Acclaimed author and poet Maya Angelou died Wednesday morning at age 86, according to officials at the city of Winston-Salem mayor’s office.
Angelou recently cancelled a scheduled appearance at the 2014 MLB Beacon Award Luncheon, where she was to be honored with the Beacon of Life Award, due to health problems.
Angelou has been honored with more than 50 awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for her collected works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, including her groundbreaking memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made history as one of the first nonfiction best-sellers by an African-American woman.
Angelou has been celebrated as one of the greatest writers of her generation,bringing light to the struggles of women and African Americans ,as well as human conditions at large.
She was the first African American woman to be honoured with a Pulitzer Prize and had received countless other accolades for her work since that time.
Her last tweet, posted on May 23, read:
May she RIP
ReplyDeleteThere goes another legend. RIP.
ReplyDelete