To honor the late Maya Angelou, the U.S. Postal Service is unveiling a special forever stamp with her picture and a quote. However, despite plenty of great quotes that Angelou actually did say, a children’s book author says that it isn’t a real Angelou quote.
Joan Walsh Anglund, 89, told the The Washington Post that the quote actually comes from one of her books. “a bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song,” the quote reads.
The Post found that the quote appears in Anglund’s 1967 book A Cup of Sun. The USPS changed the pronouns from “he” to “it.”
USPS told the Post sent the Post a link to a 2013 interview in which Angelou said the quote and that there were “numerous references” to prove that Angelou had said it. After the Post told USPS spokesman Mark Saunders about Anglund’s claim, Saunders replied, “Had we known about this issue beforehand, we would have used one of [Angelou’s] many other works. . . . The sentence held great meaning for her and she is publicly identified with its popularity.”
Emily Anglund, Anglund’s granddaughter, told the Post she wasn’t aware that the quote had been attributed to Angelou. Anglund told the Post that she wasn’t aware of the Angelou stamp when she was contacted.
The quote has been attributed to Angelou for years and was even mentioned by President Obama when he presented the 2013 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities, notes USA Today. It has also been linked to Angelou’s famous book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
Angelou died in May 2014 at age 86.
image from USPS.com
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