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50 free Maya Angelou trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Maya Angelou trivia quiz covers the memoirist and poet behind I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, from a childhood in Stamps, Arkansas to the podium at Bill Clinton's inauguration. The easy questions cover the famous first autobiography, the inaugural poem, the friendship with Oprah Winfrey, the appearance in Roots and the 2022 quarter. From there it moves through an extraordinary life: the brother who gave her the name Maya, the five years of silence, the teacher who said 'you do not love poetry until you speak it', the streetcar job at 16, the Purple Onion, the Porgy and Bess tour, the Harlem Writers Guild, Cairo, Accra and Malcolm X. The harder end covers the album Miss Calypso, the Cabaret for Freedom, the screenplay filmed in Sweden, the Tony nomination, the Wake Forest professorship she held without a degree, the hotel-room writing ritual with sherry and a deck of cards, the seven autobiographies, and the King memorial quote she called an 'arrogant twit' paraphrase. Every answer was checked against Angelou's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our poetry and Black history quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Maya Angelou's birth name?
Marguerite Annie Johnson
Her brother Bailey Jr. gave her the nickname 'Maya', from 'My' or 'Mya Sister'.
Q 02In which city was Angelou born in 1928?
St. Louis, Missouri
Her father was a doorman and navy dietitian, her mother a nurse and card dealer.
Q 03Where did the nickname 'Maya' come from?
Her older brother's way of saying 'My Sister'
Bailey Jr. was a year older; the two were sent alone by train to Arkansas when she was three.
Q 04In which Arkansas town did Angelou grow up with her paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson?
Stamps
Her grandmother's general store prospered even through the Depression thanks to 'wise and honest investments'.
Q 05For roughly how long did Angelou stop speaking after she was raped at the age of eight?
Almost five years
Her attacker was murdered days after his release, and she believed her voice had killed him.
Q 06Which teacher helped Angelou speak again, telling her 'You do not love poetry, not until you speak it'?
Mrs. Bertha Flowers
Flowers introduced her to Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe and Black women writers such as Frances Harper and Jessie Fauset.
Q 07At 16, Angelou became the first Black woman to hold which job in San Francisco?
Streetcar conductor
She wanted it for the uniform; in 2014 transport officials gave her a lifetime achievement award for it.
Q 08How soon after finishing school did Angelou give birth to her son?
Three weeks
She was 17; the boy, Clyde, later changed his name to Guy Johnson.
Q 09Angelou's first husband, Tosh Angelos, whom she married in 1951, was of what nationality?
Greek
He was an electrician and former sailor; the interracial marriage drew condemnation and her mother's disapproval.
Q 10With which future dance legend did Angelou form the unsuccessful modern-dance duo 'Al and Rita'?
Alvin Ailey
They performed at Black fraternal organisations around San Francisco; she later studied African dance with Pearl Primus in New York.
Q 11At which San Francisco nightclub did Angelou sing and dance to calypso and adopt her professional name?
The Purple Onion
'Maya Angelou' combined her nickname and a version of her married surname.
Q 12With which opera production did Angelou tour Europe in 1954-55?
Porgy and Bess
She began learning the language of every country she visited and became proficient in several.
Q 13What was the title of Angelou's first album, recorded in 1957?
Miss Calypso
It was reissued on CD in 1996; she also appeared in the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave.
Q 21Which Random House editor challenged Angelou to write her first autobiography and edited her for the rest of her career?
Robert Loomis
He dared her to write an autobiography that could be considered 'high art'; he retired in 2011.
Q 22In what year was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings published?
1969
It covers her life up to age 17 and brought her international acclaim.
Q 23How many autobiographies did Angelou publish in total?
Seven
The last came out in 2013 when she was 85.
Q 24Angelou's 1972 film Georgia, Georgia, the first produced screenplay by a Black woman, was filmed where?
Q 14Which organisation did Angelou join after moving to New York in 1959, where she was first published?
The Harlem Writers Guild
There she met John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy and Paule Marshall.
Q 15What benefit did Angelou and John Oliver Killens organise in 1960 for the SCLC?
Cabaret for Freedom
She was then named the SCLC's Northern Coordinator.
Q 16Which role did Angelou play in the 1961 production of Jean Genet's The Blacks?
The Queen
The cast included James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson and Louis Gossett.
Q 17In which city did Angelou work as associate editor of the English-language weekly The Arab Observer?
Cairo
She had moved there with South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make, whom she never officially married.
Q 18In which African country did Angelou live from 1962 to 1965?
Ghana
She stayed on in Accra after her son was seriously hurt in a car accident.
Q 19Angelou returned to the US in 1965 to help which leader build the Organization of Afro-American Unity?
Malcolm X
They had become close friends in Accra; he was assassinated shortly after her return.
Q 20On what date was King assassinated, which Angelou's biographer calls 'a macabre twist of fate'?
Her 40th birthday, April 4
He had asked her to organise a march; James Baldwin coaxed her out of the depression that followed.
Sweden
She also wrote the soundtrack but had little other say in the filming.
Q 25For her role in which 1973 play was Angelou nominated for a Tony Award?
Look Away
She called herself 'a reluctant actor'; she directed Moon on a Rainbow Shawl in London in 1988.
Q 26Angelou's second husband Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter, had previously been married to which writer?
Germaine Greer
They married in San Francisco in 1973 and divorced in 1981.
Q 27In which 1977 television mini-series did Angelou appear in a supporting role?
Roots
Around the same time she met a Baltimore TV anchor named Oprah Winfrey, who became a lifelong friend.
Q 28Which university gave Angelou a lifetime professorship in 1981, despite her having no bachelor's degree?
Wake Forest
She was the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies and called herself 'a teacher who writes'.
Q 29Which poem did Angelou recite at Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993?
'On the Pulse of Morning'
She was the first inaugural poet since 1961, and the recording won a Grammy.
Q 30Who was the last poet to recite at a presidential inauguration before Angelou in 1993?
Robert Frost
Frost read at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.