Maya Angelou receives a Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, February 15, 2011. (REUTERS/Larry Downing)
The great American poet, author, activist, and actor Dr. Maya Angelou died today at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86.
From her local paper:
In addition to her many books, she was a Grammy winner for three spoken-word albums. She had a home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University.
Her 1969 book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" —- which describes "in lyrical, unsparing prose her childhood in the Jim Crow South" -— was one of the first autobiographies by a contemporary black woman writer to reach a wide audience.
The New York Times, NPR, Time, the Washington Post, and every other news outlet of note in America offer obituaries, but one need only read a few lines of her work, or listen to her reading them in her own voice, to gain a sense of what the world just lost.
