Maya Angelou has written many nest-selling books. Her books have earned nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and National Nook Award. She is known for her successes in many fields. She is a poet, writer of plays, singer, dancer, actor, civil-rights activist, teacher, producer and director. She speaks several languages including French, Spanish, Italian and West African Fanti.

Maya Angelou is known throughout the world for the poems she has written. Bill Clinton asked her to write a poem for the ceremony when he was first sworn in as president. It is called “On the Pulse of Morning”.

On January 20th, 1993, Maya Angelou read her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning”. She was the first African-American woman to speak at an inaugural ceremony.

Maya Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928 in Saint Louis, Missouri. When she was three tears old, she went to live with her grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. It was a time when black Americans did not have the same civil rights as white Americans. Life for black Americans in the south was especially difficult.

When Maya was seven years old, she was attacked sexually by a man. For the next five years, she did not speak at all. Ms. Angelou told the New York Times newspaper that she spent those five silent years listening. She said she loved language. “For a long time,” she said, “I would think of myself, my whole body, as an ear. I never found a voice I did not find wonderful and beautiful.” Ms. Angelou says her love for the arts began early in her childhood. She says stories, music and beliefs shared by her family made life better.

After high school, Maya Angelou studied dance and acting. In the 1950s, she performed in the Broadway musical Porgy and Bess. The play was performed in twenty-two countries.

In the 1960s, she joined the civil rights movement that was seeking equal treatment for blacks. She became an organizer with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Ms. Angelou became a professional writer after several of her friends, including writer James Baldwin, heard her childhood stories and urged her to write them down.

The books she wrote about her own life were very successful. Her first book was published in 1970. It is called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It is about her childhood. Other best-selling books about her life were published in following tears.

Maya Angelou’s writing has always been about her own experience as a black woman in America. Yet she has always used her experience to speak about all human lives. She has often said that she believes human beings are more alike than they are different.

Experts say Ms. Angelou has the ability to reach all kinds of people through her writing. One of her most popular poems celebrates women. It is called “Phenomenal Woman”. Here is part of the poem read by Maya Angelou.

Maya Angelou has been a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina for almost twenty years. She continues to travel throughout the world to speak and read her poems. She says she wants her work to tell people this message, “You may be faced with many defeats, but you must not be defeated”.