World News Portal

Maya Angelou

 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Maya Angelou had an illustrious career as a poet, singer, dancer and director
• She died at home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, her literary agent said
• One of her most famous works was "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

 

Angelou had been "frail" and suffering from heart problems, the agent said.

Angelou's legacy is twofold. She leaves behind a body of important artistic work that influenced several generations. But the 86-year-old was praised by those who knew her as a good person, a woman who pushed for justice and education and equality.

In her full life, she wrote staggeringly beautiful poetry. She also wrote a cookbook and was nominated for a Tony. She delivered a poem at a presidential inauguration. In 2010, President Barack Obama named her a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.

She was friends with Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and inspired young adults and world celebrities.

Her lasting contribution to literature, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." bore witness to the brutality of a Jim Crow South, portraying racism in stark language. Readers learned of the life of Marguerite Ann Johnson (Angelou's birth name) up to the age of 16: how she was abandoned by her parents and raped by her mother's boyfriend. She was homeless and became a teen mother.

Its publication was both daring and historic, given the era of its debut in 1969.

"All of the writers of my generation must honor the ground broken by Dr. Maya Angelou," author Tayari Jones posted on her Facebook page Wednesday.

"She told a story that wasn't allowed to be told," Jones said. "Now, people tell all sorts of things in memoir, but when she told the truth, she challenged a taboo -- not for shock value, but to heal us all."

Black American novelist Julian Mayfield is said to have described the autobiography as "a work of art which eludes description."

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was an international bestseller and nominated for a National Book Award in 1970.

"If you want to know what it was like to live at the bottom of the heap before, during and after the American Depression, this exceptional book will tell you," hailed British critic Paul Bailey.

The book became a mainstay of student reading lists, much to the chagrin of some authorities. The book has reportedly been banned numerous times.

Angelou's mastery of literature trumped those who tried to keep her down. She knew that storytelling always won in the end.

"I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading," Angelou once said.

Opinion: How Maya Angelou gave me life

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

On Wednesday, people of all ages and backgrounds took to social media to say what her life's work meant to them.

Adrian Sean of Detroit posted a CNN iReport tribute, saying, "I cannot describe the feeling I had when I read 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' for the first time, and knew someone else in the world had been through extreme hardships just as I had.

"She not only survived, but she thrived just by being herself," she said. "Maya Angelou was and still is a teacher, a mentor, and a friend to me. Her impact on my life will always have a special place in my heart."

Angelou had been "frail" and suffering from heart problems, the agent said.
The words Maya Angelou left behind

Angelou's legacy is twofold. She leaves behind a body of important artistic work that influenced several generations. But the 86-year-old was praised by those who knew her as a good person, a woman who pushed for justice and education and equality.

In her full life, she wrote staggeringly beautiful poetry. She also wrote a cookbook and was nominated for a Tony. She delivered a poem at a presidential inauguration. In 2010, President Barack Obama named her a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.

She was friends with Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and inspired young adults and world celebrities.
Maya Angelou: Poet, novelist and actress
Maya Angelou: In her own words
2013: Maya Angelou discusses MLK's dream

She sang calypso. She lived through horrors.

Her lasting contribution to literature, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," bore witness to the brutality of a Jim Crow South, portraying racism in stark language. Readers learned of the life of Marguerite Ann Johnson (Angelou's birth name) up to the age of 16: how she was abandoned by her parents and raped by her mother's boyfriend. She was homeless and became a teen mother.

Its publication was both daring and historic, given the era of its debut in 1969.

"All of the writers of my generation must honor the ground broken by Dr. Maya Angelou," author Tayari Jones posted on her Facebook page Wednesday.

"She told a story that wasn't allowed to be told," Jones said. "Now, people tell all sorts of things in memoir, but when she told the truth, she challenged a taboo -- not for shock value, but to heal us all."

Black American novelist Julian Mayfield is said to have described the autobiography as "a work of art which eludes description."

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was an international bestseller and nominated for a National Book Award in 1970.

"If you want to know what it was like to live at the bottom of the heap before, during and after the American Depression, this exceptional book will tell you," hailed British critic Paul Bailey.

The book became a mainstay of student reading lists, much to the chagrin of some authorities. The book has reportedly been banned numerous times.

Angelou's mastery of literature trumped those who tried to keep her down. She knew that storytelling always won in the end.

"I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine ... before she realizes she's reading," Angelou once said.

Opinion: How Maya Angelou gave me life

On Wednesday, people of all ages and backgrounds took to social media to say what her life's work meant to them.

Adrian Sean of Detroit posted a CNN iReport tribute, saying, "I cannot describe the feeling I had when I read 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' for the first time, and knew someone else in the world had been through extreme hardships just as I had.

"She not only survived, but she thrived just by being herself," she said. "Maya Angelou was and still is a teacher, a mentor, and a friend to me. Her impact on my life will always have a special place in my heart."


A poem before Clinton's inauguration
Author Tananarive Due, the Cosby Endowed Chair for the Humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta, remembered Angelou's reading at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993. She was the first poet to do so since Robert Frost in 1961. More notably, she was the first black woman to have such a prominent role. The poem, "On the Pulse of Morning," celebrates diversity of all people in America.

Again, Angelou was influencing popular culture. Her reading probably introduced a younger generation to her and her pivotal body of work.

"I felt like I belonged in my own nation -- at last," recalled Due. "She had a tremendous gift for choosing the right language to give us peace and power."


In CNN's 2009 interview, Angelou spoke in the way that she came to be famous for, each sentence a crescendo of emotion, a call to everyone to act and to be better.

"Our country needs us all right now to stand up and be counted. We need to try to be great citizens. We are necessary in this country, and we need to give something -- that is to say, go to a local hospital, go to the children's ward and offer to the nurse in charge an hour twice a month that you can give them reading children's stories or poetry," she said. "And go to an old folks' home and read the newspaper to somebody. Go to your church or your synagogue or your mosque, and say, 'I'd like to be of service. I have one hour twice a month.'

Some of Angelou's most powerful speeches

• "Look where we've all come from ... coming out of darkness, moving toward the light," Angelou once said. "It is a long journey, but a sweet one, bittersweet."
• "You'll be surprised at how much better you will feel," she said. "And good done anywhere is good done everywhere."