Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was a poet, writer, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her autobiographies, the first of which is I know why the caged bird sings (1969), and spoken-word albums.

Maya Angelou's biography

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St Louis Missouri in April 1928. Her parents, Bailey Johnson and Vivian Johnson, raised her alongside her older brother, Bailey Jr.

After her parents' marriage ended in 1931 Angelou went to live with her grandmother Annie Henderson in Stamps, Arkansas. In 1935, Angelou's father returned and took her and her brother back to their mother in St Louis. At this time, at age eight, Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend, Freeman. Freeman was found guilty but he was imprisoned for just a single day. After his release, Freeman was beaten to death.

Following this experience, Angelou became a selective mute for almost five years. She and her brother returned to their grandmother's home in Arkansas. Angelou started her schooling at Lafayette Country Training School, a Rosenwald school built in 1929.

From an early age, Angelou was an avid reader. She enjoyed the works of authors including Jessie Fauset, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens. In a 1986 interview on the radio station Fresh Air, she recalled how her teacher Mrs Flowers both encouraged her learning and pushed her to start speaking again, telling her 'You do not love poetry. You will never love it until you speak it'.¹

At the age of fourteen, Angelou returned to her mother's care, moving to Oakland, California where she attended George Washington High School in San Francisco and studied dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School.

At age 16, Angelou became pregnant. Three weeks after graduating from high school, at 17, she gave birth to her only child, Clyde, in 1945. Clyde later changed his name to Guy Johnson. After graduating Angelou obtained a job as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. She also worked as a shake dancer in nightclubs, as a cook, and even had a job in a mechanic's shop where she removed the paint from cars.

Maya Angelou's working life and the Civil Rights Movement

Between 1951 and 1954 Angelou was married to Tosh Angelos. During this time she took modern dance classes and lived in New York City for one year, where she studied African dance. After her marriage ended in 1954 Angelou worked as a professional dancer in a number of San Francisco clubs. When dancing at The Purple Onion, Maya Angelou stopped going by Marguerite Johnson and changed her professional name to 'Maya Angelou'.

Angelou toured Europe while in a production of Porgy and Bess, an English language opera, between 1954 and 1955. In 1959, Angelou moved to New York to pursue a career in writing. Here she joined the Harlem Writers Guild. In 1960 she organised the Cabaret for freedom with John Oliver Killens after meeting and listening to Martin Luther King Jr. This Cabaret raised money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African American civil rights organisation founded in 1957.

In 1961 Angelou met Vusumzi Make, a South African Freedom fighter. She lived with him in Cairo between 1961 and 1962, where she worked as an editor at The Arab Observer. In 1962 Angelou separated from Make and moved to Accra in Ghana for her son's college education. She remained here until 1965, following an automobile accident that temporarily paralysed her son. While living in Accra she befriended Malcolm X, who she worked with to build up the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1965.

After Malcolm X's assassination in 1965, Angelou moved around the United States, living in Hawaii, Los Angeles, and New York between 1965 and 1968. In 1968 Angelou wrote, narrated, and produced a ten-episode documentary series on the role of blues music and the heritage of African Americans titled Blacks, Blues, Black! The series aired on National Educational Television. In 1969 Angelou published her first of seven biographies I know why the caged bird sings, which led to her becoming an internationally recognised figure.

The growth of Angelou's writing career

In 1973 Angelou married Paul de Feu. During their marriage, which lasted between 1973 and 1981, Angelou wrote a number of articles, scripts, and books, publishing three more autobiographies: Gather together in my name (1974), Singin' and swingin' and gettin' merry like Christmas (1976), and The heart of a woman (1981). Angelou also continued her work in the world of theatre, producing plays and acting in Look Away in 1973 and the television show Roots in 1977. After her divorce, Angelou directed a revival of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl by Errol John in 1988 in Islington, London.

In 1981 Angelou returned to live in the South of the United States of America, where she accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. In 1993 Angelou attended and performed at Bill Clinton's inauguration, reciting her poem 'On the Pulse of the Morning'. The recording of this poem won a Grammy.

Until her death in 2014, Angelou kept creating art and literature. She directed the feature film Down in the Delta in 1996, created a collection of Hallmark products in 2000, and published her sixth and seventh autobiographies: A song flung up to heaven (2002) and Mom & me & mom (2013). She even campaigned for the Democratic party during the 2008 elections, at first supporting Hilary Clinton and then Barack Obama.

Maya Angelou: facts

Interesting facts about Maya Angelou's life include:

• During her life, Angelou published seven autobiographies, five books of poetry, and three books of essays.
• Angelou received a number of awards and honours during her life including over 50 honorary degrees.
• Maya Angelou was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for her poetry book Just give me cool drink of water 'fore I diiie (1971). In 1973 she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the playLook Away.
• Alongside her literary influence, Angelou had political influence, serving on two presidential committees - Gerald Ford (1975) and Jimmy Carter (1977).
• Angelou will be included in the American Women quarters program which will run from 2022 to 2025. Her image will feature in a number of quarters as a celebration of notable women in US history.

