Author Guide · Memoir, Autobiography & Poetry
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On 20 January 1993 Maya Angelou read “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, the first poet to read at one since Robert Frost in 1961. By then she had been writing her own life for almost a quarter of a century. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis in 1928 and raised largely by her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, she had been a nightclub singer, a dancer in a touring Porgy and Bess, an editor in Cairo and a coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference before James Baldwin and the Random House editor Robert Loomis pushed her to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). She went on to tell her story in seven volumes over 44 years, and published poetry alongside them. This guide covers her thirteen key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1969–2013 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Maya Angelou’s best-known book is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), the first of seven autobiographies that ends with Mom & Me & Mom (2013). Her best-known poetry collection is And Still I Rise (1978), which contains “Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman”. Start with Caged Bird; the five volumes after it follow her life, in order, up to 1968.
Where to Start with Maya Angelou
If you want her defining book
→ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) — her childhood in Stamps, St. Louis and San Francisco.
If you want her poetry
→ And Still I Rise (1978) — the collection with “Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman”.
If you want the civil rights years
→ The Heart of a Woman (1981) — New York, the SCLC, then Cairo and Accra.
If you want the last word on her mother
→ Mom & Me & Mom (2013) — the late book about Vivian Baxter.
13 Maya Angelou Books, in Order
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Her childhood, from the age of three, when she and her brother Bailey are sent to their grandmother in segregated Stamps, Arkansas, through St. Louis and San Francisco, ending with the birth of her son. After she is raped by her mother’s boyfriend at eight, she stops speaking for almost five years; Mrs Bertha Flowers, a neighbour in Stamps, brings her back to speech through books. It was nominated for the National Book Award in 1970, stayed on The New York Times paperback bestseller list for two years, and was filmed for CBS in 1979.
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie
Her first book of poems: 38 poems in two parts, the first about love and loss, the second, “Just Before the World Ends”, about racial confrontation and Black survival. Many began as song lyrics from her nightclub years. It was a bestseller and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
Gather Together in My Name
Ages seventeen to nineteen, just after the Second World War. A young single mother, she moves between San Francisco, San Diego and Stamps through a string of jobs, including a spell managing two sex workers in San Diego, is turned down by the Army, and falls for a gambler who draws her into prostitution. When a babysitter takes her son, she tracks them to Bakersfield. It ends with her turning away from drugs after meeting an addict.
Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
Thirty-six poems in five parts, among them “On Reaching Forty”, “The Telephone”, “The Couple”, “Africa” and “America”. The language is deliberately plain and written to be read aloud; reviews were mixed, with some critics calling the poems too simple.
Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas
1949 to 1955. She marries Tosh Angelos, a Greek sailor she meets while working in a San Francisco record shop, against her mother’s wishes, and the marriage ends after about three years. Singing and dancing at the Purple Onion club, she takes the stage name Maya Angelou, then tours 22 countries with Porgy and Bess in 1954–55, leaving her son with her mother. News of his illness brings her home.
And Still I Rise
Thirty-two poems in three parts, including the title poem “Still I Rise”, her own favourite, and “Phenomenal Woman”. The poems deal with racism, Black womanhood, family, love and ageing, often with humour. Reviews at the time were mixed, but the two best-known poems have become among the most quoted in American poetry.
The Heart of a Woman
1957 to 1962. In New York she joins the Harlem Writers Guild, produces the fundraiser Cabaret for Freedom and becomes the SCLC’s northern coordinator. She meets the South African activist Vusumzi Make and moves with him and her son to Cairo, where she works at the Arab Observer. After they separate she takes her son to Accra, where he is badly hurt in a car accident; the book ends as he recovers and leaves for college.
Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?
Twenty-eight poems, more than half of them about love and its loss; the rest are about holding on against oppression and the treatment of enslaved people in the South. It includes “Caged Bird”, which returns to the image of her first book, and is dedicated to her son and grandson.
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
1962 to 1965 in Accra, Ghana. She works at the University of Ghana while her son recovers, joins a small circle of African American expatriates she calls the “Revolutionist Returnees”, and finds that Ghana does not simply take her in as a returning daughter. Malcolm X visits in 1964 and asks her to come home to work with him. It ends at Accra airport as she leaves her son behind and decides that America is her home.
I Shall Not Be Moved
Thirty-two poems about work and workers, love, and the Black struggle, opening with “Worker’s Song” and including “Our Grandmothers” and “Human Family”, with its line “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” Angelou said the title expressed her hope that young people would take a moral stand and not give up.
