Women Who Inspire Us: Maya Angelou | Center for Women's Health (2024)

FAQs

Who was Maya Angelou influential woman in history? ›

Poet, dancer, singer, activist, and scholar Maya Angelou was a world-famous author. She was best known for her unique and pioneering autobiographical writing style. On April 4, 1928, Marguerite Ann Johnson, known to the world as Maya Angelou, was born in St. Louis, Missouri.

Later in her high school years, Maya was inspired by her teacher, Bertha Flowers, to dive into literature, which would changed her life. Shortly after this, Maya became a single mother and dropped out of high school.

Besides writing of racial inequality, Angelou wrote many empowering poems about women and their rights; she wrote about the hypocrisy of the world, and injustice, but also about love and nature, combined with autobiographical elements – such as the poem Caged bird, in which Angelou described the difficult emotional ...

She read Black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs. Flowers, an educated African American woman, finally got her to speak again.

Her grandmother Annie Henderson was one of the most important, a pious woman who ran a general store in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou lived most of her childhood with her grandmother, whom she called “Momma.” Angelou's sometimes-absentee mother, Vivian Baxter, had a steel will and several careers of her own.

After being raped by her mother's boyfriend, she withdrew and was mute for five years. However, encouraged by her grandmother, who introduced her to literature, she gradually emerged as a talented artist.

During a visit with her mother, Maya was raped by her mother's boyfriend. As vengeance for the sexual assault, her uncles killed the boyfriend. Young Maya was so traumatized by the experience that she stopped talking. She returned to Arkansas and spent about five years as a virtual mute.

When she was 8 years old, Maya Angelou stopped speaking. She silenced her voice because she thought her voice had killed a man. For almost five years, she spoke to no one but her beloved brother, Bailey. The man she believed she had killed with her voice -- her mother's boyfriend, Mr.

The year is 1968. Maya Angelou's friend, fellow civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, had just been assassinated. Angelou was grieving at home when her mentor, writer James Baldwin, came knocking.

In 1952, she married a Greek sailor named Anastasios Angelopulos. When she began her career as a nightclub singer, she took the professional name Maya Angelou, combining her childhood nickname with a form of her husband's name. Although the marriage did not last, her performing career flourished.

Was Maya Angelou a nurse? ›

Answer and Explanation: No, Maya Angelou was not a nurse.

A poet, singer, autobiographer, and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou inspires us with both the beauty and the call to action of her words. Her most famous work is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an autobiography about her childhood. The book is a testament to the need for resilience in the face of discrimination.

Angelou blended her influential voice in her poems correspondingly to sustain her powerful independent identity as a black woman. She is one of the most effective feminist writers who exhibited her consciousness and awareness toward the racial power of the American society (Lupton, 1998:72).

Maya Angelou has also always been an inspiration to me for fighting for what she believed in. Her writing and her activism are unapologetic, bold, and empowering. She stood up for the voices of those who were always left out of the conversation, and this radiated through both her words and her actions.

In 1971 she became the first Black woman to have a screenplay produced as a film – Georgia, Georgia. Her writings have brought her numerous awards and have been nominated for a Tony Award, an Emmy Award and a Pulitzer Prize.