Black Lives Matter. Not only a powerful statement but a movement we are in full support of and we stand in solidarity with the black community. We would like to take this opportunity to use our platform for education and to give our readers a deeper understanding of black culture, history and industry with a spotlight series on Black Female Creatives. We are beginning the series by featuring BBC Radio 4’s dramatisations of the great Maya Angelou’s works.

The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are among the most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography ever written. Joyous, direct and searingly honest, they run the gamut from life-affirming to tragic, and back again.

Here BBC Radio 4 produce 6 dramatisations of Angelou's evocative, extraordinary memoirs, starring Adjoa Andoh and Pippa Bennett-Warner.

A prolific and revered literary figure Maya’s works document her experience of life as a black woman living in America across 8 decades. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings charts Maya’s childhood in the Deep South in the 1930s; while Gather Together In My Name recounts her descent into prostitution and narcotics. Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas sees her forging a career in showbusiness, and in The Heart of a Woman, she moves to New York and becomes involved in civil rights. All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes explores her time in Ghana during the 1960s, and in A Song Flung up to Heaven, she returns to America to work with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. When tragedy strikes, her friend James Baldwin helps her out of her devastation – and new opportunities beckon for Maya.

Angelou’s memoirs have become modern classics, beloved worldwide, and these stunning dramatisations illuminate her incredible resilience, creativity and power, painting an extraordinary portrait of 20th century black America.

This series can be downloaded and listened to here.

How To Get Involved

If you would like to get involved with the Black Lives Matter movement, here are ways in which you can help.

Donate directly to Black Lives Matter the global movement fund dedicated to the on going fight of liberating black peopled ending state sanctioned violence.

Donate to BLMUK. Black Lives Matter UK (BLMUK) is a coalition of black activists and organisers across the UK.