What You Should Know About Maya Angelou- Part I, Her Early Life

Maya Angelou was a remarkable woman whose life’s work has left a mark in history, both in literature as well as society. Her poetry, plays, autobiographies and much more have become a reference for modern-day social movements for gender and racial equality. There’s so much to say about her, but we’ve summarised the important things you should know about her in this article:

• Her name was Marguerite Johnson, but she changed it to Maya Angelou because it sounded more original. “Maya’ was her brother’s nickname for her which meant ‘sister’ and ‘Angelou’ was from her married last name, which she kept even after divorce.
  
• As a child, Maya discovered the power of her voice. She was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend Freeman and after confessing it to her brother she testified in court condemning Freeman to one day of sentence. After being set free he was murdered by who Maya presumed was a member of her family. She believed he died because of the power of her voice and didn’t speak for five years after that. It was only thanks to a teacher that introduced her to authors like Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe that she found her voice again through literature.
  
• After this, she moved to San Francisco on a dancing scholarship only to drop out at 14 to become the first African American cable car driver. During her time in San Francisco, she married a Greek man and became a dancer. She performed at clubs until she moved to New York in 1958 where she wrote and starred in off-broadway plays as well as joining the Harlem Writers. This was before moving to Cairo to work as an editor for the Arab Observer.
  
• Back in the USA, she was a huge influence and participant in the Civil Rights Movement. Maya befriended Malcolm X and was helping him build his Organization of Afro-American Unity, but he died soon after. She was also friends and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. until he was assassinated on her birthday in 1968. Due to this she never celebrated her birthday again, instead, she would send flowers to his widow.
  
• This same year, when she was at a dinner party with her friend James Baldwin, she found the inspiration to write what would be the first installment of a seven-volume autobiography ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings’. This book would be published in 1969 and be considered a must-read book for generations to come.

No one can tell you what her life was like better than her, so we invite you to explore her work on our online library www.viewermax.com.