May 30 Tip: RIP Maya Angelo

From FRESH AIR: RIP Maya Angelo

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/28/316707321/fresh-air-remembers-poet-and-memoirist-maya-angelou

In her memoirs, Maya Angelou explored how race and gender affected her life. Her first memoir,I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969 and describes growing up in the segregated South. It includes the story of how, as a child, Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend. After the rape, she withdrew into herself and went through a long period of not speaking.

Angelou got pregnant and became a mother when she was 16 and unmarried. Her autobiographies describe how she traveled around the country with her son, Guy, earning her living as a waitress, prostitute, madam, singer, actress and writer. In the '60s, Angelou was active in the civil rights movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. as the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was the inaugural poet for Bill Clinton when he took office in 1993.

Maya Angelou died Wednesday at 86. She spoke to Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 1986.