Writer · 1928 – 2014
Maya Angelou
Key Takeaways
- Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a landmark memoir.
- Her work gives powerful voice to Black womanhood, trauma and resilience.
- She was active in the civil rights movement alongside its leaders.
- She recited her poem 'On the Pulse of Morning' at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration.
Maya Angelou turned a hard life into some of the most affirming literature of her age. Her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings broke new ground in American letters, telling the truth of a Black girl’s childhood with unflinching honesty and grace.
A voice that rose
Angelou’s writing gave voice to trauma, racism and resilience — never more memorably than in her poem “Still I Rise.” Before she was famous as a writer she had been a dancer, singer, actress and journalist, even living for a time in Ghana, and all of it fed her art. She worked in the civil rights movement alongside Martin Luther King Jr.
A national poet
In 1993 Angelou recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the presidential inauguration, becoming a national voice of hope. Heir to the testimony of Frederick Douglass and a peer of Toni Morrison, this writer of the modern era remains among the most quoted and beloved authors in America.
Influence
Angelou expanded American literature by telling the truth of Black women's lives with honesty and grace, and became a beloved public voice of dignity and hope.
Legacy
Honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she remains one of the most widely read and quoted American writers.
Major Works
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- Still I Rise
- On the Pulse of Morning
Connections
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Maya Angelou?
Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was an American writer, poet and activist, best known for her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
What is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings about?
It is the first volume of Angelou's autobiography, recounting her childhood in the segregated American South, including trauma and her path to finding her voice.
Citations & Sources
People Like Maya
Martin Luther King Jr.
95Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who championed nonviolent resistance to racial injustice and became the most prominent voice of the movement for equality in the United States.
Why A civil rights leader with whom Angelou worked in the freedom struggle.
Frederick Douglass
84Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, orator and writer who escaped slavery to become the most powerful voice of the antislavery movement and one of the foremost advocates for equality and human rights in the 19th century.
Why An earlier writer whose memoir of bondage and freedom prefigured Angelou's autobiography.
Toni Morrison
81Toni Morrison was an American novelist whose richly poetic explorations of Black American life — above all Beloved — won her the Pulitzer Prize and made her the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Why A contemporary writer who also brought Black American experience to the centre of literature.
Edgar Allan Poe
81Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and poet, a master of the macabre, who invented the detective story, helped shape the modern short story and science fiction, and gave the world haunting tales and poems such as "The Raven".
Why Also a writer & poet · Active in the same era
Herman Melville
80Herman Melville was an American novelist and poet whose Moby-Dick, neglected in his lifetime, is now regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and a towering achievement of American literature.
Why Also a writer & poet · Active in the same era
Emily Dickinson
80Emily Dickinson was an American poet who lived in near-seclusion and published almost nothing in her lifetime, yet whose nearly 1,800 original, compressed poems made her, after her death, one of the most important poets in the English language.
Why Also a poet & writer · Active in the same era