Maya Angelou (1928-)

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General Articles

Burr, Zofia. "Maya Angelou on the Inaugural Stage," in Of Women, Poetry, and Power (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2002). Publisher's web site. "Of Women, Poetry, and Power demonstrates how the canonization of Dickinson has consolidated limiting assumptions about women's poetry in twentieth-century America and models an alternative reading practice that allows for deeper engagement with the political work of modern poetry." At Google Books

Walker, Pierre A. "Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in College Literature, Oct 1995

An extended, Introduction article on Maya Angelou's career, includes list of works and a secondary reading list, from the Poetry Foundation

A biography of Maya Angelou, with links to her poems "Alone," and "Still I Rise." From the Academy of American Poets

Former President Bill Clinton's list of favorite books, starting with Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. From CBS News, 11/21/03

Introduction to Maya Angelou for high school students, from Houghton Mifflin

Challener, Daniel D. A review of Stories of Resilience in Childhood: The Narratives of Maya Angelou, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, John Edgar Wideman, and Tobias Wolff. (Garland, 1997). Reviewed by Lynn Z. Bloom in MELUS, Fall-Winter, 2000 (taken offline at findarticles.com).

Teachers' resources

A teacher's guide, "How the African-American Storyteller Impacts the Black Family and Society," by Barbara P. Moss. From the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

"Amazing Grace," a lesson plan for teaching Maya Angelou by Ruth M. Wilson, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

Teaching Autobiography, biography, and fiction using I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a lesson plan by Anna K. Bartow, from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

"Black Birds Of Promise Who Defy The Odds Of Gods And Sing Their Songs," by Celeste Y. Davis, a lesson plan from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

"A Middle School Approach to Black Literature: An Introduction to Dunbar, Johnson, Hughes, and Angelou," by Ivory Erkerd, Angelou from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute

Interviews

Angelou, Maya. An interview with David Frost from New Sun newspaper

Angelou, Maya. An interview with Maya Angelou from Mother Jones magazine, 1995, interviewed by Ken Kelley

Bibliography

An extensive secondary bibliography for Maya Angelou from the Bibliography Committee of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, briefly annotated

main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century women | African American writers | about literaryhistory

1998-2009 by Jan Pridmore