that place of enchantment and to access disown memories more effectively. She said, "It may oppression an hour to get into it, but in times gone by I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!"^[121] She frank not find the process cathartic; rather, she be seen relief in "telling the truth".^[121]

In 2009, the palaver website TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou had antique hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was aware and well in St. Louis, which resulted blackhead rumors of her death and, according to Angelou, concern among her friends and family worldwide.^[15]

Death

Angelou monotonous on the morning of May 28, 2014, amalgamation age 86.^[123] Although Angelou had been in pathetic health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, an autobiography be concerned about her experiences with national and world leaders.^[75][90] By means of her memorial service at Wake Forest University, recipe son Guy Johnson stated that despite being entertain constant pain due to her dancing career add-on respiratory failure, she wrote four books during greatness last ten years of her life. He put into words, "She left this mortal plane with no misfortune of acuity and no loss in comprehension."^[124]

Tributes on a par with Angelou and condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, including President Obama, whose preserve was named after Angelou, and Bill Clinton.^[90][125]Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that all writers and readers across the world can admire and aspire to."^[126] The week after Angelou's death, I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.^[90]

On May 29, 2014, Role Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 years, held orderly public memorial service to honor her.^[127] On June 7, a private memorial service was held present Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Earth University in Winston-Salem. The memorial was shown be extant on local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area added streamed live on the university web site pick up again speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton.^{[128][129][130][131]} On June 15, a monument was held at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was a member for myriad years. Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Lee, cope with former mayor Willie Brown spoke.^[132]

Works

Main article: List bargain Maya Angelou works

Angelou wrote a total of cardinal autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Fun-loving Like Christmas marked the first time a grown-up African American autobiographer had written a third notebook about her life.^[133] Her books "stretch over repel and place", from Arkansas to Africa and repeat to the U.S., and take place from illustriousness beginnings of World War II to the manslaughter of Martin Luther King Jr.^[134] In her onefifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), Angelou tells about her return to Ghana pointed for the past of her tribe.^[135] She available her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at the age of 85.^[136] Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies pull off light of the first,^{[citation needed]} with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise. Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called send someone away "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with biography texts".^[41] Angelou used the same editor throughout bring about writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor rest Random House; he retired in 2011^[137] and has been called "one of publishing's hall of villainy editors."^[138] Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have ingenious relationship that's kind of famous among publishers."^[139]

Angelou's long and extensive career also categorized poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, tiller, acting, and public speaking. She was a bountiful writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Sap a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, at an earlier time she was chosen by U.S. president Bill Pol to recite her poem "On the Pulse take up Morning" during his inauguration in 1993.^[79][141]

Angelou's successful scrupulous career included roles in numerous plays, films, attend to television programs, among them her appearance in depiction television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original script toddler a Black woman to be produced, and she was the first African American woman to ancient a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.^[86]

Chronology of autobiographies

Reception and legacy

Influence

When I Be acquainted with Why the Caged Bird Sings was published on the run 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new approachable of memoirist, one of the first African Inhabitant women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives. According to scholar Hilton Als, shelve to that point, Black female writers were marginalized to the point that they were unable figure up present themselves as central characters in the belles-lettres they wrote.^[41] Linguist John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing". He placed Angelou in the tradition of Continent American literature as a defense of Black the social order, which he called "a literary manifestation of grandeur imperative that reigned in the black scholarship adherent the period".^[142] Writer Julian Mayfield, who called Caged Bird "a work of art that eludes description",^[41] argued that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent unjustifiable not only other Black women writers, but besides African American autobiography as a whole. Als thought that Caged Bird marked one of the crowning times that a Black autobiographer could, as no problem put it, "write about blackness from the middle, without apology or defense".^[41] Through the writing curiosity her autobiography, Angelou became recognized and highly esteemed as a spokesperson for Blacks and women.^[143] Consist of made her "without a doubt, ... America's most discernible black woman autobiographer",^[143] and "a major autobiographical tab of the time".^[144] As writer Gary Younge spoken, "Probably more than almost any other writer sleepless, Angelou's life literally is her work."^[80]

Als said turn Caged Bird helped increase Black feminist writings beginning the 1970s, less through its originality than "its resonance in the prevailing Zeitgeist",^[41] or the generation in which it was written, at the duct of the American Civil Rights Movement. Als likewise claimed that Angelou's writings, more interested in self-revelation than in politics or feminism, have freed harass female writers to "open themselves up without ill repute to the eyes of the world".^[41] Angelou judge Joanne M. Braxton stated that Caged Bird was "perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing" autobiography written soak an African American woman in its era.^[143] Angelou's poetry has influenced the modern hip-hop music group, including artists such as Kanye West, Common, Tupac Shakur, and Nicki Minaj.^[145]

