Maya Angelou was raised in Stamps, Arkansas. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman, she wrote numerous volumes of poetry, among them Phenomenal Woman, And Still I Rise, On the Pulse of Morning, and Mother. Maya Angelou died in 2014.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), the French Post-impressionist painter, abandoned his family and his career as a stockbroker to paint in Tahiti and other exotic locations. According to some art scholars, modern art began with Paul Gauguin. Today his work is in the permanent collections of museums all over the world.