BBC Radio 4 - Maya Angelou's Autobiographies - 14 famous people who have been inspired by Maya Angelou (2024)

American icon Maya Angelou was a celebrated writer, poet, activist, singer, actress and speaker. During her long and varied career she worked as a journalist in Africa, toured the world as an opera singer, authored the international bestseller I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, worked alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and recited one of her poems at a US presidential inauguration. But more than that, Maya’s life, work and wisdom inspired some of today’s most famous names to achieve great things too.

1. Oprah Winfrey

Angelou mentored TV host Oprah Winfrey from her twenties onwards, acting as a support, friend and guide throughout her career. After Angelou’s death, Winfrey remembered her as a teacher who believed in sharing knowledge so that others could learn too. Above all though, she said, “what stands out to me... about Maya Angelou is not what she has done or written or spoken, it's how she lived her life. She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace.”

2. Nelson Mandela

Angelou first met Nelson Mandela in 1962 when she was living in Cairo, Egypt, with the South African civil rights activist Vusumzi Make. Soon after, Mandela was imprisoned and the pair weren’t in contact again for three decades. But the celebrated statesman didn’t forget her – according to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, records show that he watched the film version of Angelou’s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings while in jail. When he was finally freed after 27 years in prison and elected President of South Africa, Mandela chose Angelou’s words for his inauguration, reciting her poem Still I Rise.

3. Tupac Shakur

On the set of the film Poetic Justice, Angelou famously stopped a fight between Tupac Shakur and another young actor. She recalled how Tupac took some time to calm down, but eventually agreed to talk to her: “I said, ‘Do you know how much you are needed? Do you know what you mean to us? Do you know that hundreds of years of struggle have been for you?’” The power of her words had a huge impact on the troubled star. “He started to weep”, Angelou said. “I walked him down into a little gully and kept his back to the people so they wouldn’t see him, and I used my hands to dry his cheeks.”

4 and 5. Rihanna and Beyoncé

When Angelou died in 2014, celebrities took to social media to express their sadness and respect, and it was clear she had made a big impact on many of music’s most famous names. Rihanna tweeted that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first book she read as a teenager and went on to say: “She made us feel so safe, safe enough to trust her wisdom! Wisdom one can usually only acquire through experience.” Beyoncé – whose perfume Rise is thought to be inspired by Angelou’s poetry – posted a handwritten version of Still I Rise on Instagram. She captioned it “Rest in peace phenomenal woman”, referencing another of Angelou’s poems, Phenomenal Woman, which celebrates female power and beauty.

6. Serena Williams

Tennis star Serena Williams drew on Maya Angelou’s words when she became the first solo black woman to be named Sportsperson of the Year by Sports Illustrated in 2015. In a passionate and personal acceptance speech, Williams described the immense adversity she has faced during her career: "I've had people put me down because I didn't look like them – I look stronger… I've had people look past me because of the colour of my skin. I've had people overlook me because I was a woman.” She then ended the speech by reciting an extract from Still I Rise, crediting it to “my favourite poet, Maya Angelou."

7. Bill Clinton

When he decided to have a poem read as part of his inauguration as US President in 1993, Bill Clinton knew exactly who he wanted to write and deliver it: Maya Angelou. He later explained, “I knew she got me, she understood the time we were living in, she understood the world we were living in, and she knew what could be our undoing, as well as our unchaining.” A recording of the poem, entitled On the Pulse of Morning, won a Grammy award the following year.

8. Kendrick Lamar

Many hip hop artists have cited Angelou as an influence, and she pops up as a cameo on several celebrated tracks. On Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, Angelou appears in the final few minutes of the closing track. The songs leading up to it describe stories of crime and gang violence, but Angelou represents a voice of good, playing a churchgoer who urges Lamar and his friends to embrace “a new life”.

9. Kanye West

In the song Hey Mama from his hit 2005 album Late Registration, Kanye compares his mum to a book of poetry, referencing writers Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni. And in 2010, he wrote in a blog that he wanted to follow in Angelou’s footsteps, along with those of Gil Scott-Heron and Nina Simone: “They documented what was happening in culture. That is our responsibility as the modern day artists and poets, to accurately represent what is happening now”.

10. Nicki Minaj

US music star Nicki Minaj made waves in 2015 when she gave a powerful recital of Still I Rise at the televised charity event Shining A Light: A Concert for Progress on Race in America. Her performance has since been viewed over 874,000 times on YouTube. In 2009, Minaj included a track entitled Still I Rise in the mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty, a record which helped cement her rap career.

11. Barack Obama

Although Angelou supported Hillary Clinton in the race to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2008, she became a strong advocate for Obama during his time as US President. He admired her too, awarding Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. When Angelou died, Obama described her as an inspiration to all Americans. "A childhood of suffering and abuse actually drove her to stop speaking,” he said, “but the voice she found helped generations of Americans find their rainbow amidst the clouds, and inspired the rest of us to be our best selves."

12, 13 and 14. Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock

She may have been known as the ‘Godmother of hip hop’ but Angelou inspired comedians too. She told an interviewer in 2013, “Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock… they have come here to my home in North Carolina to talk to me and ask me how do I feel about this and that.” She said of her status as a teacher and mentor: “I’m loving and I’m tough... I work very hard, and I want young men and women to know you have to work very hard.”

Radio 4 and Aardman Animations have teamed up to celebrate an incredible life story. With her unbreakable spirit, she overcame the unspeakable and did the unthinkable. She was a force of nature...