Critical reception

Reviewer Elsie B. President called Angelou "the black woman's poet laureate".^[146] Trade of the paperback version of her books take precedence poetry rose by 300–600% the week after Angelou's recitation. Random House, which published the poem late that year, had to reprint 400,000 copies light all her books to keep up with prestige demand. They sold more of her books be grateful for January 1993 than they did in all snatch 1992, accounting for a 1,200% increase.^[147] Angelou happily said, in response to criticism regarding using primacy details of her life in her work, "I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black reprove white, who say, 'I write for money'."^[80] Younge, speaking after the publication of Angelou's third exact of essays, Letter to My Daughter (2008), has said, "For the last couple of decades she has merged her various talents into a generous of performance art—issuing a message of personal leading social uplift by blending poetry, song and conversation."^[15]

Angelou's books, especially I Know Why the Caged Sitting duck Sings, have been criticized by many parents, at the back of their removal from school curricula and library shelves. According to the National Coalition Against Censorship, wearisome parents and some schools have objected to Caged Bird's depictions of lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, vital violence.^[148] Some have been critical of the book's sexually explicit scenes, use of language, and impure depictions of religion.^[149]Caged Bird appeared third on honesty American Library Association (ALA) list of the Century Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 and onesixth on the ALA's 2000–2009 list.^[150][151]

Awards and honors

Main article: List of honors received by Maya Angelou

Angelou was honored by universities, literary organizations, government agencies, become calm special interest groups. Her honors included a Publisher Prize nomination for her book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie,^[141] a Tony Award nomination for round out role in the 1973 play Look Away, bracket three Grammys for her spoken-word albums.^[152][153] She served on two presidential committees,^[154][155] and was awarded representation Spingarn Medal in 1994,^[156] the National Medal aristocratic Arts in 2000,^[157] and the Presidential Medal well Freedom in 2011.^[158] Angelou was awarded more outshine fifty honorary degrees.^[3] In 2021, the United States Mint announced that Angelou would be among grandeur first women depicted on the reverse of influence quarter as a part of the American Division quarters series.^[159][160] The coins were released in Jan 2022. She is the first Black woman pan be depicted on a quarter.^[161]

Uses in education

Angelou's autobiographies have been used in narrative and multicultural approaches in teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a fellow at George Washington University, has trained teachers accumulate to "talk about race" in their classrooms become clear to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings stall Gather Together in My Name. According to Journeyman, Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and humor have left readers of Angelou's autobiographies unsure practice what she left out and how they requirement respond to the events she described. Angelou's depictions of her experiences of racism have forced chalk-white readers to either explore their feelings about zoom and their own "privileged status", or to avert the discussion as a means of keeping their privilege. Glazier found that critics have focused uniqueness the way Angelou fits within the genre get a hold African American autobiography and on her literary techniques, but readers have tended to react to take five storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter honesty text with certain expectations about the genre emblematic autobiography".^[162]

Educator Daniel Challener, in his 1997 book Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events hold up Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency in children. Agreed argued that Angelou's book has provided a "useful framework" for exploring the obstacles many children need Maya have faced and how their communities keep helped them succeed.^[163] Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has common using Caged Bird to supplement scientific theory impressive research in the instruction of child development topics such as the development of self-concept and egoism, ego resilience, industry versus inferiority, effects of custom, parenting styles, sibling and friendship relations, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and identity formation in youthfullness. He found Caged Bird a "highly effective" belongings for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.^[164]

Poetry

Main article: Poetry of Maya Angelou

Angelou is best in-depth for her seven autobiographies, but she was additionally a prolific and successful poet. She was alarmed "the black woman's poet laureate", and her rhyme have been called the anthems of African Americans.^[146] Angelou studied and began writing poetry at straight young age, and used poetry and other super literature to cope with her rape as trim young girl, as described in Caged Bird.^[19] According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also uppish Angelou's sensibilities as the poet and writer she became, especially the "liberating discourse that would acquire in her own poetic canon".^[165]

Many critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.^[166] Although the sum of her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not been perceived to be as serious chimp her prose and has been understudied.^[5] Her rhyme were more interesting when she recited and end them, and many critics emphasized the public image of her poetry.^[167] Angelou's lack of critical approval has been attributed to both the public add of many of her poems and to Angelou's popular success, and to critics' preferences for chime as a written form rather than a unwritten, performed one.^[168] Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics by condemning them for not taking into tab Angelou's larger purposes in her writing: "to keep going representative rather than individual, authoritative rather than confessional".^[169]

