When Maya Angelou speak people listen because she is able to connect with them at that time. It is like watching a flower bloom such as a ,"morning glory". It awakens in the morning and opens to whatever the day has to offer and prayerfully keep its' petals. She will slow you down long enough to assimulate and associate her heart felt messages.
Words have power and everyone perception is not the same.
In the beginning the Word was God! It became a spoken word but we have used words to destroy nations and relationships.
Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis. She is an author, poet, historian, conductor, actor, singer, songwriter, playwright, film director, and civil rights activist. She comes from a broken home in a segregated rural area of St. Louis, Missouri. She was raped at eight. Even in all these circumstances she still managed to become San Francisco's first black woman conductor. She was the first black woman to have an original screenplay produced in 1971, Georgia. She wrote several volumes of poetry. Some of her composed music was even recorded by B.B. King. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her acting in Roots and Georgia. She was fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, and West African Fanti. One of Maya Angelou's books, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is an account of her youth. It describes the trauma of being raped as a child, the violent death of her attacker, and her refusal to speak for five years. It was the target of many censorship attacks. In one case, Texas parents thought that the book was "pornographic" and it was a "just plain filth." The book was also filmed especially for CBS. Now, Ms. Angelou lectures throughout the United States and abroad and recently she has been named a Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
Maya Angelou was among the first African-American women to hit the bestsellers lists with her "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," and she made the Great Hall audience spellbound with stories of her own childhood. She ranged from story to poem and to song and back again. Her theme was love and the universality of all lives. Angelou said, "The honorary duty of a human being is to love". She spoke of her love for William Shakespeare's works, and offered her audience excerpts from the poems of African-Americans, including James Weldon Johnson and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. But every time, she came back to love - and humanity. "I am human," quoting from my own work, Angelou said, "And nothing human can be alien to me".
Due to all these extraordinary literary and artistic activities she became famous and earned a name among the artists all over the world.
Maya Angelou's poetry becomes famous because of her hardships of life. In her poetry it seems as if she is telling her story.
Her story goes like this, Maya Angelou came into this world on 4th April 1928 when she was 3 years old her parents get separated and she along with her 4 years old brother was sent to live with their grandmother. After four years the children were returned back to their mother. Angelou at the age of eight admitted that her mother's boyfriend had abused her and that person was killed by Angelou's uncles. After this incident Angelou was in great shock and she started the poetry and started to believe in her words and thoughts.
When she was staying in summers with her father in 1940, she was beaten by her father's girlfriend and at last she ran away and stayed a month in the house of homeless children. After a month she contacted her mother and went back to San Francisco (to her mother). At the age of 16 she had a son named Guy Raphael Johnson, who also turned out to be poet afterward in his life. She started to sing in order to support herself.
So these are some hardships that she faced with courage and is also reflected in her poetry that strengthen her words and this is why it is liked by every one as it touched the hearts of those who listen to her poetry.
The two words, Dignity and beauty, come first to my mind when I think of the writings of Maya Angelou, an African American autobiographer and poetess. Many came to know about her writings when she delivered her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" in 1993. Her six-volume autobiography, poetry and her essays are all a source of delights to the mind and ear, when read aloud.
Maya Angelou has made a wonderful gift for a phenomenal woman in our life as mother, sister, daughter, lover, wife, friend, teacher ect. Lines of the poem alternate with colorful images of women from the work of post-impressionist Paul Gaugin. .
