Writings of Maya Angelou Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in California (Lupton 1). When she was three years old her parents divorced. Her father then put her and her brother on a segregated train from St. Louis, California, to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother (2). That began the roller coaster of her life. She went back and forth from her mother to her grandmother on a couple of occasions. When she was seven, she returned to live with her mother. She thought of it there as a foreign town because it was not like what she was used to. This stay ended when her mother’s live-in boyfriend raped her. After that she returned to her grandmoth