Maya Angelou (born 1928)--author, poet, playwright, stage and screen performer, and director--is best known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), which recalls a young African American woman's discovery of her self-confidence.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Growing up in rural Stamps, Arkansas, with her brother, Bailey, she lived with her pious grandmother, who owned a general store. She attended public schools in Arkansas and California, and became San Francisco's first female streetcar conductor. Later she studied dance with Martha Graham and drama with Frank Silvera, and went on to a career in theater. She appeared in Porgy and Bess, which toured 22 countries; on Broadway in Look Away; and in several off-Broadway plays, including Cabaret for Freedom, which she wrote in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge.

During the early 1960s, Angelou lived in Egypt, where she was the associate...