Maya Angelou did not speak for nearly five years. After being sexually assaulted at seven and telling her family who did it, her attacker was killed — and the young Marguerite Johnson believed her voice had become a weapon that could kill. She went mute, retreating into books and silence, and from that silence eventually emerged one of the most commanding voices in American literature.

This episode traces Angelou from her traumatic childhood in Stamps, Arkansas through the years of silence, her extraordinary career as dancer, singer, activist, and writer, and the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that made her story universal.

• The childhood trauma and the nearly five years of selective mutism that followed
• The unlikely path through dance, theater, and civil rights activism before she became a writer
• I ...