An
acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya
Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. American poet, memoirist, and
actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic,
racial, and sexual oppression. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a
singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first female black director,
but became most famous as a writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet. As
a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and
Malcolm X. She was also an educator and served as the Reynolds professor of
American Studies at Wake Forest University. By 1975, wrote Carol E. Neubauer in
Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, Angelou was recognized “as a
spokesperson for… all people who are committed to raising the moral standards
of living in the United States.” She served on two presidential committees, for
Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded
the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded
the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by
President Barack Obama. Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her
death.
Angelou’s
most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), deals with her early
years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her
brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and
controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped
by her mother’s boyfriend when she was just seven years old. When the man was
murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible, and stopped
talking. Angelou remained mute for five years, but developed a love for
language. She read Black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare,
Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs.
Flowers, an educated African American woman, finally got her to speak again.
Mrs. Flowers, as Angelou recalled in her children’s book Mrs. Flowers: A Moment
of Friendship (1986), emphasized the importance of the spoken word, explained
the nature of and importance of education, and instilled in her a love of
poetry. Angelou graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class.
Angelou
attended George Washington High School in San Francisco and took lessons in
dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. When Angelou,
just seventeen, graduated from high school and gave birth to a son, Guy, she
began to work as the first African American and first female street car
conductor in San Francisco. As she explained in Singin’ and Swingin’ and
Gettin’ Merry like Christmas (1976), the third of her autobiographies, she also
“worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, fry cook in hamburger joints, dinner
cook in a Creole restaurant and once had a job in a mechanic’s shop, taking the
paint off cars with my hands.” Angelou married a white ex-sailor, Tosh Angelos,
in 1950. After they separated, Angelou continued her study of dance in New York
City, returning to San Francisco to sing in the Purple Onion cabaret and
garnering the attention of talent scouts. From 1954 to 1955, she was a member
of the cast of a touring production of Porgy and Bess. During the late 1950s,
Angelou sang in West Coast and Hawaiian nightclubs, before returning to New
York to continue her stage career.
Angelou
joined the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950s and met James Baldwin and
other important writers. It was during this time that Angelou had the
opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak. Inspired by his message, she
decided to become a part of the struggle for civil rights. She was offered a
position as the northern coordinator for Dr. King’s SCLC. Following her work
for Dr. King, Angelou moved to Cairo with her son, and, in 1962, to Ghana in
West Africa. She worked as a freelance writer and was a feature editor at the
African Review. When Angelou returned to the United States in the mid-1960s,
she was encouraged by author James Baldwin and Robert Loomis, an editor at
Random House, to write an autobiography. Initially, Angelou declined the
offers, but eventually changed her mind and wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings. The book chronicles Angelou’s childhood and ends with the birth of her
son. It won immediate success and was nominated for a National Book Award.
I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Angelou’s six autobiographies. It
is widely taught in schools, though it has faced controversy over its portrayal
of race, sexual abuse and violence. Angelou’s use of fiction-writing techniques
like dialogue and plot in her autobiographies was innovative for its time and
helped, in part, to complicate the genre’s relationship with truth and memory.
Though her books are episodic and tightly-crafted, the events seldom follow a
strict chronology and are arranged to emphasize themes. Other volumes include
Gather Together in My Name (1974), which begins when Angelou is seventeen and a
new mother; Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry like Christmas, an account
of her tour in Europe and Africa with Porgy and Bess; The Heart of a Woman
(1981), a description of Angelou’s acting and writing career in New York and
her work for the civil rights movement; and All God’s Children Need Traveling
Shoes (1986), which recounts Angelou’s travels in West Africa and her decision
to return, without her son, to America.
It
took Angelou fifteen years to write the final volume of her autobiography, A
Song Flung up to Heaven (2002). The book covers four years, from the time
Angelou returned from Ghana in 1964 through the moment when she sat down at her
mother’s table and began to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1968.
