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"  Alexis Wilkinson One of my aunts had framed copies of &amp;quot;Phenomenal Woman&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Still I Rise&amp;quot; on her bedroom wall. As a child, I remember reading them whenever I stayed at her house. I remember tracing my fingers over &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Cause I&amp;#039;m a woman/Phenomenally.&amp;quot; I remember giggling at &amp;quot;diamonds at the meeting of my thighs.&amp;quot; I remember being proud that I could read and understand these words. They were probably the first poems I ever read by myself.  Dr. Maya Angelou represents a lot of firsts in my life. She was the first black woman I was ever assigned to read in school (&amp;quot;Wouldn&amp;#039;t Take Nothing for My Journey Now&amp;quot; was the assignment, though I ended up devouring I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings shortly thereafter). And her work was the first that made me proud of my identity.  Growing up in lily-white Wisconsin, I honestly saw my blackness and my womanhood as disabilities, two obstacles that I would have to work overcome. I had strong role models, but I still harbored this toxic worldview that made me insecure, ashamed, sad, and angry. I felt unfairly burdened. I felt scared that I would always be looked down on and underestimated. &amp;quot;Phenomenal Woman&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Still I Rise&amp;quot; were the only pieces of literature I had ever read that said I should be happy to be a black woman. That there is power in it. And strength. And beauty.  Dr. Angelou to me represents both pride in oneself and ultimate humility, a balance that is so delicate and beautiful that its product can only be love.  I only hope that the future brings along another soul so artful, uncompromising, and lovely.  Gabourey Sidibe In 2009, I got to witness Maya Angelou receive a [Glamour] Woman Of The Year Award. I remember feeling so lucky to be in her presence and honored to be in her audience, in person. In her speech she said something to the effect of, &amp;quot;Be beautiful for yourself first. Then you can be beautiful for anyone else who has the good sense to see it.&amp;quot; I was very lucky to have heard it. Straight from her mouth. I thank her for sharing her wisdom.  Keli Goff No one in my family is a professional writer. Growing up in my Texas suburb I never even met a real-life professional writer, someone for whom writing was more than a hobby but an actual profession. In 1993 my parents took me to Washington, D.C., to attend my first inauguration. I&amp;#039;ve since been to others as a journalist covering them. But that was my first, and the one that has had the greatest impact on me, in part because of Maya Angelou. There she delivered her special poem for that day, &amp;quot;On the Pulse of Morning.&amp;quot; I remember the feeling in the air. How captivated everyone there was, people of all races, all ages, from all economic backgrounds and every state in the Union. She inspired them all, including me. That&amp;#039;s when I first saw a real-life writer in person and in action, and experienced firsthand what writers can do. She inspired me then and inspires me to this day. \u2028Heather Wood Rudulph \u2028 Maya Angelou always felt like a mother to me, particularly because it was my own mother who kept her so prominent in my life. Like most, I was introduced to Angelou through her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I read it in an AP literature class in high school along with a canon of important texts by authors who would also help shape my thoughts on womanhood \u2014 Toni Morrison&amp;#039;s Jazz, Alice Walker&amp;#039;s The Color Purple, Margaret Atwood&amp;#039;s The Handmaid&amp;#039;s Tale. I loved these books, wrote impassioned SAT-prep essays about them, and then promptly moved on to the next thing I had to study. My mother gifted me with another copy of Caged Bird before I went away to college.  When I got my first job as a working journalist, she bought me Heart of a Woman. When I moved to New York City after a painful breakup with no job, few friends, and little money, and found myself depressed, my mother and I didn&amp;#039;t talk much on the phone. But she did send me letters of support and encouragement, often accompanied by a clipping with an Angelou poem or one of her recent quotes in O magazine. As a gift for my first Mother&amp;#039;s Day, my mother gave me Mom &amp;amp; Me &amp;amp; Mom, Angelou&amp;#039;s beautiful autobiography that depicts her rollercoaster relationship with her own mother.  My mother and I never talked much about the significant impact these books have had on me \u2014 or about their influence on my feminist identity. We&amp;#039;ve never had to. In telling the story of her life \u2014 a journey so extraordinary that each of her seven autobiographies reveals something new \u2014 Angelou gave us all permission to be ourselves. It&amp;#039;s one of the hardest lessons to teach a child, given the powerful influences of modern life \u2014 peer pressure, love, violence, and self-doubt. When my mother couldn&amp;#039;t find the words, she used Angelou&amp;#039;s. Her work celebrates the beauty in humanity \u2014 from the ugliness of her rape as a 7-year-old girl by her mother&amp;#039;s boyfriend, to the sunbursts of joy she felt having her first child. A verse from her poem, A Brave and Startling Truth, underscores the idea that we are all capable of greatness, something she herself certainly achieved.  