Many women today have become a role model for society. To have a reputation as a role model, you must achieve in life in addition to having a positive influence on society itself. Maya Angelou is a great example of a female role model. She defied all odds and became one of the most famous African-American women today. She is an author, poet, historian, composer, playwright, dancer, theater and film producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. His most influential work comes from his extraordinary books and poems. His literature has influenced young and old through its content. Maya Angelou's literary importance rests primarily on her exceptional ability to tell the story of her life both as a human being and as a black American woman. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early childhood experiences. The first and most acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, written in 1969, chronicles his first seventeen years. This brought him international recognition and was nominated for a National Book Award. In the book, Maya confronts the insidious effects of racism and segregation in America at a young age. She internalizes the idea that blonde hair is beautiful and that she is a fat black girl trapped in a nightmare. Arkansas was so deeply segregated that as a child, Maya didn't really believe in the existence of white people. As Maya grows up, she encounters more overt and personal incidents of racism, such as a white speaker's condescending speech at her eighth-grade graduation, her white boss's insistence on calling her Mary and the refusal of a white dentist to treat her. Thes...... middle of paper ......: Playwrights and prose writers, ed. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris, 1985, pp. 7. Conversations with Maya Angelou. Ed. Jeffrey M.Elliot. London: Virago Press, 1989. pages 158 and 173Françoise Lionnet, “Con Artists and Storytellers: Maya Angelou's Problematic Sense of Audience”, in Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self Portraiture, 1989, pp. 167. Hagen, Lyman B. Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou. Lanham: UP of America, 1997. page 128. Joann Braxton. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook, Oxford University Press US, 1999, page 4. John Alfred Avant, “Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement,” in Black Women Writers (1950-1980) : A Critical Evaluation, ed. Mari Evans, 1984, pp. 6. The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House,1994.