The Life and Achievements of Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou became and died a phenomenal author because of her esoteric depictions of life through the themes of race and her distaste for the social class system. Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis as Marguerite Annie Johnson (Williamson). Following her parents’ divorce, Angelou and her brother Bailey were sent to live with their deeply religious grandmother Annie Johnson. Bailey gave Marguerite the nickname Maya at a young age. During Angelou’s childhood, she was forced to witness and carry things that would only make her stronger in her adult life. In her younger years, she lived in the back of The Johnson Store with her small family, which enabled her to see the many indignities the black community faced at the hands of white prejudice. When Angelou was seven, she was raped by a boyfriend of her mother’s (Williamson). After hearing of the rape, her uncles killed the man. “My seven-and-a-half-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost …show more content…
At President Clinton’s inauguration, she read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” in 1993. She has won three Grammys, and The National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 2010, the highest encomium to a civilian was given to Angelou when President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom (“15”). Maya Angelou died at 86 years old on May 28, 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was the Reynolds Professor of American studies at Wake University for 32 years. Her students remember her fondly for her bold spirit and effervescent storytelling. In 2015, the United States Postal Service tried to honor Angelou by giving a stamp a quotation under the credence that it was Angelou’s, but was actually from the Joan Walsh Anglund book, A Cup of Sun (Dwyer). The stamp still fittingly read, “A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a
Maya Angelou became and died a phenomenal author because of her esoteric depictions of life through the themes of race and her distaste for the social class system. Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis as Marguerite Annie Johnson (Williamson). Following her parents’ divorce, Angelou and her brother Bailey were sent to live with their deeply religious grandmother Annie Johnson. Bailey gave Marguerite the nickname Maya at a young age. During Angelou’s childhood, she was forced to witness and carry things that would only make her stronger in her adult life. In her younger years, she lived in the back of The Johnson Store with her small family, which enabled her to see the many indignities the black community faced at the hands of white prejudice. When Angelou was seven, she was raped by a boyfriend of her mother’s (Williamson). After hearing of the rape, her uncles killed the man. “My seven-and-a-half-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost …show more content…
At President Clinton’s inauguration, she read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” in 1993. She has won three Grammys, and The National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 2010, the highest encomium to a civilian was given to Angelou when President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom (“15”). Maya Angelou died at 86 years old on May 28, 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was the Reynolds Professor of American studies at Wake University for 32 years. Her students remember her fondly for her bold spirit and effervescent storytelling. In 2015, the United States Postal Service tried to honor Angelou by giving a stamp a quotation under the credence that it was Angelou’s, but was actually from the Joan Walsh Anglund book, A Cup of Sun (Dwyer). The stamp still fittingly read, “A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a