Maya Angelou

Lino portrait by Carine

Dr Maya Angelou will be remembered for her words of wisdom and her ability to harness anger as a force for good. But one of America’s most prolific writers and performers had an incredibly eventful life.

Born as Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis in 1928, Maya Angelou was her chosen stage name. Initially she “worked as a shake dancer in nightclubs, fry cook in hamburger joints” and other low paying jobs. These experiences helped her achieve her many accolades: touring with ‘Porgy & Bess’, an Emmy nomination, a Pulitzer nomination, a Tony Award, and a Grammy for best audiobook. She was also San Francisco’s first female cable car driver and the first black woman to have a screenplay produced. On top of that, she managed to write and direct for TV and film, be a feature editor for the African Review, and write music and cookbooks. Plus, she spoke 6 languages and read at Clinton’s presidential inauguration. In her final years, however, after an event-packed career and living in Cairo, Ghana and all over the USA, she eventually settled into a job she loved: teaching.

“Life loves the liver of it”.

Maya Angelou

In the sixties, Dr Maya was involved in the civil rights movement. She worked and became ‘dear’ friends with greats like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. When Dr King got assassinated on her birthday, April 4th 1968, she stopped celebrating it for years. Instead, she would send flowers to his widow.

Her younger years are described in her first autobiographical work ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ (1969). In it, she recounts how her mother’s boyfriend raped her when she was 8 and that her uncles killed him for his crime. She was so affected that she stopped talking for five years. By 17 she was mother to a boy named Guy. This first book, and the many that followed it, are steeped in references to larger suffering: the experiences of African-Americans in the US. Her poetry and works deal with pain, rebellion, slavery, guilt and survival. Watching her you hear that her deep voice can carry the emotions of generations.

And Still I Rise, read by Maya Angelou in 1987

To her “words are things” we should be careful with. She recognised the humanity in people and the opportunities in life. Anger was something to be harnessed.

In an Iconoclasts episode on Youtube, she speaks to Dave Chapelle and tells him about the time she made Tupac cry just through the honesty of her words. She was powerful.

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