Maya Angelou  (b. 1928) LINKS Dr. Maya Angelou: The Official Web Site http://www.mayaangelou.com/ Maya Angelou’s official site includes a biography of Angelou, a list of recent events in which she has participated, a link to buy her works, and a recording of her interview with Oprah Winfrey. Voices from the Gaps http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/MayaAngelou.html Voices from the Gaps is organized and maintained by the Department of English and the Program in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. Though the links to other sites do not all work, Angelou’s page offers a wealth of information on its own, including a detailed biography, synopses of her books, and a bibliography of works both by and about Angelou. BIOGRAPHY Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. After the breakup of her parents’ marriage, she and her brother lived with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, where she attended public schools. At age eight, she returned to her mother’s home, where she was raped by her mother’s lover, a trauma that caused her to stop talking for a year. Returned to her grandmother’s home, she began reading widely among English and American writers. A mother by the time she was sixteen, Angelou had held jobs as a cook, cocktail waitress, and dancer by her early twenties. Her literary talent was also developing and, encouraged by friends, she published her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), the story of her first sixteen years. A great critical and commercial success, it was followed by four more autobiographical volumes, each covering a later period of her life: Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). The multitalented Angelou has also published fiction, written plays, and contributed to many periodicals. Her poems have been collected in The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994). An actress, she also wrote the screenplay for the film Georgia, Georgia (1972) and made her debut as a director with the film Down in the Delta (1998). In 1993, she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton.