9 questions · Literature
Between the ages of eight and thirteen Maya Angelou barely spoke a word. She had been raped as a child by her mother's boyfriend; she testified, the man was released and was found dead a few days later. The girl concluded that her voice had killed a man, and fell silent. What she did instead in those years was read. Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens, the Black poets of America, everything the library in Stamps, Arkansas, would give her and she learned whole works by heart. A friend of the family eventually brought her back to speech by reading poetry aloud and insisting that you only truly understand language in your own mouth. The next thirty years read like several lives running side by side. At sixteen she became San Francisco's first Black streetcar conductor, by sitting in the transit company's outer office until they hired her. She was a single mother, a cook, a dancer, a calypso singer, toured Europe with „Porgy and Bess“, lived in Cairo and in Ghana, worked as an editor and a lecturer. She was friends with Malcolm X and helped build his organisation; she coordinated a campaign for Martin Luther King. Both were murdered: King on her fortieth birthday. Writing came out of a dare. James Baldwin and an editor goaded her into writing an autobiography that would also be literature. „I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings“ appeared in 1969, a book about childhood, segregation and silence that stayed two years on the bestseller list, was taught in schools and regularly banned from libraries in conservative districts. Six more volumes followed. In 1993 she stood at the lectern at Bill Clinton's inauguration and read a poem: the first poet to do so since Robert Frost in 1961, and the first Black woman ever. She died in 2014 at 86 in North Carolina, where she had taught literature for more than thirty years. Eight years later her face appeared on an American quarter; she was the first Black woman to be given one.
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Speaking
She had testified, the man was released and was found dead soon afterwards. The child believed her voice had killed him.
💡 Did you know? In those years she read her way through the library and memorised poetry: the silence laid the ground for her language.
Streetcar conductor
The transit company did not hire Black staff: she sat in the outer office for days until they gave in.
💡 Did you know? In 1979 San Francisco gave her a commendation for it: the city's first Black streetcar conductor.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
It tells her childhood up to the birth of her son, whom she had at seventeen.
💡 Did you know? The title comes from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first Black poet read nationwide in the United States.
It was banned from libraries
The objections were to the account of the abuse and the frank language about sexuality.
💡 Did you know? It has been among the most challenged books in America for decades: which reliably pushed its sales up.
Bill Clinton's
She was the first poet in that role since Robert Frost in 1961 and the first Black woman ever.
💡 Did you know? Clinton came from Arkansas, as she did; he had read her book as a teenager.
Malcolm X's
She had met him in Ghana and returned to the United States for the work.
💡 Did you know? Weeks after she arrived, Malcolm X was shot. Four years later King was killed on her birthday: she did not celebrate it for decades.
A US coin
The „American Women Quarters“ series began with her.
💡 Did you know? She appears with her arms spread wide and a bird rising behind her: a nod to her most famous book.
As a dancer and singer
She toured Europe with the opera „Porgy and Bess“ in the late 1950s.
💡 Did you know? Her stage name „Maya“ came from her brother, who called her „my-a sister“ when they were children.
Foto: Tami Heilemann--Interior Staff · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Maya Angelou
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