September 14, 1998 Volume 21, No. 2

Seniors to Know Poetry's Power

Author, poet Maya Angelou to give Commencement address

While their final year has barely begun, Ithaca College seniors can look forward to hearing from a remarkable speaker when Commencement rolls around next spring. Maya Angelou, author of such acclaimed works as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, has accepted an offer to deliver the main address at Ithaca College's 104th Commencement on May 15.

"It will be an honor and a privilege to have Maya Angelou address our graduating seniors and their guests," says Ithaca College president Peggy R. Williams. "Her words, both written and spoken, carry a weight and a meaning that can only be described as truly inspirational."

Senior class president Dominic Cottone and his fellow class officers point to a passage from Even the Stars Look Lonesome, a 1997 collection of Angelou's essays, as having particular significance to Ithaca College students: "Many people are graduated from teacher training academies, but one has to have a calling to become a true teacher. And above all things, one needs a bounty of courage."

"There are so many different shades of color and people here at Ithaca, and to have a speaker who encompasses struggle, passion, and difference will touch the hearts of so many," says Cottone. "The seniors deserve to leave the four best years of their lives with dignity, grace, and accomplishment, and Maya Angelou fits every category."

Angelou is best known as a poet and the author of a series of autobiographical novels. She has been praised for confronting both the racist and sexual pressures on black women and her work combines her perspective as an individual with her involvement in larger social and political movements, including civil rights.

Born Marguerita Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou spent most of her early childhood in rural Arkansas. While appearing as a dancer in a San Francisco cabaret, she changed her name to Maya Angelou. Her experience there led to an acting and singing career and she joined a cast performing Porgy and Bess throughout Europe. She later moved to New York and joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and for two years she served as the northern coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She left the United States to work in Africa, first as a newspaper editor in Egypt and then as a writer and editor in Ghana.

In 1970 Angelou published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. An account of her childhood, which included being raped by her mother's boyfriend and losing the ability to speak for several years, it is her most critically acclaimed work and was nominated for a National Book Award. Gather Together in My Name (1974) describes her search for identity and her struggle for survival as a young, unwed mother. In Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976) Angelou chronicles her business career, and in The Heart of a Woman (1981) she describes her emergence as a writer and a political activist. Based on her experience in Ghana, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) examines the relationship between Africa and black culture in America. Angelou has written several plays for screen, stage and television, as well as several volumes of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Die (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), and Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983).

Among Angelou's many other honors are a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the play Look Away, an Emmy Award nomination for her supporting role in the television landmark Roots, and a Grammy Award for best spoken word album. She has also been recognized as woman of the year by Essence magazine and as one of the top 100 most influential women by Ladies' Home Journal.

In 1993 Angelou became the first woman and the first African-American to read her work at a presidential inauguration. Her poem for Bill Clinton's first inaugural, "On the Pulse of Morning," celebrates the diversity of the American and world communities and calls on them to work together to create a better future. She lectures and gives readings of her works throughout the world --- including at Ithaca College in 1995 --- and has a lifetime appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Recently she served on a panel of writers, critics, and historians which selected a controversial list of 100 novels considered the best of the 20th century.

Photo by art/science studio/lab.
Maya Angelou visited Ithaca College in 1995
as a guest of the Student Activities Board.