Maya would go on to write six more autobiographies, as well as countless poems and essays, and I've continued to feel that she has a unique gift for making her life resonate with the stories of all our lives. This was the first time I'd encountered anyone in a book whose life so closely resembled my own. 'What are you looking at me for? I didn't come to stay.I just come to tell you, it's Easter Day.' Like Maya, I was a Negro girl-that's what we were called back then-being raised in the South by my grandmother, and like her, I loved to read.

As I've said many times on the Oprah show, I was captivated from the very first page, when an awkward young girl in a lavender taffeta dress stands up in church in Arkansas and forgets the lines of a poem she's reciting: Like many of you, I first encountered Maya Angelou through her 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Now 85, she's published her 34th book: a deeply personal history of her relationship with her indomitable mother, Vivian Baxter, who encouraged her to live life with 'pizzazz.' In an intimate conversation, Angelou talks to Oprah about God, forgiveness, the healing powers of love-and the day Baxter handed her a gun and told her to go kill the man who'd abused her.

A performer, poet, activist, memoirist and teacher, Maya Angelou has lived an extraordinary life. The following is from the May 2013 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

Editor's note: We were deeply saddened to learn of Dr.

Maya angelou daughter