Maya Angelou, the award-winning poet, civil rights activist and playwright, will speak Monday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.
Angelou’s visit is part of the College’s President’s Forum on Diversity. Her talk is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and members of the campus community will be given priority.
Angelou, 79, is the recipient of dozens of honorary degrees, and she became one of only two poets to read an original work at a presidential inauguration when she was invited by President Bill Clinton to speak in 1993. Her work, “On the Pulse of Morning,” earned Angelou a Grammy award.
Her best-known book is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” the first of six volumes of her memoirs. The 1970 autobiography, nominated for a National Book Award, chronicles her childhood growing up black and poor in Arkansas through the birth of her son, Guy, a few weeks after she graduated from high school.
Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she and her brother Bailey, were sent to live with their grandmother in rural Stamps, Ark. It was Bailey who gave her the nickname Maya.
When she was seven, Angelou visited her mother in Chicago, where she was molested by her mother’s boyfriend. Traumatized by the incident and the subsequent news that an uncle had killed her attacker, Angelou lost the ability to speak for five years.
She eventually moved to San Francisco and married a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos. When she became a professional singer, she took the name Maya Angelou.
She later relocated to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild before leaving to become a newspaper editor in Egypt and then a writer and editor in Ghana.
Over the years, Angelou has published dozens of works, including “Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas,” “The Heart of a Woman,” and “Even the Stars Look Lonesome.”
Angelou has also directed and appeared in numerous television programs, including “Roots.” Since 1981, she has been the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
She hosts a weekly radio show on XM Satellite Radio as part of the Oprah and Friends group of shows.