Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelouwas an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells of her...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 April 1928
CitySt. Louis, MO
CountryUnited States of America
The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.
It is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history.
I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, 'I write for money.' Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.
I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
A woman needs someone she can trust, someone who laughs when she laughs, but who has different ideas so she can learn from and teach to them. She needs someone who will stand up with her and encourage her to be a woman-not just a female. See where you are, admit what you know, and what you need, and search for a sister friend.
There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in Black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.
In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.
Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.
I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people.
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.
Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits.
Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.
Shakespeare must be a black girl.