Maya Angelou was a woman who defied definition. Her life was a tapestry of experiences that ranged from being a dancer, actress, poet, civil rights activist, and author. She was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928, but she would later adopt the name, Maya Angelou.
Maya Angelou’s childhood was marked by hardship and tragedy. Her parents’ divorce, when she was just three years old, led to her being sent with her brother to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.
There, in the racially segregated South, she witnessed the daily struggles of black people and learned the importance of community support. Despite the difficulties, her grandmother instilled in her a love for life and a positive outlook that would stay with her throughout her life.
However, at the age of seven, her life was forever changed when she was molested by her mother’s boyfriend. After the man was found dead, Angelou stopped speaking for five and a half years, but she continued to find solace in her brother and her grandmother’s teachings.
Read Also: Lupita Nyong’o: Shining a Light on Women’s Empowerment in Hollywood and Beyond
Later, she joined her mother in San Francisco and became pregnant during her senior year of high school. She gave birth to her son, Guy, and supported him by working as a waitress and a cook.
Angelou’s marriage to Greek sailor Tosh Anus in 1952 was short-lived, but it marked the beginning of her singing career. Taking the stage name Maya Angelou, she recorded an album, Calypso Lady, and landed a role in the stage production of Porgy and Bess.
Despite her success, Angelou had always been interested in writing and poetry. She moved to Harlem, where she joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild, and began to pursue her writing more seriously.
Her journey as an artist and writer took her to Cairo, Egypt, where she worked as the editor of the English Language Weekly, the Arab Observer, and later to Ghana to work as an editor for the Ghanaian Times. It was during this time that Angelou found her voice and began writing about her experiences, including her journey to Africa and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
Angelou’s life experiences, both the joys and the struggles, became the inspiration for her memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, which was published in 1970. The book was a critical and commercial success and marked the beginning of her literary career.
In the following years, she published four more volumes of her autobiography.
Despite facing racism and discrimination throughout her life, Angelou became a beacon of hope and inspiration for many Americans. In 1993, she was asked by President Bill Clinton to compose a poem for his inauguration. Her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” was a call for unity and hope for the future.
In addition to her literary achievements, Angelou acted in films and television shows and hosted her own radio show on Oprah Winfrey’s XM Radio Network. She was also a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.
Maya Angelou passed away in 2014, but her legacy lives on. Her poetry and writing continue to inspire people around the world to celebrate life to the fullest, overcome challenges, and stand up for what is right. As Maya
Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
