05/14/2024
Poet, feminist, filmmaker and actress, the American Maya Angelou (1928-2014) is the author of autobiographical novels, including I know why the caged bird sings, published in 1969. ICI Musique host Stanley Péan tells the story the incredible life of this activist and her participation in the fight for the recognition of black rights in the United States.
A difficult childhood
R***d at 7 years old by a companion of her mother, Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Johnson, lived a traumatic childhood in the South of the United States. After she reported the man who had abused her, he was brutally murdered. She tells herself that by denouncing her attacker, her words killed him. She then stopped speaking for four years, until literature and poetry brought her out of her silence.
The vibrant life of an artist, from the West Coast to New York
Marguerite Johnson had a child while she was still in high school. She settled on the west coast and married a musician and sailor of Greek origin, Tosh Angelos, whose name she kept.
In the 1950s, she flourished in dance and song. She appears in the films Porgy and Bess and Calypso Heat Wave. In these years, she had success as a calypso singer. In 1959, Maya Angelou left the West Coast for New York, where she became part of a movement for the intellectual and artistic renaissance of black culture.
Fight for the rights of all black people
In 1961, Maya Angelou fell in love with one of Nelson Mandela’s fellow fighters, Vusumzi Make. She followed him to Egypt and campaigned with him for Pan-Africanism. However, seeing that he does not consider women equal to men, she leaves him and stays in Ghana for some time.
An ally of the Democrats
In 1993, Maya Angelou became the first black woman and the second poet, after Robert Frost, to speak at the inauguration of an American president. In support of Bill Clinton, she addresses in a partisan poem the themes of change, of the America she has seen progress and the importance of doing better in the future. During the 2008 campaign, a few years before her death, she offered her support to Hillary Clinton rather than Barack Obama.