Angelou hesitated so long to start the book and took so long to finish it, she
told Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service interviewer Sherryl Connelly, because
so many painful things happened to her, and to the entire African-American
community, in those four years. “I didn’t know how to write it,” she said. “I
didn’t see how the assassination of Malcolm [X], the Watts riot, the breakup of
a love affair, then [the assassination of Dr.] Martin [Luther] King [Jr.], how
I could get all that loose with something uplifting in it.” A Song Flung up to
Heaven deals forthrightly with these events, and “the poignant beauty of
Angelou’s writing enhances rather than masks the candor with which she
addresses the racial crisis through which America was passing,” Wayne A. Holst
wrote in Christian Century.
Angelou
was also a prolific and widely-read poet, and her poetry has often been lauded
more for its depictions of Black beauty, the strength of women, and the human
spirit; criticizing the Vietnam War; demanding social justice for all—than for
its poetic virtue. Yet Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie, which
was published in 1971, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972. According to
Carol Neubauer in Southern Women Writers, “the first twenty poems describe the
whole gamut of love, from the first moment of passionate discovery to the first
suspicion of painful loss.” In other poems, “Angelou turns her attention to the
lives of black people in America from the time of slavery to the rebellious 1960s.
Her themes deal broadly with the painful anguish suffered by blacks forced into
submission, with guilt over accepting too much, and with protest and basic
survival.”
As
Angelou wrote her autobiographies and poems, she continued her career in film
and television. She was the first Black woman to have a screenplay (Georgia,
Georgia) produced in 1972. She was honored with a nomination for an Emmy award
for her performance in Roots in 1977. In 1979, Angelou helped adapt her book, I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, for a television movie of the same name. Angelou
wrote the poetry for the 1993 film Poetic Justice and played the role of Aunt
June. She also played Lelia Mae in the 1993 television film There Are No
Children Here and appeared as Anna in the feature film How to Make an American
Quilt in 1995.
One
source of Angelou’s fame in the early 1990s was President Bill Clinton’s
invitation to write and read an inaugural poem. Americans all across the
country watched as she read “On the Pulse of Morning,” which begins “A Rock, a
River, a Tree” and calls for peace, racial and religious harmony, and social
justice for people of different origins, incomes, genders, and sexual
orientations. It recalls the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech as it urges America to “Give birth again /
To the Dream” of equality. Angelou challenged the new administration and all
Americans to work together for progress: “Here, on the pulse of this new day, /
You may have the grace to look up and out / And into your sister’s eyes, and
into / Your brother’s face, your country /And say simply / Very simply / With
hope—Good morning.”
During
the early 1990s, Angelou wrote several books for children, including Life
Doesn’t Frighten Me (1993), which also featured the work of Jean-Michel
Basquiat; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and
His Magic (1996), both collaborations with the photographer Margaret
Courtney-Clark. Angelou’s poetry collections include The Complete Collected
Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) and Phenomenal Woman (1995), a collection of four
poems that takes its title from a poem which originally appeared in
Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. The poem’s narrator describes the physical and
spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive. Angelou also
wrote occasional poems, including A Brave Startling Truth (1995), which
commemorated the founding of the United Nations, and Amazing Peace (2005), a
poem written for the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.
Angelou
published multiple collections of essays. Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey
Now (1993) contains declarations, complaints, memories, opinions, and advice on
subjects ranging from faith to jealousy. Genevieve Stuttaford, writing in Publishers
Weekly, described the essays as “quietly inspirational pieces.” Anne Whitehouse
of the New York Times Book Review observed that the book would “appeal to
readers in search of clear messages with easily digested meanings.” Even the
Stars Look Lonesome (1997) is the sister volume, a book of “candid and lovingly
crafted homilies” to “sensuality, beauty, and black women” said Donna Seaman in
Booklist. Letter to my Daughter was published in 2008.
Angelou’s
poetry often benefited from her performance of it, and during her lifetime
Angelou recited her poems before spellbound crowds. Indeed, Angelou’s poetry
can also be traced to African-American oral traditions like slave and work
songs, especially in her use of personal narrative and emphasis on individual
responses to hardship, oppression and loss. In addition to examining individual
experience, Angelou’s poems often respond to matters like race and sex on a
larger social and psychological scale. Describing her work to George Plimpton,
Angelou said, “Once I got into it I realized I was following a tradition
established by Frederick Douglass—the slave narrative—speaking in the
first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I
meaning ‘we.’ And what a responsibility. Trying to work with that form, the
autobiographical mode, to change it, to make it bigger, richer, finer, and more
inclusive in the twentieth century has been a great challenge for me.”
