Dr. Maya Angelou, author, poet and defender of black culture, died May 28, 2014 at the age of 86, according to a statement issued by Wake Forest University, where she taught American Studies beginning in 1982. Critic Lyman B. Hagen said “has been duly recognized as being one of the most successful serial writers of black autobiography. In her five autobiographies (and also in her poetry), she dramatizes both the pleasure and the plight of a young black female in America’s socially segregated society.” * Her poems are a popular choice for students to read at the Favorite Poem Project readings every April. Here are just a few of the titles available in Rentschler Library:
The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou, New York: Modern Library, 2o04
Phenomenal woman : four poems celebrating women, New York: Random House, 1994.
Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, New York: Random House, 1994.