what did Maya Angelou do for a living
Margaret Annie Johnson was born on 4th April 1928 in St.Louis Missouri. The second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian, and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer.
Angelo’s older brother Bailey Jr. Nicknamed Marguerite. Maya at age three Maya’s parent ended in calamitous marriage and her father moved them to Stamps, Arkansas, to stay with their grandmother Annie Henderson in Arkansas. During the Great Depression and world war II, Angelo’s grandmother prospered financially in an astonishing exception to the hush economies of the African-Americans of the day.
Because the general store she operated offered essential basic commodities. Four years later Bailey Maya’s father came to stamps without notice and return them to their mother’s custody in San Luis.
At age eight Maya was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend. A guy called Freeman, she told her brother who told the rest of the family. Freeman was rude guilty and was sentenced for only a day. He was assassinated four day after his release presumably by Maya’s uncle.
For nearly five years, Angela went mute believing the blame for the man’s death. Lead to Angelou extra bleached high exceptional memory her passion for books and reading. Her capacity to listen and understand the world around her. During this time of silence.
Shortly after Freeman’s murder. Angela and her brother were returned to the grandmother. Angelou acknowledges Mrs. Bertha Flowers a teacher and acquaintance of a family for helping her speak again. Bertha Flowers exposed her to writers including Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Douglas Johnson (historian) and James Weldon Johnson writers who influence her life and career.
As well as black female artists including Frances Harper, Anne Spencer and Jessie Redmon Fauset. When she was 14, Maya and her brother moved in again with mother who had since moved to Oakland, California. During second world war Maya attended George Washington High School in San Francisco.
And took classes in dance and drama at the California Labor School. Around the same time she became San Francisco’s first black female cable car conductor. In 2014 the conference of minority transportation officials awarded angular a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of his session build women who moved to the nation.
At age 17, she gave birth to her son Clyde who later changed his name to guy Johnson. Three weeks after completing school, Maya Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former sailor an aspiring musician in 1951. Despite the opposition of interracial ties at the time and her model disapproval.
Around the style she had taken modern dance lesson and encountered dancers and choreographers. Maya a new husband and her son relocated to New York city. To enable her to study African dance with Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus. Still one year later they returned to San Francisco. After Maya’s marriage came to an end in 1954. She performed professionally in San Francisco.
Including the Purple Onion nightclub where she sang and danced Calypso music. She then moved to San Dieogo worked as a nightclub waitress, fry cook in hamburger joints. Dinner cook in Creole restaurants tangled with drugs and prostitution taken the pains of cars.
And danced in a strip club saved her career. The Borden artist was discovered there by theater group Porgy and Bess. In 1957 riding on the success of Calypso, Angelo released a first album Miss Calypso which in 1996 was reissued as a C.D.
She appeared in an off-Broadway review that inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave in which Angelou sang her composition and performed them. In 1959 the single writer met novelist John Oliver Killens and at his origin moved to New York to focus on a writing career.
She joined and worked with the Harlem Writers Guild where she met several major African-American authors including John Henrik Clarke,Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, Julian Mayfield and was first published.
It was during this time that Angelou had the chance to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak inspired by his message. She resolved to become a part of the civil rights movements. She was given a role for Dr. King’s S.C.L.C as the Northern Coordinator.
Following Dr. King’s work. Angela moved to Cairo with her son where she wrote the weekly newspaper the Arab Observer. She moved to Accra, Ghana in West Africa. In 1962 and worked as a freelance writer a feature editor at the African review and taught at the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana.
Angelou returned to the United States in 1964 to help Malcolm X established the African American unity organization. Sadly the organization died too when Malcolm died. Encouraged by James Baldwin and Robert Loomis and editor, Maya set out to write an autobiography. Initially she declined the offer but eventually changed her mind and wrote “I know why the caged bird sings” in 1970.
The book chronicles Angela’s childhood and ends with her son’s birth. It gone immediate success and was nominated for a National Book Award. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is the first of Maya’s six autobiographies it is widely taught in schools. Although it has encountered criticism about its depiction of racism, sexual harassment and crime.
