MAYA’S JOURNEY HOME

By Maya Angelou, from the book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, September 1982

“CREATIVITY IS ALL of a piece, beginning in childhood . ... Some terrible and wonderful things happened in Stamps, Arkansas, to Maya Angelou as a little girl. There, as she relates in I Know Why the Caged Bird her nascent creativity was Sings, first threatened and then forged...” reads an introduction by PBS host Bill Moyers. This excerpt reveals how Angelou and her classmates, feeling disrespected by a guest speaker at their high school graduation, proudly joined together for “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”