Profile of Maya Angelou on Famous Like Me

Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA) is an African-American poet, memoirist, actress, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her autobiographical writings I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has published numerous other collections of verse.

Life

Angelou was an unwed mother. To support her young son, Clyde Bailey "Guy" Johnson, born in San Francisco, she danced in night clubs, conducted cable cars, cooked at a Creole cafe, removed paint at a body shop, and was a madam and prostitute at a San Diego brothel. However, she soon returned home, to Stamps, Arkansas, then Louisville, Kentucky.

While working in a record shop in 1950, Marguerite met and married Tosh Angelos, a Greek-American sailor. They lived in relative comfort in Los Angeles, California, but fell out of love and divorced after a few years.

Angelou's early activism led Martin Luther King, Jr. to request that she become the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960's. In the early and mid-1960s, Angelou was an editor for newspapers in Africa, including The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt and The African Review in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the United States in the 1970s, being named a member of the Bicentennial Commission by Gerald Ford and a member of the Commission for International Woman of the Year by Jimmy Carter. She was given a lifetime appointment in 1981 as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She also read her poem On the Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton's Presidential inauguration in 1993, at his request. In 1976, Angelou became a grandmother when her son, Guy, fathered Colin Ashanti Johnson.

Careers

Angelou has had success as a director, producer, actor, and author for stage, television, and film. She wrote the screenplay and score for the film Georgia, Georgia in 1971; the screenplay was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for Look Away (her debut role), and an Emmy for her role in the 1977 miniseries Roots. She was the first African-American woman admitted to the Directors Guild of America.

Pop Culture

Comedian David Alan Grier spoofed Angelou while hosting the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. Conceptually, the gag was that Angelou (played by Grier) had been hired as the new spokesperson for Pennzoil motor oils. In character, Grier read a poem dramatically, using Afrocentrism as an analogy for motor oil. The bit was repeated during the same episode with Grier-as-Angelou hawking Froot Loops breakfast cereal. Angelou is said to have requested a copy of the sketch on videotape because she so enjoyed it.

External Links

• Official website
• Literary Encyclopedia (in-progress)
• Voices from the Gaps biography
• PAL biography
• National Hall of Women biography
• oprah.com
• PBS
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
• Maya Angelou on Poets.org Biography, poems, and related essays from the Academy of American Poets
• 2005 Commencement Address, Michigan State
• RISE: The Maya Angelou Fanlisting
• 1987 Audio Interview with Maya Angelou - RealAudio (21 min 32 s)
• 2005 "Identity" interviews with Michael Silverblatt, Bookworm
• On Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman
• Maya Angelou at the Internet Movie Database

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Maya Angelou