All the volumes include Gather together in my name 1974. which starts when Maya is 17 and a new mother singing and swinging and getting married like Christmas. A history of art all with Porgy and Bess in Europe and Africa.
The Heart of a Woman in 1981. A summary of Maya’s performing and writing career in New York. And her advocacy for the civil rights movement.
And All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes 1986. which narrates Maya’s travel in West Africa and a decision to return without her son to America.
It took the literary genius 15 years to write a final volume of our autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven 2002. the novel spans four years from the time.
Angela returned from Ghana in 1964 to the movement when she sat sown at her mother’s table and began to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1968. Maya Angelou was also a renowned widely read poet and her poetry was mostly praised more for her portrayals of black beauty and power of women and the human spirit condemning the Vietnam war. And demanding social justice for all done for her artistic virtue.
Yet Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie published in 1971. Was nominated for a 1972 Pulitzer Prize. One of her best-know peace on the pose of civil right in 1993 was written and recited at First inauguration of Bill Clinton in January 1993.
The occasion marked the first inaugural recitation since 1961. when Robert Frost delivered his poem the gift outright at John F Kennedy’s inauguration. Angela went on to win a Grammy Award, and best spoken word album for the audio version of the poem.
Angelou wrote her autobiography and poem. She continued a career in film and television. Maya Hollywood’s first black woman director. Wrote,produced,directed and stirred in stage. Film and television productions, some of her works includes Georgia, Georgia, , Sister, Sister (1982 film), Brewster’s plays, black-blues-blacks and how to make an American quilt.
She helped adopt her novel I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings for a T.v film of the same name in 1979. she also wrote and produced many award-winning documentaries including African-American in the arts a P.B.S special for which she was a word at the golden eagle award.
Maya was nominated twice for a Tony Award for acting, once for a Broadway debut and look away in 1973. Again for her role in roots in 1977. Angelou made her first film attempt are directed but down in the doubter in 1998.
Angelou published several children’s book. During the early in 1990’s including life doesn’t frighten me in 1993, which also featured Jean-Michel backwards work, my painted house, my friendly chicken and me in 1994.
And coffee on his magic in 1996. both collaborated with photographer Margret Khatma Clarke. Angelou poetry collection includes my Angelou is complete collected webs in 1994. And phenomenal woman in 1995
A selection of four poems from a poem originally published in 1978 in Cosmopolitan Magazine. The writer has also written occasional poems including a brave startling truth in 1995. Commemorating the founding of the United Nations, an amazing piece 2005 a poem reaching for the three lighting ceremony at the White House.
Angelou has written many essay collections wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now in 1993 includes comments and complaints memories thoughts and suggestions on Martyrs from faith to jealousy. She published the sister volume and Even the Stars Look Lonesome in 1997.
Angelou poetry often benefited from her performances of it. Angelou would recite her poems before spell bound audiences, during her lifetime in reality Angelou’s poetry can also be traced back to African-American oral traditions. Such as slave and work songs, particularly in use and personal narratives and emphasizing individual responses to struggle oppression and loss.
In addition to explored individual experiences. Angelou’s poems often respond to issues such a race and sex on a broader social and psychological scale. The multi-talented artist served on two presidential commissions in 1975 for Gerald Ford and 1977 for Jimmy Carter. In 2000 President Bill Clinton awarded Angelou the National Medal of Arts. In 2010 President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Highest Civil Decoration in the U.S.
Before her death Angelou received more than 50 honorary degrees. Maya Angelou has lectured at many American Colleges and Universities including the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Ghana, Wichita State University and California state University as Sacramento.
She has been a professor and writer in residence at Wake Forest University in Reynolds. Since the early 1980s she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in a year 2000. And in 2002 Hallmark Cards launched the Maya Angelou life mosaic collection, a series of greeting cards.
Following a long struggle with respiratory failure the literary giants died on the morning of 28 may 2014. While Angelou was reportedly in poor health and had recently cancel shadowed appearances. She was working on another book an autobiography about her encounters with national and world leaders.
During her memorial service at Wake Forest university. Musicians, entertainers and world leaders like Obama and Bill Clinton paid tributes to Angelou and condolences.
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