In
2013 she was the recipient of the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book
Award for contributions to the literary community. She died in 2014 at the age
of 86.
Works
Angelou
wrote a total of seven autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton,
Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
marked the first time a well-known African-American autobiographer had written
a third volume about her life. Her books "stretch over time and
place", from Arkansas to Africa and back to the U.S., and take place from
the beginnings of World War II to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
In her fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986),
Angelou tells about her return to Ghana searching for the past of her tribe.
She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at the
age of 85. Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies
"in light of the first", with Caged Bird receiving the highest
praise. Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als
called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with
autobiographical texts". Angelou used the same editor throughout her
writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor at Random House; he retired
in 2011 and has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame
editors." Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship
that's kind of famous among publishers."
Angelou's
long and extensive career also included poetry, plays, screenplays for
television and film, directing, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific
writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie
(1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was chosen by U.S.
president Bill Clinton to recite her poem "On the Pulse of Morning"
during his inauguration in 1993.
Angelou's
successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, and
television programs, including her appearance in the television mini-series
Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original
script by a Black woman to be produced, and she was the first African-American
woman to direct a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.
Chronology
of autobiographies
I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969): Up to 1944 (age 17) , Gather Together in
My Name (1974): 1944–48 , Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
(1976): 1949–55 , The Heart of a Woman (1981): 1957–62 , All God's Children
Need Traveling Shoes (1986): 1962–65 , A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002):
1965–68 , Mom & Me & Mom (2013): overview
Poetry
Angelou
is best known for her seven autobiographies, but she was also a prolific and
successful poet. She was called "the black woman's poet laureate",
and her poems have been called the anthems of African Americans.[143] Angelou
studied and began writing poetry at a young age, and used poetry and other
great literature to cope with her rape as a young girl, as described in Caged
Bird. According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also affected Angelou's
sensibilities as the poet and writer she became, especially the "liberating
discourse that would evolve in her own poetic canon".
Many
critics consider Angelou's autobiographies more important than her poetry.
Although all her books have been bestsellers, her poetry has not been perceived
to be as serious as her prose and has been understudied. Her poems were more
interesting when she recited and performed them, and many critics emphasized
the public aspect of her poetry. Angelou's lack of critical acclaim has been
attributed to both the public nature of many of her poems and to Angelou's
popular success, and to critics' preferences for poetry as a written form
rather than a verbal, performed one. Zofia Burr has countered Angelou's critics
by condemning them for not taking into account Angelou's larger purposes in her
writing: "to be representative rather than individual, authoritative
rather than confessional".
In
the view of Harold Bloom, Professor of Literature (Yale University and New York
University) and literary critic:
Her
poetry has a large public, but very little critical esteem. It is, in every
sense, "popular poetry," and makes no formal or cognitive demands
upon the reader. Of Angelou's sincerity, good-will towards all, and personal
vitality, there can be no doubt. She is professionally an inspirational writer,
of the self-help variety, which perhaps places her beyond criticism. [...]
Angelou seems best at ballads, the most traditional kind of popular poetry. The
function of such work is necessarily social rather than aesthetic, particularly
in an era totally dominated by visual media. One has to be grateful for the
benignity, humor, and whole-heartedness of Angelou's project, even if her
autobiographical prose necessarily centers her achievement.
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 of theme, setting, plot, and language has often resulted in the
placement of her books into the genre of autobiographical fiction. Angelou made
a deliberate attempt in her books to challenge the common structure of the
autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Scholar Mary
Jane Lupton argues that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's
standard structure: they are written by a single author, they are
chronological, and they contain elements of character, technique, and theme.
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", which parallels the conventions of much
of African-American autobiography written during the abolitionist period of
U.S. history, when as both Lupton and African-American scholar Crispin Sartwell
put it, the truth was censored out of the need for self-protection. Scholar
Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the long tradition of African-American
autobiography, but claims that Angelou created a unique interpretation of the
autobiographical form.