When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it Danielle Henderson At a time when I had no examples of how to live a life with joy, I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I wish I remembered how I came to that book in those pre-Internet days of my teenage years because it revolutionized my life. I had been silently suffering in the wake of my childhood sexual abuse, with no language to describe what had happened to me, and no map of how I could possibly live my life in spite of it. I cried while reading it, identifying parts of myself in her words. I felt known for the first time.  I read her poetry next, and fell in love with &amp;quot;Phenomenal Woman,&amp;quot; a poem that is essentially about unconventional beauty, but also confidence. I loved her attitude in that poem. I loved her for being unrelenting and unforgiving about who she was and how she lived.  Now that we know her as poet laureate who&amp;#039;s deep with Oprah and Obama, it&amp;#039;s become easy to forget Maya Angelou&amp;#039;s powerful beginnings. Her life is a miracle. She&amp;#039;s part of the fabric of things that put me back together, and I am eternally grateful for her.  Ilyse Hogue\u2028 When Maya Angelou became the second poet \u2014 and the first woman poet, and the first African-American poet \u2014 to grace an inaugural stage in 1993, I remember the visceral feeling that something was changing in our country. Bill Clinton&amp;#039;s election was the first one in which I was able to vote, and I felt that sense of responsibility and pride as he took his oath of office. So much of what I believed that single vote signified \u2014 the idea that individual action might lead to increased equality and freedom for all Americans \u2014 was tied up in the moment of watching Maya Angelou take the stage. Like a generation raised on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya was a symbol to me of an empowered woman, an activist, a philosopher, a spirit guide for those of us seeking a better world.  The final passage of the poem she read that day has been my refuge in moments of self-doubt. When the weight of the work I do feels heavy and the promise of its potential far away, I hear Maya&amp;#039;s voice imploring me to believe.  Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister&amp;#039;s eyes, into Your brother&amp;#039;s face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning. Lauren Rankin \u2028&amp;quot;Bitterness is a cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.&amp;quot; There have been countless times in my life, social justice-related and not, that I have felt passed over, dismissed, ignored. I felt I didn&amp;#039;t get the credit I deserved. I would feel the tide of bitterness and resentment swell within me, which, as Maya Angelou said, would spread through me like a cancer, and eat away at my motivation and joy. As someone who does social justice work, the line between bitterness and anger has been hard to walk. Anger is a central part of social justice; it helps lift the veil of oppression and mobilizes the masses to demand social change. But bitterness isn&amp;#039;t about change, it&amp;#039;s about ego. Then I think of Maya Angelou, who crafted this brilliant quote, with her incredible humility, generosity, and lack of any hint of egocentrism. If there was ever a woman who should feel entitled to credit, praise, and accolades, it was she. But she never did. She never centered herself. She centered justice and peace, righteousness and equality.  Because she knew, like so few of us do, that bitterness is about the individual; anger is about the collective.  Rachel Sklar Maya Angelou was incredible. Brilliant, resilient, warm, wise, human. I love &amp;quot;Phenomenal Woman,&amp;quot; but &amp;quot;Still I Rise&amp;quot; has always been my favorite because it contains so much hope and defiance in the face of brutality and discrimination and abuse. It&amp;#039;s a beautiful and proud poem that necessarily contains real ugliness and that is why it is so powerful. &amp;quot;But still, like air, I&amp;#039;ll rise.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s about her life, about women, about class, and about the experience of being black in America, but amazingly, it is above all about hope and joy and lightness. I could read it again and again, and have already many times today. It&amp;#039;s such a masterpiece, and still so relevant and so necessary.  Just a huge talent and icon and spirit and heart.  