Poet and memoirist Maya Angelou’s death at 86 on May 28 triggered an outpouring of tributes from readers and admirers – everyone from President Clinton to actress Anjelica Huston. Now the first of Angelou’s 36 books, her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, soars to No. 4 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list.
The book, in which Angelou writes about coming of age in the segregated South and being raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was about 8, has spent 86 weeks on the list, which began in 1993. Before now, the book has never been higher than No. 41. It was a best seller in 1969, upsetting the conventional wisdom then in publishing that the memoir of a black woman would not have much appeal.
Angelou has had 12 other books on USA TODAY’s list, including her 1981 memoir, The Heart of a Woman, which hit No. 1 in 1997, after it was selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
Last Sunday, Winfrey tweeted that she was at Angelou’s home in Winston-Salem, N.C., “sitting at her kitchen table.”
New reports indicate that Winfrey, a friend who gave grand birthday parties for Angelou, has been helping plan Angelou’s memorial service this Saturday at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, where Angelou was a professor of American Studies. No details have been announced. Angelou was the only person to speak at the funerals of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
The university said that due to limited seating at Wait Chapel, which holds 2,250 people, Angelou’s family decided to have a private service. The university plans to live stream the service at go.wfu.edu/angeloumemorial, beginning at 8 a.m. MST.
Wake Forest also said Angelou’s son, Guy B. Johnson, a novelist and poet, will be announcing other celebrations of his mother’s life in other cities at a later date.
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