Maya Angelou And Alice Walker Essay

Maya Angelou and Alice Walker are both well-known African American authors and inspirational political and civil rights activists. They are credited with significant contributions to important fictional and non-fictional texts on the issues of what it means to be an African American in the U.S.. Angelou is also known for her work as an actress and film and television producer. Walker is well- known for her famous book and movie The Color Purple. . Despite the hardships they dealt with in their youth, these women still managed to overcome and become greater than the past. Both Walker and Angelou addressed very similar topics in their writing, but wrote in different styles; both had their own opinions and forms of expressing themselves.
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She was fortunate enough to get a role in a touring production of Progy and Bess, which later appeared in the off-Broadway production Calypso Heat Wave and in the release of her first album, Miss Calypso. Angelou was a member of the Harlem Writers Guide and a civil rights activist, she organized and starred in the musical Cabaret for Freedom as a benefit for the Southern Christian Leadership, also known as SCL. In 1961, Angelou appeared in an off Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks with James Earl Jones, Lou Gossett and Cicely Tyson. Even though the play got tons of good reviews, Angelou moved on to aspire other things, spending much of the 1960s abroad. She first lived in Egypt and then moved to Ghana, working as an editor and a freelance writer. After returning to the U.S., Angelou was urged by the people around her to write about her life’s experiences. Her efforts resulted in the very successful 1963 memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the best-selling novel by an African American woman. Little did she know that this book would make her an international star. Since publishing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she continued to set new records artistically, socially, and educationally. In 1972 Angelou wrote the drama Georgia, Georgia becoming the first African American woman to have her screenplay produced. She also earned a Tony Award nomination for her role in