Maya Angelou's books

Maya Angelou wrote a total of seven autobiographies and, at the time of her death in 2014, was reportedly working on an eighth one which explored her experiences with world leaders. Although Angelou's autobiographies are all based on her own life, she utilises writing techniques associated with fiction writing in each of them such as plot and dialogue. Due to this, sometimes these works are classed as autobiographical fiction.

I know why the caged bird sings (1969)

Angelou's first autobiography covers her early childhood to late teenage years. It begins in 1931 when Angelou was first sent to live with her grandmother and ends with the birth of her son Guy just after she had graduated from high school.

This work marked a shift in the expectations of memoirist writers at the time. Angelou openly discussed her life as a Black woman, including her traumas of racism and rape at a time when African Americans faced great oppression and discrimination in society. Angelou centred herself and her story as the 'main character' at a time when Black experiences were often underrepresented and pushed to the side. The way Angelou unapologetically wrote about Blackness set a new standard for African American writers and memoirists.

The heart of a woman (1981)

This memoir is the fourth of Angelou's biographies and follows her journey after she left California for New York and began to play a role in the civil rights movement (1957–62). The book not only focuses on Angelou's role in the civil rights movement but also her experiences raising her son, ending as he starts college.

A song flung up to heaven (2002)

Angelou's penultimate biography explores her return to the United States after living in Ghana for some time and the way she dealt with the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, both of whom she knew. This autobiography is set between 1965 and 1968 and ends at the moment when Angelou starts to write her first autobiography.

Fig. 1 - Maya Angelou at Bill Clinton's Inauguration in 1993.

Maya Angelou's poems

Maya Angelou published five poetry collections during her lifetime. Her most famous one is Just give me a cool drink of water 'fore I diiie which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Two of her most famous poems are 'Still I rise' (1978) and 'Caged bird' (1983).

'Still I rise' (1978)

'Still I rise' centres on Maya Angelou's own experiences as a Black woman in America. It describes how she rose up and persevered through not just her own trauma, but also the generational trauma of African Americans. Through both the historical and modern conception and treatment of African Americans she rises, she is 'the dream and the hope of the slave' and refuses to be anything else other than her sassy, haughty, and sexy self.

An effective literary device Maya Angelou utilises in this poem is repetition. Throughout the poem she repeats the word 'rise', stating in the first five stanzas 'I'll rise' and in the final two stanza's 'I rise':

The repetition of this phrase creates the continuous image of rising up throughout the poem. This is emphasised by the switch between the future tense 'I'll rise' and the present tense 'I rise'. The change between these two tenses suggests a build-up to the action of rising, creating a sense of release at the end of the poem, as 'I rise' is repeated three times.

'Caged bird' (1983)

The title of 'Caged bird' is similar to the title of Angelou's first poem, it is clear that the metaphor of a caged bird holds significance for her. In the poem, Angelou describes two birds: one free which 'leaps' and 'dares to claim the sky' and another is caged, singing a fearful 'trill'. Despite the trauma this caged bird has evidently experienced, it 'sings of freedom'.

The two separate birds represent two things:

1. The history and experiences of African Americans throughout the history of the USA.

2. Maya Angelou's own experiences in childhood, and selective mutism between the ages of eight and twelve.

Enjambment is used to great effect in this poem, for instance, in the poem's final stanza:

In this stanza, enjambment is used until the final end-stopped line. This encourages the reader to consider each line individually, as the enjambment fragments the rhythm. Additionally, there is an ABCBDB rhyme scheme for the first six lines of the stanza. This creates a regular tempo that is fragmented not only by the enjambment but by the break of the rhyme scheme in the poem's final two lines:

This emphasises the idea of 'freedom', perhaps suggesting that the caged bird is breaking free by singing, just as the poem's lines are breaking free from its rhyme scheme.

Maya Angelou: quotes

Let's look at some prominent quotes from Maya Angelou's works.

From I know why the caged bird sings:

This quote suggests that holding onto a personal experience or emotion that has not been expressed or shared can cause immense pain and suffering. Speaking out or sharing one's experiences can bring a sense of catharsis and release from the emotional pain caused by keeping it inside.

From A letter to my daughter (1987):

While we may not have control over everything that happens to us in life, we have the power to choose how we respond to and deal with these events. By not letting events and experiences define us, we can maintain our sense of self and resilience, instead of being 'reduced' by them.

From Phenomenal woman: four poems celebrating women (1995):

The poem is a celebration of femininity and the female form. The poem also challenges conventional beauty standards that society imposes on women. The speaker of the poem says that although she does not fit the mould of a typical fashion model, her beauty lies in her confident, self-assured posture and presence. The poem emphasizes that beauty is not just about physical appearance, but it's also about the qualities and characteristics that make a woman truly phenomenal, not in how she conforms to societal expectations.

¹ Fresh Air, 'Fresh Air' Remembers Poet And Memoirist Maya Angelou, 2014.