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Definition: Angelou, Maya from Philip's Encyclopedia

US writer, editor, and entertainer. She is best known for six volumes of autobiography, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). Evoking her childhood in 1930s Arkansas, it relates the rape that left Angelou mute for the next five years. The fourth volume, The Heart of a Woman, deals with her involvement in the 1960s Civil Rights movement as the Northern Coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.

Maya Angelou (1928–2014)

From The American Women's Almanac: 500 Years of Making History
One of America's most popular and acclaimed American poets, storytellers, and essayists, Maya Angelou was also a memoirist whose most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), became a pioneering work on gender and race and one of the first autobiographies by an African American woman. Selected by Bill Clinton to read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at his 1993 inauguration, Angelou was proclaimed “the black woman's poet laureate.” Born Marguerite Anni Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou and her brother were sent to live with her grandmother in Arkansas when her parents’ marriage collapsed. Angelou recorded in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings how she was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was seven. When the man was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible and stopped talking, remaining mute for the next five years. During these silent years, Angelou developed her love for books and reading and her ability to listen and observe the world…
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
A. is an extremely prolific black American woman writer whose greatest achievement is her series of autobiographical novels in which the A. persona moves from age three to her mid-thirties, from 1928 to the mid-1960s. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was followed by Gather Together…
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American writer. Maya Angelou was born in St Louis, Missouri, and when she was three, after her parents’ divorce, was sent with her brother Bailey to live in Stamps, Arkansas, with her grandmother. There, at the age of eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and became mute for five years: …
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya (Marguerite Johnson)

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
Novelist, poet, civil rights activist. Angelou gained wide recognition when she delivered her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton . Born in St. Louis, Angelou chronicles her life in five autobiographies including her highly acclaimed first work of…
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya (1928–)

From Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
As a best-selling writer, and as a performer, film producer, director, and social activist, Maya Angelou has promoted black equality throughout her career. She became known to millions of Americans when she read an original poem at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in January 1993—a moment…
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya (1928-2014)

From From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women
Teacher, poet, dancer, writer, actress, and civil rights organizer Maya Angelou chronicled the life experiences of one African American woman through the many volumes of her autobiography. In 1960, Angelou co-wrote the stage production Cabaret for Freedom , which was produced in New York City to…
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya (1928–)

From The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry
Born in St Louis, Missouri, she grew up in Arkansas and California. She toured Europe in Porgy and Bess before moving to New York where she worked as a night-club singer and performed in Genet's The Blacks . After becoming involved in black struggles in the Sixties she was editor of the African…
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Full text Article Angelou, Maya (1928–)

From Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, spent her early years in Stamps, Arkansas. It was here that she learned the glaring need for change in the South. As the movement for civil rights began to build in the 1950s, Angelou became an active participant for change. Upon moving…
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Full text Article Maya Angelou (1928–2014)

From The American Women's Almanac: 500 Years of Making History
Maya Angelou (1928–2014)
One of America's most popular and acclaimed American poets, storytellers, and essayists, Maya Angelou was also a memoirist whose most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), became a pioneering work on gender and race and one of the first autobiographies by an African American woman. …
| 537 words , 1 image
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Full text Article Maya Angelou (1928–)

From African American Almanac
Maya Angelou (1928–)
Novelist, Poet Born Marguerite Johnson, Angelou spent her formative years shuttling between St. Louis, Missouri, a tiny, totally segregated town in Arkansas, and San Francisco, where she realized her ambition of becoming that city's first black streetcar conductor. During the 1950s she studied…
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