Maya 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 serial autobiographical volumes have been published to date (in...

Maya Angelou's literary significance rests upon her exceptional ability to tell her life story as both a human being and a black American woman in the twentieth century. Four serial autobiographical volumes have been published to date (in 1970, 1974,...

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 girl with dark skin, a gap between her teeth, and...

Maya Angelou (born 1928)--author, poet, playwright, stage and screen performer, and director--is best known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), which recalls a young African American woman's discovery of her self-confidence....