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Maya Angelou
editor at an English-language publication, the Arab Observer. Her marriage to Make ended in 1963, and Angelou moved to the newly independent African nation of Ghana, where her son was attending college. There, she worked as a teacher at the University of Ghana’s music and drama school and as a writer and editor for the African Review and the Ghanaian Times. She returned to Los Angeles in 1966, where she wrote a two-act play, The Least of These, and a ten-part television series, Black, Blues, Black (broadcast by National Educational Television in1968), that dealt with the role of African culture in American life.
Encouraged by such prominent writers as James Baldwin and Jules Feiffer to write the story of her own life in the same lilting, powerful style in which she performed, Angelou published her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in 1970. The story of the first 17 years of her life, up until the birth of her son, the memoir met with astonishing critical acclaim and popular success. Since then, Angelou has become one of the most celebrated writers in America and a distinctive voice of African-American culture in particular. Even as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings remained a bestseller well into the late 1990s, Angelou published four more volumes of autobiography: Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). Her performing career also continued, most notably in her debut performance on Broadway in Look Away (1975), for which she was nominated for a Tony Award, and her Emmy-nominated supporting turn in the hugely popular 1977 TV miniseries Roots, based on Alex Haley’s best-selling book.
Angelou also gained worldwide renown as a poet. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for her first volume of verse, entitled Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie. Her other books of poetry include And Still I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990). Her poetry became phenomenally popular, especially such favorites as “Phenomenal Woman,” and “Still I Rise.” In January 1993, Angelou became the first poet since Robert Frost, in 1961, to take part in a presidential inauguration ceremony when she wrote and read “On the Pulse of Morning,” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. The poem was later published in 1994’s The Complete Poems of Maya Angelou; her recording of the poem won Angelou a Grammy Award for Best Nonmusical Album. Angelou also read her poem, “A Brave and Startling Truth,” for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995.
In 1997, Angelou published a collection of essays, Even the Stars Look Lonesome. That year, she had three books on the New York Times bestseller lists for 10 consecutive weeks, with I Know How the Caged Bird Sings, The Heart of a Woman, and Even the Stars Look Lonesome. After directing some short films [next page]