Free Maya Angelou by Mary; Lupton Page A

of wise woman and stateswoman—sometimes on daytime television with her close friend Oprah Winfrey; sometimes for organizations such as the Women’s Foundation, which sold more than two thousand tickets when she spoke in San Francisco during the spring of 1997; and most often in college lecture halls, where seating was sold out long before the actual event. When Hilary Clinton was seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2008, Angelou was a loyal supporter and spokesperson.
    Her writing, above all I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , has also been well received by an adolescent readership. A sample of the biographies about Angelou aimed at young audience is listed in the bibliography, under the heading “Biographies for Young Readers.” Because The Iconic Muse is primarily concerned with more scholarly viewpoints, these children’s books do not enter the discussion. They are important, however, in assessing the scope of Angelou’s appeal.
    Maya Angelou occasionally indulged in unexpected flights of whimsy, aimed not at an academic or political audience but at a trendy clientele. She was notorious for having written the text for Hallmark greeting cards, many of which are in a file at the Schomburg Center. She also presumably endorsed other popular items that bore her face and her signature. In its toys and games division, Amazon.com offered during November of 2014 a Maya Angelou Portrait Jigsaw Puzzle. The 100-piece puzzle shows four different “scenes” from Angelou’s career. Another product sold by Amazon in 2014 was a series of tile wall hangings, ranging in price from $8.45 to $18.49, with a choice of some of Angelou’s famous quotes, for example, “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.” For sale at the same venue were a “Still I Rise’ black tee-shirt and an “I’ve learned” cell phone case for the Apple iPhone. I once walked out of a New York Barnes and Noble with my book purchases piled in a yellow plasticbag graced with her image, clearly a Random House promotion. But I saw no listing in my Amazon search for my favorite piece of Maya/anna: a set of Maya Angelou wind chimes that my friend Carolyn Maun once gave me as a Christmas present.
    In celebrating Maya Angelou’s various achievements, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in April 2015.The stamp featured a popular quotation that had frequently been attributed to Angelou: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Unfortunately, the Postal Service had failed to ascertain the authenticity of the quotation, which was actually from A Cup of Sun , a 1967 book by Joan Walsh Anglund. According to an article printed in the New York Times on April 9, 2015, the Postal Service will not be reissuing the stamp. It will remain in the hands of those faithful fans who pre-ordered it; and it will very likely be filed in the Maya Angelou Archives as a sad reminder of governmental blunder.
The Archives
    When I was in North Carolina in 1977, I had the opportunity to meet briefly with Sharon E. Snow, Curator of Rare Books at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. Ms. Snow had already been making progress in providing access to Angelou’s letters and manuscripts, as well as to the mountain of writings and video clips bearing her name.
    Over the years a number of curators at Wake Forest have continued to compile Angelou’s work in the performing arts. According to a document e-mailed to me on April 17, 2015, by Steven Fullwood of the Schomburg Center in Harlem, The Maya Angelou Film and Theater Collection in North Carolina consists of “30.61 feet 60 letter boxes, 10 oversized letter boxes, 1 half-letter box, 1 oversize folder.” The collection contains such treasures as the manuscript and notes for Angelou’s 1974 play Ajax ; a copy of the first