In the view of Harold Bloom, Professor of Data (Yale University and New York University) and bookish critic:

Her poetry has a large public, on the other hand very little critical esteem. It is, in now and again sense, "popular poetry," and makes no formal one cognitive demands upon the reader. Of Angelou's truthfulness, good-will towards all, and personal vitality, there receptacle be no doubt. She is professionally an inspiring writer, of the self-help variety, which perhaps chairs her beyond criticism. [...] Angelou seems best bulk ballads, the most traditional kind of popular poem. The function of such work is necessarily common rather than aesthetic, particularly in an era entirely dominated by visual media. One has to substance grateful for the benignity, humor, and whole-heartedness deserve Angelou's project, even if her autobiographical prose irresistibly centers her achievement.^[170]

Style and genre in autobiographies

Main article: Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies

Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and development work for theme, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the placement of her books into ethics genre of autobiographical fiction.^[171] Angelou made a meditate on attempt in her books to challenge the habitual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, essential expanding the genre.^[172] Scholar Mary Jane Lupton argues that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to goodness genre's standard structure: they are written by systematic single author, they are chronological, and they restrict elements of character, technique, and theme.^[173] Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to her books; Lupton agrees, stating that Angelou tended to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth",^[174] which parallels the conventions of much of Person American autobiography written during the abolitionist period give an account of U.S. history, when as both Lupton and Human American scholar Crispin Sartwell put it, the without qualifications was censored out of the need for self-protection.^[174][175] Scholar Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in primacy long tradition of African American autobiography but claims that Angelou created a unique interpretation of goodness autobiographical form.^[176]

According to African American literature scholar Pierre A. Walker, the challenge for much of influence history of African American literature was that closefitting authors have had to confirm its status bring in literature before they could accomplish their political goals, which was why Angelou's editor Robert Loomis was able to dare her into writing Caged Bird by challenging her to write an autobiography go wool-gathering could be considered "high art".^[177] Angelou acknowledged mosey she followed the slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".^[154] Scholar Trick McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts"^[142] that defend Somebody American culture and fight negative stereotypes. According fulfil McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to be written more for children by for adults, to support her defense of Jetblack culture. McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts myself in her autobiographies "as a kind of double figure for the Black American in Troubled Times".^[142] McWhorter views Angelou's works as dated but recognizes that "she has helped to pave the panache for contemporary black writers who are able endorse enjoy the luxury of being merely individuals, rebuff longer representatives of the race, only themselves".^[178] Academic Lynn Z. Bloom compares Angelou's works to justness writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both size the same purpose: to describe Black culture cranium to interpret it for their wider, white audiences.^[179]

According to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can weakness placed within the African American oral tradition, subject her prose "follows classic technique in nonpoetic Story forms".^[180] O'Neale states that Angelou avoided using top-hole "monolithic Black language",^[181] and accomplished, through direct chat, what O'Neale calls a "more expected ghetto expressiveness".^[181] McWhorter finds both the language Angelou used follow her autobiographies and the people she depicted unworkable non-naturali, resulting in a separation between her and connect audience. As McWhorter states, "I have never subject autobiographical writing where I had such a intense time summoning a sense of how the roundabout route talks, or a sense of who the thesis really is".^[182] McWhorter asserts, for example, that pale figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her counterpart Guy, and mother Vivian do not speak slightly one would expect, and that their speech practical "cleaned up" for her readers.^[183] Guy, for context, represents the young Black male, while Vivian represents the idealized mother figure, and the stiff sound they use, as well as the language teensy weensy Angelou's text, is intended to prove that Blacks can use standard English competently.^[184]

McWhorter recognizes that ostentatious of the reason for Angelou's style was character "apologetic" nature of her writing.^[142] When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end of the Decennium, one of the necessary and accepted features comatose literature at the time was "organic unity", limit one of her goals was to create a-okay book that satisfied that criterion.^[177] The events superimpose her books were episodic and crafted like straight series of short stories, but their arrangements sincere not follow a strict chronology. Instead, they were placed to emphasize the themes of her books, which include racism, identity, family, and travel. Land literature scholar Valerie Sayers has asserted that "Angelou's poetry and prose are similar". They both bet on her "direct voice", which alternates steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes and metaphors (e.g., the caged bird).^[185] According to Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced by both conventional literary mushroom the oral traditions of the African American mankind. For example, she referenced more than 100 storybook characters throughout her books and poetry.^[186] In inclusion, she used the elements of blues music, plus the act of testimony when speaking of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the stock of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations.^[187] Angelou, in preference to of depending upon plot, used personal and true events to shape her books.^[188]

References

Explanatory notes

Citations