Soraya Chemaly I can remember clearly the first time I read a Maya Angelou poem, but what will always stay with me is the first time I heard her voice. When she read &amp;quot;Still We Rise,&amp;quot; it smiled and lilted. Her voice itself was a renunciation of ugliness and cultural degradation. Its tenor was an embrace of beauty and humanity. Not many people have ever been able to use their voices in exactly this way with words that were so powerful, and I will be forever grateful for the way in which she made me think about the world.  Sally Kohn I didn&amp;#039;t even know there were caged birds. Sure, I knew about slavery and segregation and maybe even how it lingered on, just like sexism, or so I was told. I didn&amp;#039;t really know. My life in junior high was simple; my problems were very white and very upper middle class and very much about social cliques and lunchroom pecking order. That was the only discrimination I cared about. Everything else was just dusty history. And then I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and my heart stopped. My world stopped. My bubble was permanently pierced. Not just because of the horrors of a reality I would never know but because of Maya Angelou&amp;#039;s incredible power to draw anyone and everyone into her story, her experience, no matter how different. Her stories became our story, not just a way to catalogue the pernicious and persistent prejudice, but also the emotions and fear and longing and grasping at hope that all of can somehow understand. Reaching beyond her own bars, Maya Angelou showed us the many cages of racism and sexism and poverty and despair and violence and more, cages that ultimately encircle our whole society. Cages she invited us to transcend together and more importantly destroy. And in the middle of all that, Maya Angelou opened my eyes and I haven&amp;#039;t shut them since.  Jennifer L. Pozner What can I say about Maya Angelou&amp;#039;s impact on my emotional and political development that won&amp;#039;t be inadequate, dwarfed by her incredibly powerful legacy as a writer, a poet, a public thinker, a person who helped us all connect more deeply to our common humanity?  I don&amp;#039;t get intimidated often, yet I find myself not only tearing up at her loss, but also feeling intimidated by how to even begin to talk about what she meant to me. As someone who felt trapped in various ways as a child, reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings \u2014 I think in seventh grade \u2014 gave me permission to feel righteous anger and cathartic sadness at the pieces of my experience that were deeply unfair, from coping with emotional, mental, and other forms of non-physical abuse, to being bullied for being low-income, among other things. At the same time, the book gave me immense perspective, an understanding at a really early age that there were so many forms of oppression and injustice (based on race, especially) that I had never and would never have to endure, which probably helped me develop both empathy and an inclination toward racial justice far earlier than I would have without Maya&amp;#039;s work.  Later in life, two of Maya&amp;#039;s most well-known quotes have become personal guideposts. Whenever I find myself frustrated at the famous Eleanor Roosevelt line that no one can make you inferior without your consent \u2014 frustrated because that ignores power dynamics and structural imbalances that can be at play in oppressive circumstances \u2014 I return to Maya&amp;#039;s contribution that &amp;quot;You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.&amp;quot; As a low-income activist, as a feminist, as someone who has struggled to build a women&amp;#039;s media nonprofit in a climate that hoards resources, Maya&amp;#039;s words remind me to be cognizant of systemic biases, but to have the strength and the focus to not internalize their dehumanizing effects. And on a personal level, I can&amp;#039;t tell you how useful it is in romantic relationships to remember Maya&amp;#039;s brilliantly simple insight, &amp;quot;If someone shows you who they really are, believe them.&amp;quot; Courtney Martin I lay in the hospital bed primordially exhausted, slightly traumatized, and totally intimidated by the responsibility of naming a human being. I&amp;#039;d just given birth to my daughter 24 hours before, but already the officials that be were bugging my husband and me for her name so they could get the necessary documents squared away. Growing up, I&amp;#039;d thought there could be nothing more delicious than naming a child. All those years crawling around the Barbie-covered shag carpet in my attic, making up wild scenarios for my dramatically named dolls had been pure joy. Unhappy with my own &amp;quot;cutesy&amp;quot; name \u2014 Courtney \u2014 I&amp;#039;d usually given my dolls what I thought of as super serious alternatives via 80s television shows: Diane (Cheers) and Maddie (Moonlighting). But 20 odd years later, the prospect of actually naming another human being, particularly one that I had just met hours ago and knew almost nothing about, felt preposterous. John, my partner, and I had entered the hospital with a clear frontrunner: Stella. And yet, when this little, dark-haired babe squirmed onto my chest and looked up at me with a curious, gentle gaze, Stella just didn&amp;#039;t feel right. Stella, at least to us, seemed like the life of the party. This little human had the presence of something far gentler and more grounded. Her life force, if you can call it that, felt unmistakably strong, but not aggressive. It felt wide and deep, not high and loud. We stared into her light-sensitive eyes and asked, &amp;quot;Who are you little one?