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Biography:
Maya Angelou, born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis,
was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a poet, historian,
author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and
director. She lectures throughout the US and abroad and is Reynolds
professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North
Carolina since 1981. She has published ten best selling books and
numerous magazine articles earning her Pulitzer Prize and National
Book Award nominations. At the request of President Clinton, she
wrote and delivered a poem at his 1993 presidential inauguration.
Dr. Angelou, who speaks French, Spanish, Italian and West African
Fanti, began her career in drama and dance. She married a South
African freedom fighter and lived in Cairo where she was editor
of The Arab Observer, the only English-language news weekly
in the Middle East. In Ghana, she was feature editor of The African
Review and taught at the University of Ghana. In the 1960s,
at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Angelou became
the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
She was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Commission
and by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the
Observance of International Women's Year.
Maya Angelou, poet, was among the first African-American women to
hit the bestsellers lists with her "I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings." She held the Great Hall audience spellbound with stories
of her own childhood. She ranged from story to poem to song and
back again, and her theme was love and the universality of all lives.
"The honorary duty of a human being is to love," Angelou
said. She spoke of her early love for William Shakespeare's works,
and offered her audience excerpts from the poems of several African-Americans,
including James Weldon Johnson and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. But always,
she came back to love - and humanity. "I am human,; Angelou
said, quoting from her own work, "and nothing human can be
alien to me."
In the sixties, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
she became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and in 1975 she received The Ladies Home Journal
Woman of the Year Award in communications. She received numerous
honorary degrees and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to
the National Commission on the Observance of International Woman's
Year and by President Ford to the American Revolutionary Bicentennial
Advisory Council. She is on the board of the American Film Institute
and is one
of the few female members of the Director's Guild.
In the film industry, through her work in script writing and directing,
Maya Angelou has been a groundbreaker for black women. In television,
she has made hundreds of appearances. Her best-selling autobiographical
account of her youth, "I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings,"
won critical acclaim in 1970 and was a two-hour TV special on CBS.
She has written and produced several prize winning documentaries,
including "Afro-Americans in the Arts," a PBS
special for which she received the Golden Eagle Award. She was also
nominated for an Emmy Award for her acting in Roots, and her screenplay
"Georgia, Georgia" was the first by a black woman to be
filmed. In theatre, she produced, directed and starred in "Cabaret
for Freedom" in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New
York's Village Gate; starred in Genet's "The Blacks";
at St Mark's Playhouse; and adapted Sophocles "Ajax" which
premiered in Los Angeles in 1974. She wrote the original screenplay
for "Georgia, Georgia" and wrote and produced a 10-part
TV series on African traditions in American life. Maya Angelou is
currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem,
North Carolina.
Works:
Phenomenal Woman
Still I Rise
Men
Remembrance
A Conceit
Touched By An Angel
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Passing Time
The Lesson
When You Come To Me
Links:
www.Maya Angelou Dedication Page.com
Maya
Angelou
Maya
Angelou
Circle Association's
Maya Angelou Page
www.Maya Angelou Home Page.com
www.WIC Biography Maya Angelou.com
www.Maya Angelou Information/inspiration Page.com
www.Maya Angelou: Teachers Resource File.com
Maya Angelou.com
www.Karenís Maya Angelou Page.com
Criticism
Angelou'sfirst work of literature, I Know Why The Caged Bird
Sings, is anautobiography. Angelou's sometimes disruptive life
inspired her to write this book. It truly reflects the essence of
her struggle to overcome the restrictions that were placed upon
her in a hostile environment. Angelou writes with a twist of lyrical
imagery along with a touch of realism. The title of this book is
taken from the poem "sympathy" by the great black poet,
Paul Laurence Dunbar. Sidonie Ann Smith praised Angelou, saying
that, "like Richard Wright, she opens with a primal childhood
scene that brings into focus the nature of the imprisoning environment
from which the self will seek escape" (Smith 10). This work
displays on impulse towards transcendence and is one of the most
aesthetically satisfying autobiographies written by a black woman.
Her second book, Gather Together In My Name, centers on Angelou
and her brother's move away from their
grandmother. This transition takes place from her later teen years
through her mid twenties, focusing on her experiences as a mother,
a Creole cook, a madam, a tap dancer, a prostitute and a chauffeurette.
