Author Fun Facts: Maya Angelou

Hello Everyone!

So, I have decided to do more Author Fun Fact posts, and decided why not bring them back today. To kick off the first author fun fact for the new year, I have decided to chose a wonderful poet by the name of Maya Angelou. I don’t know much about Maya, but I find that these posts let me learn things about authors that I did not know before. Maya Angelou was a powerful female poet and I can’t wait to share these fun facts with you all!

Let’s get started!

 

• She was the first black woman to conduct a cable car in San Francisco
• She spoke 6 languages
• She wrote and directed several movies
• She wrote two cookbooks
• She was born on April 4, 1928
• She has received over 50 honorary degrees, although she never went to college
• She became a member of the Harlem Writers Gild in 1958
• She helped Doctor Martin Luther King Jr in the Civil Rights Movement
• She stopped celebrating her birthdays due to Martin Luther King Jr being killed on her birthday
• She was the first black woman to be a producer and direction at 20th Century Fox
• She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie, her book of poetry
• Over the course of her life, Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was third on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990–2000 and was sixth on the same list from 2000–2009 list
• She was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011

 

I hope you all learned something new about this amazing woman, just like I did. If you know a fun fact you would like to share about Maya Angelou that wasn’t on this list, please feel free to add it in the comments below.

For further reading on these facts above, please visit the below sites where this information was found:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/50-facts-everyone-should-know-about-maya-angelou

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/535135/facts-about-maya-angelou