&amp;quot; She stared right back without an answer. We deliberated for hours and decided nothing. Finally, in the middle of our second night in the hospital, all three of us wedged into one bed together, blanketed in moonlight pouring through the central courtyard outside our window, we landed on her name. We&amp;#039;d never really discussed it in depth before, just mentioned it as a nice name, the name of many people we respected, and then moved on. But something about this girl, this 7-pound, 3-ounce creature, inspired it to re-surface. Maya. A name that people in so many cultures can say, relate to, admire. A name that feels visually congruent and simple. A name, most importantly of visionary women, like Maya Lin (my partner is an architect) and Maya Angelou.  Maya Angelou&amp;#039;s memoir series sat on my grandmother&amp;#039;s sparse shelf when I was growing up \u2014 little white paperbacks, all in a row. When I was 11 or 12, I borrowed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and devoured it, falling in love with Maya and her resilience, falling in love with the memoir form itself. I also fell in love with my grandmother all over again; this white, farmer&amp;#039;s daughter from Kearney, Nebraska had loved the story of this poor, black girl from Arkansas enough to keep it in the exalted place on her bookshelf for decades. Why? What was it about Maya&amp;#039;s story that my grandmother \u2014 seemingly from another demographic universe \u2014 had so identified with? I loved that intrigue so much that I never asked. I&amp;#039;ll never know now as my grandmother is long dead. I read all of the books in the series. None struck me like the first, but I did leave the whole with a palpable sense that one woman&amp;#039;s life could really be ten women&amp;#039;s lives, that there was no reason to limit one&amp;#039;s existence to one place, lover, job. I also had a sense that truth telling was courageous and powerful and necessary. Maybe my grandmother, a kindergarten teacher turned housewife who lost the love her life in her fifties and never remarried, a devout Episcopalian and rule follower, a devotee of what was appropriate not what was true, kept the series precisely because she didn&amp;#039;t relate to that limitlessness and raw honesty, and she coveted both.  I&amp;#039;ll never know. But I know one thing, and that is that I want \u2014 for my daughter \u2014 a life of experimentation and truth, a life of the liberation born from both. If her namesake, the amazing and no longer Angelou, can infuse her subconscious with a bit of that, we&amp;#039;re all in for an adventure.   Samhita Mukhopadhyay There&amp;#039;s really no nice way to say this: I thought I was really ugly when I was young. Believing you are ugly isn&amp;#039;t just about an inability to live up to conventional standards of beauty. Negative thoughts about your appearance have deeper implications for what you think is possible for yourself and what you think you deserve. I grew up to realize what is common sense now, but unfathomable as a young person: Beauty comes in all different forms and is much deeper than what you look like. And I have Dr. Maya Angelou to thank for helping me realize this truth. She starts in her famous poem, &amp;quot;Phenomenal Woman&amp;quot;: Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. \u2028I&amp;#039;m not cute or built to suit a fashion model&amp;#039;s size \u2028 But when I start to tell them,\u2028 They think I&amp;#039;m telling lies.\u2028 I say,\u2028 It&amp;#039;s in the reach of my arms,\u2028 The span of my hips, \u2028 The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. \u2028 I&amp;#039;m a woman\u2028 Phenomenally. \u2028Phenomenal woman, \u2028 That&amp;#039;s me. Simply put, when I was in my late teens, I read this in my feminist poetry class and it changed my life. She gave me a language to describe the tremendous power and possibility hiding behind my low self-esteem and a world of self-hate. She gave me permission to love myself and call myself beautiful, even if no one else would. I could have relegated myself to a life of bitterness, believing I wasn&amp;#039;t worthy of success or love, but instead Dr. Angelou taught me to be a better version of myself. To see my flaws as my beauty, to project courage into the face of racism and believe that despite the negativity, I am amazing. She could do this, because she faced her own difficult set of circumstances with courage, compassion and poetry. She was the quintessential phenomenal woman \u2014 one that could take her struggle, paint a new world with it, and share it with us for generations to come.  RELATED: Maya Angelou Dead at 86 Photo Credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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