Maya angelou feminist quotes series#

In Gather Together in My Name, published in 1974, she wrote about living as a single mother in California and spending two years working alternately as a pimp and as a prostitute. She wrote about that experience over 40 years ago – despite an even deeper culture of silence and shame around rape than we have today – when she came to realise that she could not let herself, or others, be reduced by the experience.Īngelou was quoted both on her support for a woman’s right to choose on matters of abortion and on the strength she found in choosing to keep her own teenage pregnancy and raise her son, Guy, against all the odds. The scale and depth of the tributes from the great many whom Angelou’s words touched is testament to how well her own indomitable stance against racism, injustice and rape resonated with people from all walks of life.Īngelou wrote about her experience of rape as a child and the years of horrified muteness she adopted when naming her rapist led to his death. Her death last week has led to an outpouring of collective grief and tributes from many prominent names – among them Barack Obama, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison – but equally from thousands of less well-known names who have taken to social media to mourn her passing.

Indeed she did not shy away from anything. She did not shy away from politics throughout her life, seeking out friendships with prominent activists such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Poet, activist and writer, Maya Angelou was probably best known for her first memoir, Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969, for delivering the inaugural poem at Bill Clinton’s swearing-in ceremony in 1993 and for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour, from President Obama in 2011.

Maya angelou feminist quotes series#

Her whole purpose was to express her own vulnerable humanity through a series of painfully honest autobiographies so that others would feel empowered to express their own. Since the death of Maya Angelou last week, the scale of tributes pouring in shows just how much of a cultural idol she had become, but she did not stand for idolisation. Her indomitable stance against racism, injustice and rape resonated with people from all walks of life.