Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou appeared with Don Swaim on his CBS Radio show “Book Beat” on May 5, 1987, to discuss her goals as a writer, her childhood and her latest work, “Now Sheba Sings the Song.”

She recounted how poetry helped her overcome her refusal to speak between the ages of 7 and 12. She loved poetry and memorized the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Langston Hughes, Shakespeare and others.
 
Angelou described how a teacher of hers, Mrs. Flowers, convinced her to speak: “She said, ‘You don’t love poetry.’ And it was the cruelest thing I think she could have done. Because she seemed to be taking my only friend. She said, ‘You can’t love poetry. In order to love poetry, you must speak it. You must feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.’ … She was trying to shock me. And one day I went under the house … and I tried poetry. And I had a voice. I had a voice.”

Additional Interviews With Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou spoke with Tavis Smiley on his PBS show on Jan. 19, 2009, about her book “Letter to my Daughter,” the election of Barack Obama, and why she feels at home in the South.

Angelou gave an interview to Oprah Winfrey for Oprah Magazine in December 2000.

To learn more about Maya Angelou, visit her profile on findingDulcinea.