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Gaines was born on a Louisiana plantation where five generations of his family had lived, and drew on his childhood memories of rural Louisiana and its oral tradition throughout his life for his novels and short stories. He was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese. Four of his works were made into television movies. He was the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, National Medal of the Art, Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the government of France, and a National Books Critics Circle Award winner. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana –in particular of both dispiriting and triumphal experiences of black personhood--made him a greatly respected and beloved world-renowned author. He was a writer in residence Emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In presenting the National Medal of the Arts, President Barack Obama cited Ernest J Gaines "for his contributions as an author and teacher. Drawing deeply from his childhood in the rural South, his works have shed new light on the African American experience and given voice to those who have endured injustice" (“The Author”). Enthralled by literature he found in a library after moving to California at 15, he started writing because he could find no stories that reflected the African-American experience in the rural South. Later he would say that he was afraid if he didn't write the stories he wanted told, nobody would. His breakout work was his 1971 novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, the reminisces of a 110-year-old woman born into slavery who lived long enough to see the Civil Rights Movement. Three years later it was made into a hit film starring Cicely Tyson.
Across a career of fifty years, Angelou published numerous poems and poetry collections, several autobiographies - her first and most famous, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, appeared in 1969 and chronicled her life up to age 17 - essays, and plays. Up until Caged Bird, public personal writing by African-Americans was mostly the province of men, and women had been marginalized, but she was the first to prominently bring the lives of women to the foreground - one reviewer called her “the black woman’s poet laureate”. Much of Angelou’s life draws directly on her own life, including what have been called her “autobiographical novels”, with her struggles often becoming the larger struggles of African-American women at large in the shape of her characters, and defending in both her fiction and non-fiction African-American culture, particularly that of women. She was the first African-American woman to have a screenplay produced. Angelou was introduced to a new generation when she read at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, and her poetry went on to influence numerous hip-hop artists, including Mary J. Blige, Nicki Minaj, Common, Tupac Shakur, Kanye West, and Wu Tang Clan (Feeney).