On the Pulse of Morning
The poem she read at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration on 20 January 1993, the first woman and the first African American to read at one. Random House published it as a short book the same year and it became a bestseller; sales of her other books jumped in the following weeks. Her recording won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album in 1994.
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
1965 to 1968, written sixteen years after the fifth volume. She returns from Ghana to help Malcolm X build the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and he is assassinated soon after she arrives. In Los Angeles she works as a market researcher in Watts and witnesses the 1965 riots; Martin Luther King Jr. is killed on 4 April 1968, her fortieth birthday. It ends with her writing the opening lines of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Her audio recording won a Grammy in 2003.
Mom & Me & Mom
Published in April 2013, the year before her death, and devoted to her mother, Vivian Baxter, who appears only briefly in the earlier volumes. It explains why Baxter sent Maya, aged three, and Bailey, five, to their grandmother in Stamps, and traces how the daughter who called her “Lady” came to rely on her as an adult. It entered The New York Times bestseller list at number 8.
In What Order to Read Maya Angelou
Read the autobiographies in publication order. The first six run in sequence from the early 1930s to 1968, each picking up roughly where the last one stopped, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven ends with her starting to write the first. Mom & Me & Mom is different: it goes back over her whole life through one relationship, so it works best last.
The poetry can be read at any point. The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) gathers the five collections listed here plus “On the Pulse of Morning”, and The Collected Autobiographies (2004) puts the first six memoirs in one volume.
A reading path
1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
2. And Still I Rise (1978)
3. The Heart of a Woman (1981)
4. All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986)
5. Mom & Me & Mom (2013)
Everything Else Maya Angelou Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 16 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Poetry
7
7 books · 1987–2014
- 1987Now Sheba Sings the Songa long poem with drawings by Tom Feelings
- 1994The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelouthe five collections plus “On the Pulse of Morning”
- 1995A Brave and Startling Trutha poem for the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations
- 2005Amazing Peacea Christmas poem
- 2006Mother: A Cradle to Hold Mea poem for mothers
- 2006Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayeroccasional poems
- 2014His Day Is Donea tribute to Nelson Mandela
Essays
3
3 books · 1993–2008
- 1993Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Nowshort, mostly autobiographical essays
- 1997Even the Stars Look Lonesomeher second essay collection
- 2008Letter to My Daughtershort essays addressed to the daughter she never had
Cookbooks
2
2 books · 2004–2010
- 2004Hallelujah! The Welcome Table73 recipes with 28 essays from her life
- 2010Great Food, All Day Longrecipes and essays on eating smaller portions
Children’s books
3
3 books · 1993–1996
- 1993Life Doesn’t Frighten Mea poem with paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat
- 1994My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Mea picture book set in South Africa
- 1996Kofi and His Magica picture book set in Ghana
Collected editions
1
1 book · 2004
- 2004The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelouthe first six autobiographies in one volume
The years · 1928–2014
Quick facts about Maya Angelou
- Known for
- Telling her own life, from a segregated childhood in Arkansas to the civil rights movement, in seven autobiographies, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), and poems such as “Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman”.
- 1928
- Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis
- 1954
- Tours with Porgy and Bess
- 1981
- Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest
- 1993
- Reads at Clinton’s inauguration
- 2014
- Dies in Winston-Salem
- Born
- 4 April 1928, St. Louis, Missouri, as Marguerite Annie Johnson
- Raised
- Largely by her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas; later in San Francisco
- Worked
- Singer, dancer and actor; editor in Cairo; administrator at the University of Ghana; SCLC northern coordinator; Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University from 1981
- Honours
- Spingarn Medal (1994), National Medal of Arts (2000), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011); Grammy Awards for spoken-word albums in 1994, 1996 and 2003
- Firsts
- Georgia, Georgia (1972), the first produced screenplay by a Black woman; in 2022 the first Black woman on a US quarter
- Died
- 28 May 2014, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
The red mark is 1969: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of her seven autobiographies.
How Maya Angelou Writes: A Life Told Like a Novel
Baldwin and Loomis challenged her to write an autobiography that was also literature, and she did it with the tools of fiction: scenes, dialogue, a narrator who knows less than the writer. Each volume covers a few years and ends at a turning point — a birth, a departure, a single word, “myself”, at the close of The Heart of a Woman — and the sixth loops back to the moment she began the first.
