Maya Angelou as a Poet and Storyteller

Writing the Voice and Passion of African American People

Aug 4, 2009

Maya Angelou is widely known as a poet. However, her oral delivery of a story is raw with energy and rich with endless passion.

Born April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Angelou has the life experiences, the heartaches and the victories, to give her poetry a rare breadth. In her first published book, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, the author speaks of the struggles of her young life as well as the challenges, joys and triumphs of being a single mother. The writing is poignant, emotionally charged.

Maya Angelou’s Early Years

Equally moving are the oral presentations that Maya Angelou gives. It is not uncommon for the beloved entertainer to leave listening audiences in the grip of her stories and recounts of her personal experiences. One personal incident that Maya Angelou struggled to confront and overcome was the molestation she experienced when she was seven years old.

Maya Angelou spent the first three years of her life living in St. Louis with her mother and her father. She adored both of her parents.

The couple divorced in 1931, three years after Maya was born. After they divorced, Maya and her brother, Bailey, were sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The move took Maya from the growing conflicts in her parents’ home to the heart of a racist South.

The Shaping of Southern Roots and Tragedy

It also took the artist closer to the love of her strong yet compassionate grandmother. While growing up in Arkansas, Bailey and Maya grew closer to one another as well. Although not a substitute for a loving mother and father, the relationships must have been like food to young Maya’s soul. The strength of community was evident throughout Stamps and nowhere more than in Maya’s grandmother’s home. It was a rich learning experience that was soon to take a sudden and dreadful change.

During a trip to Chicago where she lived with her mother for a brief period, Maya was molested by one of her mother’s boyfriends. Although Maya’s mother was a strong and open woman, Maya did not reveal the molestation to her mother. Instead she told her brother Bailey.

Soon other members of the family discovered the crime. To retaliate for the sexual assault, one of Maya’s uncles went after the guilty man and killed him, an act of violence for which Maya blamed herself. She didn’t speak again for six years.

Maya Angelou’s Teenage Years

Maya went to live with her grandmother again. It was under the older woman’s caring eye that Maya began to feel safe again. She resumed speaking when she was 13 years old. Even before she resumed speaking, words fascinated Maya. She played and danced with them. She soaked up information and had a passion for learning.

At 13 years old, Maya left the South and moved to live with her mother in San Francisco, California. She attended Mission High School. Three years later she became a mother to her son, Guy. It wasn’t long before Maya left home and took off down the arduous yet rewarding road of raising her son on her own.

It was 1944. The world was at war. Women were entering the work force in large numbers, and the Great Depression was less than a decade gone. Change was in the air.

Early Adulthood and Publication

During Guy’s early years, Maya worked as a cook and a waitress. She also began to pursue her passion for the arts, particularly dance. Many of her life experiences during this time would find themselves into her famous poems which would be penned later.

Before I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was published in 1970, Maya married and divorced. She also moved, with her son, to Cairo, Egypt where she lived for four years. She didn’t return to the United States until 1964, just in time to witness another large scale shift in thought and behavior that would manifest itself through the Civil Rights Movement.

The Civil Rights Movement and Education

During the Movement, Maya worked with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and served as Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1972, four years after Dr. King was assassinated, Maya Angelou wrote the screenplay for the film, Georgia, Georgia. Her worked earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Some of the artist’s more famous poems include “Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now,” “A Song Flung Up To Heaven,” “Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman.”

Maya Angelou has spoken around the world. She serves as the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She read her poem “On The Pulse Of The Morning” at former President Bill Clinton’s 1993 presidential inauguration.

Sources

The copyright of the article Maya Angelou as a Poet and Storyteller in Poetry is owned by Rhonda Campbell. Permission to republish Maya Angelou as a Poet and Storyteller in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.