of Porgy and Bess, joined the Harlem Writers Guild
in 1959, worked as the northern coordinator for
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in
1960, and helped write and produce, in collabora-
tion with Godfrey Cambridge, the famous fund-
raiser Cabaret for Freedom.
In 1961 Angelou moved to Africa with Vusumzi
Make, an African freedom fighter; as that relation-
ship began to fail, she worked at the University of
Ghana, the Ghanaian Broadcast Corporation, and
eventually at the Ghanian Times. In 1970, after the
publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
she became a writer-in-residence at the University
of Kansas, received a Yale University Fellowship,
and, in 1973, married Paul Du Feu. That marriage
ended in 1980. Maya Angelou has been a cook,
streetcar conductor, BLUES singer, dancer, madam,
actress, activist, teacher, playwright, writer, film
director, television writer, producer, acclaimed
public lecturer, autobiographer, poet, and writer
of children’s literature. She has produced six se-
rial autobiographies, numerous books of poetry,
recordings, film scripts, screenplays, essays, and
children’s books.
Beginning in 1970 with the acknowledged liter-
ary classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she
published more than 30 books, including Just Give
Me a Cool Drink of Water ’Fore I Die (1971), Gather
in My Name (1974), Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna
Fit Me Well (1975), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Get-
tin’ Merry like Christmas (1976), And Still I Rise
(1978), Phenomenal Woman (1978), The Heart of a
Woman (1981), Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing (1983),
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986),
Poems: Maya Angelou (1986), I Shall Not Be Moved
(1990), “On the Pulse of the Morning” (1993;
poem delivered at President Bill Clinton’s inaugu-
ration), Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
(1993), The Complete Collected Poems of Maya An-
gelou (1994), A Brave and Startling Truth (1995),
Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997), and A Song
Flung Up to Heaven (2003). In addition, Angelou’s
children’s stories include Mrs. Flowers (1986), Life
Does Not Frighten Me (1993), My Painted House,
My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and
His Magic (1996).
Angelou has been a prolific film script and
screenplay writer. Her list of achievements in this
category include Cabaret for Freedom (1960; mu-
sical review written and produced in collabora-
tion with Godfrey Cambridge), The Least of These
(1966; two-act drama), Blacks, Blues, Black (1968;
PBS documentary), All Day Long (1974; film
script, American Film Institute), The Legacy (1976;
Afro-American Television Special), The Inheritors
(1976; Afro-American Television Special), I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979; with Leonora
Thuna, film), Sister, Sister (1982; drama for NBC-
TV), and Down in the Delta (1990; film director).
She also has a music CD, Music, Deep Rivers in My
Soul (2003).
Angelou’s poetics are informed by her public
persona and several uniquely African and African-
American models: the African griot who performs
public poetic utterance on behalf of the group,
the African-American preacher, and the civil and
women’s rights political apologists. Academicians
and purists who fail to understand her style con-
sistently devalue her poetry as too popular, too
propagandistic, and too public. Most have failed to
take seriously “On the Pulse of the Morning,” one
of her best-known poems, as a highly performative
postcolonial protest poem that speaks back pow-
erfully to the white male poet Robert Frost, her
predecessor, whose universal “We” she displaces
with her catalog of vastly different American audi-
tors such as “The Sioux” and “The Catholic.” The
poems most beloved by her readers and listeners
are “And Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman,”
now much anthologized and reprinted. Critics of
Angelou’s poetry who judge it from within the rhe-
torical traditions of African and African-American
cultural traditions generally appreciate the orality,
representationality, and public dimension of her
poetry far more than those for whom poetry is an
individualist academic genre privately read and
privately experienced.
Most significant are Angelou’s serial autobiog-
raphies. Since there is no precedent in American
literary history of a writer, white or black, whose
predominant contribution to American letters
is in serial autobiographical form, the literaryAngelou, Maya 13