I am a memoirist, essayist and poet. I have published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry, and I write plays, film and television across more than fifty years of creative work.
As a consultant to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2011, I objected publicly to a paraphrase of King carved on it and demanded it be changed. The paraphrase was removed.
Educators use my autobiographies as teaching tools: to train teachers to talk about race, to frame resilience in children, and to illustrate child development research with real-life cases.
In 1993 I read "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Clinton's inauguration, the first inaugural poem since Robert Frost in 1961. The performance won a Grammy and multiplied the readership of all my literature.
In 1981, with no bachelor's degree, I accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University and taught philosophy, ethics, theology, science, theater and writing.
My screenplay Georgia, Georgia (1972), produced by a Swedish film company, was the first original script by a Black woman to be produced. I also wrote the film's soundtrack.
My poems are written to be heard: public, representative and spoken aloud. Critics who prefer poetry as a written form have undervalued them, but that public purpose is the point of the art.
Starting with Caged Bird, I followed the same writing ritual for every book: I put myself back into the time I am writing about, even the traumatic parts, until I reach what I call enchantment.
I write in the slave narrative tradition, speaking in the first-person singular about the first-person plural. My autobiographies describe Black culture and interpret it for a wider, white readership.
My editor Robert Loomis dared me to write an autobiography that could stand as high art. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) made me one of the first African American women to put her own life at the centre of literature.
From 1961 to 1965 I worked as a journalist and broadcaster in Africa: associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, then feature editor, freelance writer and radio broadcaster in Accra, Ghana.
In 1960, after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak, John Oliver Killens and I organized the Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I was named its Northern Coordinator.
Touring Europe with Porgy and Bess in 1954–1955, I made a practice of learning the language of every country I visited, and within a few years I was proficient in several languages.
