Maya Angelou Summary

Maya Angelou Born April 4, 1928 St. Louis, Missouri Poet, author, actress, director "Her personal outreach to improve conditions for women in the Third World, primarily in Africa, has helpe... Read more

Angelou, Maya (1928—) American author Maya Angelou is known for her poetry, autobiography, and novels that lyrically articulate the experience of Africans Americans and give a voice to black pr... Read more

Biography EssayMaya Angelou's literary significance rests primarily upon her exceptional ability to tell her life story as both a human being and a black American woman in the twentieth century. Five ... Read more

Standing before the church congregation, little Marguerite Johnson realized that everyone was looking at her, and that she wasn't a white girl with long blonde hair. As she remembered that she was a g... Read more

Critical Essay by Alleen Pace Nilsen Besides the always present Angelou zest and style, a value of [Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas] is that it covers the pe... Read more

Critical Essay by Sidonie Ann Smith Maya Angelou's autobiography, like [Richard] Wright's, opens with a primal childhood scene that brings into focus the nature of the imprisoning enviro... Read more

Critical Essay by Lynn Sukenick Maya Angelou's rendering of three years of her innocent, awkward, and admirably nervy late adolescence in ["Gather Together in My Name"], the secon... Read more

Critical Essay by Frank Lamont Phillips [Maya Angelou begins Gather Together In My Name] with a brief history of Black American thought and culture after the second World War; it is not a precise hist... Read more

Critical Essay by Sandra M. Gilbert I can't help feeling that Maya Angelou's career has suffered from the interest her publishers have in mythologizing her. Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fi... Read more

In the following review, Stepto finds the poems in Angelou's third volume “woefully thin,” but significant because of their relation to her autobiographical writing. … And ... Read more

In the following interview, originally conducted in 1981, Angelou talks about her writing habits and the values by which she is guided, and those which she wishes to pass on. In 1969 Maya Angelou publ... Read more

In the following interview, originally conducted in 1983, Angelou discusses the influence of other writers, social conditions, and her own experience upon her work. Maya Angelou: Image making is very ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Erikson explores Angelou's remarks on Shakespeare, and their implications, challenging how they were employed by Lynne Cheney, Ronald Reagan's director of the N... Read more

In the following vignette, Slivinski Lisandrelli depicts Angelou's composition and presentation of the Clinton inauguration poem “In the Pulse of Morning.” In a country store in t... Read more

The Life and Literature of Maya Angelou 1928-"?"? "I love life" says Angelou, " I love living life and love the art of living, so I try to live my life as a poetic adventure, in everything I do." (... Read more

Maya Angelou Maya Angelou, also known as Marguerite Johnson was born on April 4, 1928 by Bailey and Vivian Johnson. Bailey was a naval dietitian and door man and Vivian was a realtor and nurse. Sh... Read more

Life Lessons Throughout life we go through many stepping stones, Maya Angelou's autobiographical essay "Graduation", was about more than just moving on to another grade. The unexpected events that o... Read more