Maya Angelou, an iconic woman who survived the harshest of childhoods to become a force on stage, screen, the print media died yesterday, her son said. She was 86.
Angelou’s son, Guy B. Johnson, said the writer died at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she had been a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University since 1982.
Tall and regal, with a deep, majestic voice, Angelou defied existing socio cultural norms, becoming one of the first black women to enjoy mainstream success as an author and thriving in virtually every artistic medium.
The young single mother who worked at strip clubs to earn a living later wrote and recited the most popular presidential inaugural poem in history. The childhood victim of rape wrote a million-selling memoir, befriended Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and performed on stages around the world.
She was a mentor to Oprah Winfrey, whom she befriended when Winfrey was still a local television reporter. At age 7, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and didn’t speak for years. She learned by reading, and listening. At age 9, she was writing poetry. Angelou was little known outside the theatrical community until “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a book occasionally attacked for its content.