Also in the novel, Angelou writes about an affair with a customer
at a restaurant and her brief experience with drugs. Annie Gottlieb
states that Angelou "writes like a song, and like the truth"
(Gottlieb 23). Another reader, Doris Grumbach, states, "it
is apparent that Angelou is keen, sharp, earthy, imaginative, lyrical,
spiritually bold, and seems destined for
distinction" (Grumbach 12). But according to Frank L. Phillips,
"Maya Angelou is not the stylist that Himes is,
nor a Richard Wright" (Phillips 12). Angelou concludes this
book with an appeal to her audience for forgiveness for
the accounts of her wretched past.
Angelou's third novel, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry
Like Christmas, covers about five years of her life
from the ages of 22 to 27. During this period she was married to
Tosh Angelos, an ex-sailor who is intelligent, kind, reliable and
white. He was a temporary source of stability for herself and her
son, but after five years of marriage she found that she wasn't
suited for it. She divorced him and returned to her career as a
dancer. Shortly afterwards she joined the European touring production
of Porgy and Bess. She devotes over half the book to describing
the tour. She talks about how the guilt over her neglect of her
son nearly drove her to suicide, but her love for life and of motherhood
and of dancing sent her running home. June Jordon states that this
novel "frequently borders on a light and fantastical style
of comic opera.....that is sometimes delightful reading, and sometimes
not" (Jordan 13). In Alleen P. Nilsen's opinion "this
book might make an exciting introduction to Angelou's poetry"
(Nilsen 14).
The title of her fourth novel The Heart of a Women, comes
from a poem that was written during the Harlem
Renaissance by the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson. Once again Angelou
is in search of her identity and place. This book focuses largely
from the perspective and psychological depth that almost matches
the quality of the first novel. Now in her thirties, Angelou reflects
on her son Guy, the civil rights movement, marriage, and her own
writing. During this period she becomes more committed to her writings
and is inspired by her friend, John Killens, a distinguished social
activist author. Also during that time she made a commitment to
promote black civil rights examining the nature of racial oppression,
racial progress and racial integration. Adam David Miller states
that this is a book that "covers one of the most exciting periods
in recent African and Afro-American history" (Miller 23).
Angelou's fifth autobiography, All God's Children Need Traveling
Shoes, exemplifies an awareness of an even greater sense of
connectedness with her African past. She dedicates this book to
Julian Mayfield and Malcolm X who both were passionately and earnestly
in search of their symbolic home. After her visit to Ghana she became
immediately swept into an adoration for the homeland that she adopted
as her own. She states, "our people had always longed for home....In
the yearning, heaven and Africa were inextricably combined....So
I had finally come home." (pg. 19) One reviewer, Barbara T.
Christian describes the book as "a thoughtful yet spirited
account of one Afro-American woman's journey into the land of her
ancestors." She goes on to say that it is "an important
document drawing more much needed attention to the hidden history
of a people both African and American." Also according to Barbara
T. Christian, "Angelou's sojourn in Africa strengthens her
bond to her ancestral home even as she concretely experiences her
distinctiveness as an Afro-American" (Christian 23).
Maya Angelou speaks numerous languages fluently and has traveled
abroad to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She has worked as
a journalist for foreign publications and has been honored by the
academic world, receiving the Yale University Fellowship and being
named a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar in Italy. She has taught
at the University of Ghana, the University of Kansas, and currently
holds a lifetime chair as Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of American
Studies at Wake Forest University. Among her many accomplishments
are the Woman of the Year Award in Communications of the Ladies'
Home Journal and nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Awards.
Maya Angelou is a wonderful speaker and is highly sought after on
the lecture circuit.
The life and work of Maya Angelou are fully intertwined. Angelou's
poetry and personal narratives form a larger picture wherein the
symbolic Maya Angelou rises to become a point of consciousness for
African-American people, and especially for black women seeking
to survive masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and Black
lack of power. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings has generated
a wealth of critical literature as well as solid recognition for
Maya Angelou. Many liked The Heart of a Women; it has also
received critical acclaim. In any case all of Maya
Angelou's autobiographical novels are widely read and taught in
schools and universities and continue to inspire lively critical
responses. Angelou's poetry and screenplays are less well known
and critics have not been generous when it comes to criticizing
them. Some have referred to her poetry as "too simple"
and suggest that they are unworthy of inclusion in the established
canon of American poetry, which is a body of literature that is
largely written by white men and women. But Angelou's audiences,
composed mostly of black women, aren't affected by what white critics
have to say about her work. Angelou's response to her critics may
be, "If that canon, that body of literature written largely
by white men, acknowledges my work, then well and good. I accept
this honor" (7).
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