In May of this year Maya Angelou died at the age of 86. She was a wise and respected woman, who grew beyond her abusive childhood and used her early experiences to help others.
At 16, she became the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Over the next 24 years, she worked as a calypso singer, waitress, dancer, actress, prostitute, and a madam. She began her journey to become the woman most of us knew – the writer, poet, and speaker at President Clinton’s inauguration – when she wrote her first book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings at the age of 40 .
