Who

Angelou, a writer, poet, actress and activist, is one of America's most prominent and influential African-American women.

Backstory

Angelou's brutal childhood is familiar to most American high school students. In the oft-required reading autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), she describes shuttling between her grandmother's home in segregated Arkansas and her mother's house in San Francisco. At seven she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was consequently beaten to death by Angelou's uncles—and she became mute for five years as a result. As an adult she was a cabaret singer, a prostitute, a cook, and the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco, before becoming involved in the civil rights movement of the '60s and later achieving international acclaim as a poet and memoirist.

Of note

Over Angelou's 40-year plus career, she's published 12 bestselling books and volumes of poetry, earned nominations for two Tonys and a Pulitzer, taught students all over the world, and inspired countless writers, poets and artists. (She inspires presidents, too: She wrote and delivered a poem, "On The Pulse of the Morning," at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request.) These days she commutes between New York and North Carolina, where she's the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. You don't have to travel that far to take in her wise words: She hosts a weekly show on pal Oprah Winfrey's XM Satellite radio channel, "Oprah & Friends."

On screen

Angelou's acting resume includes the TV mini series Roots, as well as the films Poetic Justice, How to Make an American Quilt and, inexplicably, Madea's Family Reunion.

Personal

Angelou has had three marriages and divorces over the years, to Tosh Angelou, Vusumzi Make, and Paul du Feu. She had a son named Guy, now a poet and novelist in Oakland, when she was 16. After years of living in Manhattan (on Central Park West and Riverside Drive) and Brooklyn, she decided in 2003 to buy a 4,000 square foot brownstone in Mount Morris Park in Harlem. The house—which has five bedrooms and is filled with her collection of African art—is down the street from Marcia Gay Harden's place. Angelou also owns an 18-room house in Winston-Salem, N.C., where Wake Forest in located. A private bus that sleeps six takes her back and forth.