Most artists are talented in one area. For instance, Pablo Picasso was a great painter. He didn’t write novels or act in plays. No, he was a painter. That was his art.
Similarly, you don’t hear about Ludwig van Beethoven working as a dancer or writing poetry. No, he was a composer. Music was his art. Maya Angelou was different. Though she is best known for her work as a writer and poet, she had success as an actor, a singer, a filmmaker, and so much more. All manner of artistic expression poured from Maya Angelou. As did her work as a civil rights activist.

▲ When Maya Angelou was in her late twenties, opportunities seemed to find her. And she took advantage of them. From 1954 to 1955, she went on a European tour performing in the opera Porgy and Bess. A year after her return, she sang music that she herself had written. It was for the musical film Calypso Heat Wave. That same year – 1957 – Angelou recorded her first album, Miss Calypso.

▲ In 1959, Angelou moved to Harlem, New York. There, she explored her talent as a writer. She also turned her attention to civil rights. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., she began working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). (The SCLC was founded to coordinate civil rights protest groups throughout the South.) To raise money for the SCLC, Angelou helped write and stage a show of skits, songs, and dances. The work was performed by Black artists for a Black audience. It was called Cabaret for Freedom.

◀ In 1962, Angelou moved to Ghana, West Africa. There, she joined the University of Ghana as an administrative assistant. In Ghana, Angelou worked with Malcom X. With others, they delivered a petition to the American Embassy. The petition criticized racist practices in the U.S. Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965. In the States, she helped Malcolm X develop the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
Between 1969 and 2013, Angelou wrote seven books that told her life’s story, her autobiography. The first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is the most well known. Like the others, it combines dialogue, plot, and other techniques used in fiction-writing to tell the story. This was a very unusual approach for the time. The excerpt below is an example of fiction-writing techniques Angelou used in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The scene takes place between Mrs. Flowers and Marguerite after she became mute. ▶

‘Now no one is going to make you talk – possibly no one can. But bear in mind, language is man’s way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.’ That was a totally new idea to me, and I would need time to think about it. ‘Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That’s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse [fill] them with the shades of deeper meaning.’
Think Piece!
The title I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a metaphor. It isn’t really about a caged bird singing, but something else. In her poem by the same name, Angelou says more about the caged bird. The first two stanzas of the poem are below. Who do you think Angelou is really talking about in this poem and in her book?
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and digs his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped
and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
Through her poetry, Maya Angelou expressed ideas about race, social justice, and the strength of women. Below is how she describes her work as a poet. ▶

Once I got into it I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass – the slave narrative – speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying ‘I’ meaning ‘we.’ And what a responsibility.
Think Piece!
“Still I Rise” is one of Angelou’s most famous poems. Here are the first and last stanzas of the poem. In what way is this poem an example of saying “I” but meaning “we”?
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.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

▲ Angelou’s work as a poet and writer often took place at the same time as her work in other art forms and in civil rights. Through it all, she never accepted defeat: “All my work, my life, everything is about survival. All my work is meant to say, ‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.’ In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure.”

▲ Maya Angelou’s creative energy seemed boundless. Her autobiography series features seven volumes. (The final book, Mom & Me & Mom, was published when she was turning 85.) She wrote many poems, including “On the Pulse of Morning,” which became famous as the title for a poem heard nationally. She also authored a cookbook called Great Food, All Day Long. And essays, so many essays. Some are in a collection called Letter to My Daughter. Though Maya Angelou never had her own daughter, she writes this:
I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.