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Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was an American poet, memoirist, performer, and civil rights activist whose work articulates the Black experience with rare emotional clarity and moral authority.
She was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. After her parents divorced, Maya and her older brother were sent to live with their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, a racially segregated Southern town that would profoundly shape her worldview.
At age seven, Maya was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend, during a brief return to her mother’s care. She testified against her abuser, who was killed shortly after. She believed her voice had killed him. As a result of this belief, she became mute for nearly five years. During these years of mutism, she “listened” to the world. She developed an intense sensitivity to language, sound, and rhythm.
Following her recovery from mutism, Angelou moved to San Francisco, where she attended George Washington High School and studied dance and drama at the California Labor School. At just sixteen, she made history as San Francisco’s first African American female streetcar conductor. In the 1950s, she toured Europe and Africa as a professional dancer and singer, adopting the name Maya Angelou.
Angelou was deeply involved in the American Civil Rights Movement. She worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She served as the Northern Coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she contributed both her voice and organisational skills to the struggle for racial justice.
Her autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), brought her international recognition. It remains one of the most influential memoirs in American literature. Through poetry and prose, Angelou explored themes such as resilience, identity, womanhood, racism, oppression, and survival. Poems like “Still I Rise,” “Phenomenal Woman,” and “Caged Bird” celebrate Black identity and assert dignity in the face of historical and personal injustice.
Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at the age of 86. She is remembered as one of the most significant voices in modern American literature and a global symbol of courage, grace, and self-affirmation. Her writing is noted for its accessible diction, musical cadence, and affirmation of human dignity.
Poems of Maya Angelou
Caged Bird
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to clean the sky
“Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou is an allegorical reference to the Afro-American situation. By contrasting the free bird to the caged bird, the sky to the cage, endless opportunities to no opportunity, the poet subtly juxtaposes the life of a black American with that of a white American. The poem particularly provides, through the use of contrast, an insight into what the caged bird misses, that is, freedom. Beyond the surface level, it juxtaposes the opportunity-imbued life of the white Americans with the poor living conditions of the segregated black Americans.
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” is a poem voiced by a confident Black woman who speaks directly to forces that have historically attempted to silence, demean, and subdue her. These forces include racist historians, oppressive social systems, and individuals who take offence at her dignity, confidence, and success.
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