According
to African-American literature scholar Pierre A. Walker, the challenge for much
of the history of African-American literature was that its authors have had to
confirm its status as 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 that could be
considered "high art". Angelou acknowledged that she followed the
slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular
talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".
Scholar John McWhorter calls Angelou's books "tracts" that defend
African-American culture and fight negative stereotypes. According to
McWhorter, Angelou structured her books, which to him seem to be written more
for children than for adults, to support her defense of Black culture.
McWhorter sees Angelou as she depicts herself in her autobiographies "as a
kind of stand-in figure for the Black American in Troubled Times". McWhorter
views Angelou's works as dated, but recognizes that "she has helped to
pave the way for contemporary black writers who are able to enjoy the luxury of
being merely individuals, no longer representatives of the race, only
themselves". Scholar Lynn Z. Bloom compares Angelou's works to the
writings of Frederick Douglass, stating that both fulfilled the same purpose:
to describe Black culture and to interpret it for their wider, white audiences.
According
to scholar Sondra O'Neale, Angelou's poetry can be placed within the
African-American oral tradition, and her prose "follows classic technique
in nonpoetic Western forms". O'Neale states that Angelou avoided using a
"monolithic Black language", and accomplished, through direct dialogue,
what O'Neale calls a "more expected ghetto expressiveness". McWhorter
finds both the language Angelou used in her autobiographies and the people she
depicted unrealistic, resulting in a separation between her and her audience.
As McWhorter states, "I have never read autobiographical writing where I
had such a hard time summoning a sense of how the subject talks, or a sense of
who the subject really is". McWhorter asserts, for example, that key
figures in Angelou's books, like herself, her son Guy, and mother Vivian do not
speak as one would expect, and that their speech is "cleaned up" for
her readers. Guy, for example, represents the young Black male, while Vivian
represents the idealized mother figure, and the stiff language they use, as
well as the language in Angelou's text, is intended to prove that Blacks can
use standard English competently.
McWhorter
recognizes that much of the reason for Angelou's style was the
"apologetic" nature of her writing. When Angelou wrote Caged Bird at
the end of the 1960s, one of the necessary and accepted features of literature
at the time was "organic unity", and one of her goals was to create a
book that satisfied that criterion. The events in her books were episodic and
crafted like a series of short stories, but their arrangements did not follow a
strict chronology. Instead, they were placed to emphasize the themes of her
books, which include racism, identity, family, and travel. English literature
scholar Valerie Sayers has asserted that "Angelou's poetry and prose are
similar". They both rely on her "direct voice", which alternates
steady rhythms with syncopated patterns and uses similes and metaphors (e.g.,
the caged bird). According to Hagen, Angelou's works were influenced by both
conventional literary and the oral traditions of the African-American
community. For example, she referenced more than 100 literary characters
throughout her books and poetry. In addition, she used the elements of blues
music, including the act of testimony when speaking of one's life and
struggles, ironic understatement, and the use of natural metaphors, rhythms,
and intonations.[183] Angelou, instead of depending upon plot, used personal
and historical events to shape her books.
Works by Maya Angelou
Albums
Miss Calypso
Autobiographies
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Gather Together in My
Name Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas The Heart of a
Woman All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes A Song Flung Up to Heaven Mom &
Me & Mom Themes
Poetry
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I DiiieOh
Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well And Still I Rise Shaker, Why Don't You
Sing? Now Sheba Sings the Song I Shall Not Be Moved "On the Pulse of
Morning" The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou Phenomenal Woman: Four
Poems Celebrating Women" A Brave and Startling Truth" Celebrations,
Rituals of Peace and Prayer Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me" We Had
Him" Life Doesn't Frighten Me
Essays
Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now Even the
Stars Look Lonesome Letter to My Daughter
Cookbooks
Hallelujah! The Welcome Table Great Food, All Day Long
Screenplays
Georgia, Georgia (1972)Sister, Sister (1982)
Films
Down in the Delta (1998)
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