Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

As Gillespie states "If 1968 was a year of great pain loss and sadness it was also the year when America first witnessed the breadth and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius". As of 2008 Maya Angelou owned two homes in Winston-Salem North Carolina and one in Harlem full of her "growing library" of books Maya Angelou has collected throughout her life artwork collected over the span of many decades and well-stocked kitchens. Angelou has one son Guy whose birth was described in her first autobiography one grandson and two young great-grandchildren and according to Gillespie a large group of friends and extended family.

She is respected as a spokesperson of Black people and women and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. : /ˈmaɪ. Maya Angelou (pron.