She went mute for five years after her abuser was murdered.
In that book, Angelou famously recounted her traumatic childhood in St. Louis and Arkansas, where she was raped and sexually abused. She went mute for five years after her abuser was murdered. Angelou was a gifted dancer and also worked as a nightclub performer, sex worker, actress and organizer before her writing career took off. She eventually became a celebrated professor at Wake Forest University. Caged Bird (published in 1969) marked a new era in memoir, with Angelou opening the door to more works by Black women who had been intentionally ignored by publishers in the past. You can read Maya Angelou’s work in the book The Complete Poetry, available from publisher Penguin Random House.