Maya Angelou has been honored in a lot of ways, but this might be the most original. The poet and bff to Oprah has been minted on the back side of the US quarter.
This is part of a series of quarters featuring trailblazing American women, with Maya’s being first.
George Washington’s likeness remain on one side, while the other will have the honored women. The women that will be featured include Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation’s first female principal chief; Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood film star; Adelina Otero-Warren, a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement; and Sally Ride, an astronaut and physicist who was the first American woman in space.
Angelou is depicted on the coin with her arms uplifted. Behind her are a bird and the rising sun, which are “inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived.”