Her working routine was fixed. She rented a hotel room, asked for the pictures to be taken off the walls, and wrote lying on the bed on yellow legal pads, with a Bible, Roget’s Thesaurus, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry. She aimed for ten to twelve pages a day and cut them to three or four in the evening.
The poems are built for the voice. Many in her first collection began as song lyrics from her nightclub years, and the best known lean on the repetition of blues and spirituals, which is why they are so often read aloud. For writers who share her voice and subjects, see Authors like Maya Angelou.
Watch
Maya Angelou on HARDtalk with Tim Sebastian
Maya Angelou talks with Tim Sebastian on the BBC programme HARDtalk, recorded in 1998 and posted in 2014. From the official BBC News channel.
Frequently asked questions about Maya Angelou’s books
What is Maya Angelou’s most famous book?
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), the first of her seven autobiographies. It covers her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, St. Louis and San Francisco, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1970, and stayed on The New York Times paperback bestseller list for two years. It remains one of the most widely taught American memoirs.
How many books did Maya Angelou write?
About thirty under her own name: seven autobiographies, poetry collections, three books of essays, two cookbooks and several children’s books. Thirteen are the key books on this page — the seven autobiographies and six books of poetry — and the rest are listed below them.
What are Maya Angelou’s books in order?
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), Gather Together in My Name (1974), Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), And Still I Rise (1978), The Heart of a Woman (1981), Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? (1983), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), On the Pulse of Morning (1993), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) and Mom & Me & Mom (2013).
In what order should I read Maya Angelou’s autobiographies?
In publication order: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) and Mom & Me & Mom (2013). The first six follow her life in sequence up to 1968; the seventh goes back over it through her relationship with her mother.
Where should I start with Maya Angelou?
With I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969); everything in the later volumes builds on it. If you want her poetry first, start with And Still I Rise (1978).
Did Maya Angelou write poetry?
Yes. She published five main collections, from Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, to I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), and many single poems in book form. On 20 January 1993 she read “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, the first poet to do so since Robert Frost in 1961 and the first woman and first African American.
What is And Still I Rise about?
And Still I Rise (1978) is her third poetry collection: 32 poems in three parts about racism, Black womanhood, family, love and ageing, often with humour. It contains “Still I Rise” and “Phenomenal Woman”, her two most quoted poems, which makes it the usual starting point for readers who want her voice in verse rather than prose.
Why has I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings been banned?
It has been challenged or removed in some US schools and libraries because it describes, briefly and without graphic detail, her rape at the age of eight, along with racism and sexuality. The American Library Association ranked it third on its list of the most frequently challenged books of the 1990s, and it was still in the top ten in the 2000s.
Was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made into a film?
Yes, as a television film shown on CBS on 28 April 1979, directed by Fielder Cook, with Constance Good as the young Maya and Diahann Carroll as her mother. Angelou co-wrote the screenplay with Leonora Thuna.
Did Maya Angelou say “people will never forget how you made them feel”?
Probably not first. The line is widely credited to her, but Quote Investigator found it in Richard Evans’ Quote Book (1971), attributed to Carl W. Buehner, and calls the attribution to Angelou unsupported.
Where did the name Maya Angelou come from?
“Maya” was her brother Bailey’s childhood name for her, from “my sister”, and “Angelou” was adapted from the surname of her first husband, Tosh Angelos. She took it as a stage name in the early 1950s, when the owners of the Purple Onion in San Francisco asked her for something more exotic than Marguerite Johnson, as she tells in Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas.
When did Maya Angelou die?
On 28 May 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, aged 86. Her last autobiography, Mom & Me & Mom, had been published the year before.
What should I read after Maya Angelou’s autobiographies?
Her friend James Baldwin, whose push helped start Caged Bird, and Toni Morrison are the obvious next writers. For a wider list, see Authors like Maya Angelou and Best memoirs and biographies.
Is Maya Angelou her real name?
Not her birth name. She was born Marguerite Annie Johnson; her brother called her Maya, and she added a version of her husband Tosh Angelos’s surname when she performed in San Francisco in the early 1950s. More writers who did the same are on my list of authors who wrote under pseudonyms.
Footnotes
- Maya Angelou — Wikipedia
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Wikipedia
- A Song Flung Up to Heaven — Wikipedia
- Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 1990–1999 — American Library Association
- They May Forget What You Said — Quote Investigator
- Maya Angelou and Bill Moyers, 1973 — The Marginalian
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.”
— Maya Angelou, interview with Bill Moyers (1973), in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)
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