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Maya Angelou (/ ˈ æ n dʒ ə l oʊ / ⓘ AN-jə-loh; [1] [2] born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning ...
- "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
- "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. "
- "If you're always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."
- "Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud."
But several of her poems are well-known, and she was popular as a poet during her lifetime and a couple of the poems that follow, at the very least, remain famous. Below, we’ve picked some of Maya Angelou’s very best poems, as a ‘way in’ to her work. ‘ Still I Rise ’.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces—particularly with racism and self-affirmation—in the Southern United States.
- Maya Angelou was the first Black woman to conduct a cable car in San Francisco. As a teenager, Angelou earned a scholarship to study dance and drama at the California Labor School, but she briefly dropped out when she was 16 to become a cable car conductor in San Francisco.
- Porgy and Bess took Maya Angelou to Europe in the 1950s. After actors spotted her singing in a nightclub and asked if she could dance, Angelou got her foot in the door to join a touring company for Porgy and Bess.
- Maya Angelou spoke six languages. Angelou’s time in Europe also gave her the chance to hear other languages, and she paid very close attention. Ultimately, she learned to speak French, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, and Fante (a dialect of Akan native to Ghana).
- Maya Angelou didn’t speak for five years in her youth. When she was just a child, Angelou was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. She told her brother about the incident, and was later called to testify against the man in court, which led to his conviction.
Jun 8, 2024 · Maya Angelou was a renowned author and poet, whose writing transcended the bounds of gender and race. She was the first African-American woman to write and publish a best-selling autobiography and is widely considered one of the most influential authors of all time.
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May 28, 2014 · Loving the world, Maya Angelou also knows its cruelty and offers up her autobiography as an extraordinary mixture of innocence and depravity, of elegy and celebration.
