Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist who wrote 36 books, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a bestseller about her childhood sexual abuse. She rose to prominence with her book and activism, and became a role model for many people. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1928, and spent much of her childhood with her grandmother in rural Arkansas. She was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was seven, and he was killed shortly after. She became mute for several years, and found solace in reading and writing. She moved to San Francisco with her mother when she was 13, and became the first Black female streetcar conductor in the city. She also worked as a dancer, singer, fry cook, sex worker, and nightclub performer. She married a Greek sailor, Tosh Angelos, in 1951, and had a son, Guy, the next year. She divorced Angelos in 1954, and pursued a career in show business. She toured Europe and Africa in the cast of Porgy and Bess, and recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, in 1957. She also wrote and performed in an off-Broadway production of Calypso Heat Wave. She became involved in the civil rights movement in the late 1950s, and met Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She moved to Egypt in 1961 with a South African activist, Vusumzi Make, and worked as a journalist and editor. She later moved to Ghana with her son, and joined a community of African American expatriates. She befriended James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969. The book was critically acclaimed and nominated for a National Book Award. It also made her one of the first Black women to write a best-selling nonfiction book. She continued to write more autobiographies, as well as poetry, essays, and children's books. She also worked as a professor, a scriptwriter, a director, and a producer. She recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming the first poet to do so since Robert Frost in 1961. She received many awards and honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, and three Grammy Awards. She died in 2014 at the age of 86.