When she was 3, Angelou and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Arkansas after their parents divorced in Missouri. Angelou was molested by her mother's boyfriend when she was 7. Later on in life, she said, "Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused, barefoot, black girl on the roads of Arkansas."
Angelou grew up during a time when discrimination against blacks was the norm. In fact, it was the law in the South. But she persevered after many struggles, according to Achievement.org. Looking back on her formative years, Angelou remembers many experiences that led to these words: "Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable." She also has been quoted as saying: "Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible."
Angelou's first husband was a Greek sailor, Anastasios Angelopulos. She later toured Europe as an opera performer in the mid 1950s, married a South African and moved to Egypt in 1960, studied foreign languages and became involved with the American civil rights movement after meeting Malcolm X. These experiences may have led her to state, "It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength."
After a long life filled with struggles and achievements, Angelou looked back on her experiences and held out hope for people everywhere. "I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted"