25 (non-Bravo) real life housewives who are pretty badass

Maya Angelou

Perhaps one of the most famous and well respected poets of all time, Maya Angelou emerged as a powerful female voice for multiple generations. Her themes of love, pain, resilience and sisterhood have affected every American woman in more ways than can be measured. Her words, as well as the way she lived her life, serve as a testament to the beauty to be found in pain and turmoil.

She’s had her fair share of triumph, however. She’s won Tonys, Grammys and a Pulitzer, and read a poem for Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. There are few more successful authors in existence, yet the themes of her work have always been pretty specific to the female experience. She was proud of her role of wife and mother, and often wrote about the gifts these roles offered her life. She eloquently articulated this universal sisterhood precisely and painfully, and her work continues to be regarded as some of the most important in the American canon. I can’t think of a more moving and touching poem as the one she’s reciting in the above clip. “Still I Rise” has become an anthem for anyone who’s been held down, hurt or underestimated.

As kind and as gentle as Angelou could be, she could also appear to be made of granite. She preferred people outside of her friends and family call her Dr. Angelou, and she was emphatic about never apologizing or skirting her accomplishments. Her most famous work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is still being taught in schools across America as we speak. Hailed as one of the first female, African-American memoirists who wrote from such a personal place, she helped to define 20th and 21st century femininity.