#Maya angelou poems still i rise professional#
Up to this point in her life, she went by the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at the strong suggestion of her managers at the Purple Onion, she changed her professional name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname). It was also at this moment when Angelou got her name. It was this moment that pushed her towards her short career as a calypso singer. When Angelou’s marriage ended in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub the Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music. They called themselves "Al and Rita", and performed modern dance at fraternal black organisations throughout San Francisco but never became successful. Unbeknown to most, in the early 50s – a decade before she would publish her first piece of writing – Angelou was an aspiring singer and dancer who gained a following by performing in local nightclubs in San Francisco.Īfter marrying her first husband Tosh Angelos in 1951, she began modern dance classes where she formed a dance team with choreographer Alvin Ailey. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” She told Angelou: “You will never love poetry until you actually feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.” Ultimately, she was persuaded to speak again by a friend of her grandmother, who realised Angelou’s passion for poetry and convinced her that in order for poetry to be fully loved, it had to be spoken aloud. This period of silence allowed Angelou to fall in love with the works of Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Anne Spencer, Frances Harper, and Jessie Fauset. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone …” According to Angelou’s biographer Marcia Ann Gillespie, it was her mutism that allowed Angelou to realise her calling as a writer. “I thought, my voice killed him I killed that man, because I told his name. Shocked by Freeman’s death, Angelou became mute for nearly five years because she believed it was her voice that caused Freeman’s death. Four days after Freeman was released, he was murdered by what was believed to be Angelou’s uncles.
Angelou told her brother what happened, which resulted in Freeman’s arrest and sentencing to one day in jail. When she was eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Freeman. “I thought, my voice killed him I killed that man, because I told his name.”Īngelou didn’t speak a single word between the ages of eight and 13. On what would have been the luminary’s 90th birthday, here is Maya Angelou in her own words. In 2010, then-President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom to which he stated: “(Maya Angelou) touched me, she touched all of you, she touched people all across the globe, including a young white woman from Kansas who named her daughter after Maya and raised her son to be the first black president of the United States.” On January 20, 1993, she became the first woman and the first black woman to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration, reading her “On The Pulse Of Morning” poem at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. In the 1950s, she was a San Francisco famed Calypso dancer and singer in the 1960s, she rose to become a writer and core part of the Civil Rights Movement alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, and in the 1970s, she was famed for writing poetry that addressed issues of racial and gender inequality. Having spread her talents across dancing, singing, literature, and poetry, it’s no wonder her impact is still felt so strongly four years on from her death.
#Maya angelou poems still i rise how to#
As we continue her fight for equality, her endless poems and autobiographies serve as pillars for how to progress the world’s social and political reality.
Writer and activist Maya Angelou’s voice was so powerful, it still rings loudly across the globe.
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