The Life and Literary Career of Maya Angelou

Some people find inspiration in athletes, singers, or musicians. For me, it is an author who inspires me. Maya Angelou is my inspiration. She is an amazing author, women’s rights activist, and her life story is very inspirational. Maya Angelou overcame significant challenges in her life to achieve success. Originally known as Marguerite Annie Johnson, she grew up in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, with her mother Vivian Johnson and her father Bailey Johnson. Her mother was a nurse and her father served in the navy.

However, things didn’t turn out as planned. Ms. Angelou grew up in a single-parent home after her parents divorced. She and her brother Bailey moved in with their grandmother in racially divided Stamps, Arkansas. Ms. Angelo faced racial discrimination in this environment. Despite these challenges, her grandmother instilled in her a sense of pride and faith.

Maya and her brother were eventually sent back to St. Louis to live with their mother Vivian Johnson. There, Maya suffered a traumatic event: she was raped by one of her mother’s friends at the age of 8. This tragedy silenced Maya; she became mute for nearly five years. Failing to cope with her withdrawn demeanor, Maya was sent back to Stamps. It was here that a woman named Mrs. Flowers came to Maya’s aid. With her help, Maya regained the self-respect, pride, and confidence she had lost.

Once Maya had received this assistance, she and her brother returned to St. Louis to live with their mother. She attended Mission High School and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School, where she learned much of what would shape her future activism. Maya dropped out of school in her teens to become San Francisco’s first African American female cable car conductor. Eventually, she made the decision to return to high school. However, during her senior year, she became pregnant. Maya gave birth to her son, Guy, just a few weeks after graduation. At 16, she left home and faced the challenges of being a single mother, supporting herself and her son by working as a waitress and cook. Nonetheless, she did not abandon her gifts for music, dance, performance, and poetry.

In 1952, she married a Greek sailor, Anastasios Angelopoulos. When she began her career as a nightclub singer, she adopted the professional name Maya Angelou, combining her childhood nickname with a form of her husband’s name. Though her marriage ended, Maya’s career flourished. Between 1954 and 1955, she toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. Having composed song lyrics and poems for many years, Maya was growing increasingly interested in developing her skills as a writer by the end of the 1950s. She moved to New York and joined the Harlem Writers Guild, alongside many other young black writers and artists associated with the Civil Rights Movement.

In New York, she fell in love with the South African civil rights activist, Vusumzi Make, and in 1960, the couple moved, with Angelou’s son, to Cairo, Egypt. Angelou served as an editor for The Arab Observer. Angelou and Guy later moved to Ghana, where she joined a thriving group of African American expatriates. She then worked as an assistant administrator at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama, worked as a feature editor for The African Review, and wrote for The Ghanaian Times and the Ghanaian Broadcasting Company. Angelou had studied many different things and languages. For example, she mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and the West African language Fanti. She met with the American dissident leader Malcolm X when he visited Ghana.

Maya Angelou returned to America in 1964 with the intention of helping Malcolm X build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated and his plans for a new organization died with him. Angelou became active in the Civil Rights Movement, working more closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King encouraged her to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His assassination left her devastated. With the help of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she found solace in writing and began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Seemingly overnight, Angelou became a national figure. She wrote many books, including a screenplay. The screenplay she wrote was called Georgia, and was published in 1972. Mrs. Angelou then became a known Civil Rights leader, and is regarded as one of the best. She has authored over ten books.

Maya Angelou is an inspiration to me because she grew up with a hard life and overcame many obstacles. Dealing with family struggles, racial problems, and work issues, she has overcome a lot and I look up to her.

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