‘I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass,’ says the celebrated writer and poet, Maya Angelou

Born in Missouri in 1928, Maya Angelou was traumatized by abuse as a child. ‘I was a mute from the time I was seven and a half until I was almost 13. I didn't speak. I had voice, but I refused to use it,’ she says.

Her childhood was spent shuttling between her devout grandmother in rural, segregated Arkansas and her glamorous mother who lived in St Louis. When she was 7, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who was then murdered by her uncles. Angelou felt responsible and stopped talking. For five years, she was silent, but in time, she found her voice, and that voice has since been heard around the world.  

A single mother at age 16, by the time she was in her early twenties, Maya Angelou had been a Creole cook, a streetcar conductor, a cocktail waitress, a dancer and a madam. Later in her extraordinary career, she became an actress and entertainer, a journalist, an educator and a civil rights activist. A key figure in the civil rights movement, she was a close friend and associate of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.    It was the black activist and author, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write after hearing stories of her childhood.

The first of her autobiographical works, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, created an international sensation when it was published in 1970.  Many volumes of memoir and poetry followed making her one of the world's favorite writers and best-loved public speakers.

‘Love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. Love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it,’ she says.

Renowned as an eminent author and poet and hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, Maya Angelou continues to travel the world, sharing her hard-won wisdom and the memories of her remarkable life.

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