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"The world knew Maya Angelou, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 86, as a prolific writer and poet. But she had a long string of other jobs throughout her life. \nSee also: 10 Maya Angelou Quotes That Will Lift You Up\nFrom a cable car conductor to a shake dancer in a nightclub, Angelou's odd jobs seem out of place in a life associated with prose. But when woven together, these were the experiences that made Marguerite Ann Johnson (Angelou's birth name) the person she was. \nHere are 15 of them.\nDancer\nAngelou went to school in San Francisco to study dance, and though she dropped out at 14, her passion for it never seemed to fizzle. At six feet tall, Angelou had an unforgettable stage presence, and she eventually went on to perform in many very different venues.\n\nPoet and dancer Maya Angelou poses for a portrait in circa 1950.Image: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesStreetcar conductor\nShortly after dropping out of school, Angelou became San Francisco's first black female streetcar conductor at age 16. In one of her many interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Angelou said when she first went to place an application, the staff refused to give her one. However, her mother encouraged her to keep pursuing the job, telling her to work harder than anyone else. Angelou said it seemed like a dream job, adding, \"I loved the uniforms.\"\n \nTable dancer in a nightclub\nAfter she gave birth at age 16, Angelou bounced around from a series of jobs in order to support her son, which she chronicled in Singin\u2019 and Swingin\u2019 and Gettin\u2019 Merry Like Christmas. One of those jobs was a \"shake dancer in a nightclub.\"\nPaint-stripper in mechanic shop\nIn that same memoir, Angelou wrote that one of those jobs included working in a mechanic's shop, where she would remove paint from cars with her hands.\nCook in a hamburger joint, then in a Creole restaurant\nAngelou was a fry cook in a hamburger joint, and she passed herself off as an experienced Creole chef to get a job as a dinner cook \u2014 even though she had no idea what she was doing when it came to Creole food. Though she started off with little cooking knowledge, she eventually wrote Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes. In the recipe book, she includes sometimes-hilarious backstories associated with each dish.  \nProstitute and madam for lesbian hookers\nAs a teenage mother, a struggling Angelou faced darker periods in her life in which she worked less-than-legitimate jobs. One of those included a madam for lesbian prostitutes and a brief, unsuccessful stint as a prostitute herself. She later described these experiences in Gather Together in My Name, a book she said was the most painful thing she's ever written. In one interview, Angelou said that, though the experience gave her a rich life, she doesn't suggest it for just anybody. \n[..] If you happen to fall into that sort of experience, what you have to do is forgive yourself. If you\u2019re in the very gutter, see where you are and admit it. As soon as you admit it, you can be like the prodigal son, the prodigal daughter. Get up and go home - wherever home is. Get up and go to a safe place, someplace where your spirit is not kicked and brutalized and your body not misused and abused. Get up. But you can\u2019t get up unless you see where you are and admit it. I wrote about my experiences because I thought too many people tell young folks, \u201CI never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? - never I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In fact, I have no closet.\u201D They lie like that and then young people find themselves in situations and they think, \u201CDamn I must be a pretty bad guy. My mom or dad never did anything wrong.\u201D They can\u2019t forgive themselves and go on with their lives. So I wrote the book Gather Together in My Name. Meaning that all those grown people, all those adults, all those parents and grandparents and teachers and preachers and rabbis and priests who lie to the children can gather together in my name and I will tell them the truth. Wherever you are, you have got to admit it and set about to make a change.\nCalypso singer and dancer\nAfter one of her divorces, Angelou, whose real name was Marguerite, tried to make it as a calypso singer and danger. This is when she adopted the name that everyone in the world would come to know her by. Maya Angelou was a variation of her married name (her ex-husband's name was Tosh Angelos). \n\nAmerican poet and singer Maya Angelou wears a red dress while dancing next to a fire in a promotional portrait taken for the cover of her album, 'Miss Calypso,' 1957.Image: Gene Lester/Getty ImagesAs a calypso dancer, Angelou sometimes hooked up with Alvin Ailey \u2014 a revered choreographer who is credited for bringing modern dance to the mainstream \u2014 for nightclub dance gigs in San Francisco.  \n\nMagazine editor in Cairo\nAfter falling in love with Vusumzi L. Make, a South African civil rights activist, Angelou moved to Cairo, where she worked as the associate editor of The Arab Observer from 1962 to 1963. At that time, the magazine was the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East.\nFeatures editor in Ghana\nAngelou eventually left Make in the 1960s and then moved to Ghana and took a features editor position at the African Review in Accra. She worked there from 1964 to 1966, during the days of decolonization.\nAdministrative assistant in Ghana\nGhana seemingly had a huge impact on Angelou's life because it set her on course to becoming a powerful voice in the civil rights movement. While simultaneously working as an editor and an administrative assistant at the University of Ghana, she met Malcolm X. \nCivil rights activist\nOne year later, she moved back to the U.S. to help Malcolm X set up his Organization of African-American Unity, but it fell apart after his assassination. Angelou went on to work with Dr. Martin Luther King to help him set up the Southern Christina Leadership Conference. Angelou was devastated when King was killed, which was on her 40th birthday. That's when Angelou threw herself into her writing and penned her first memoirs.\nActress\nAngelou appeared on stage and in front of the camera several times as both a dancer and actress. Though she was cast in the Broadway musical \"House of Flowers\" in 1954, Angelou turned it down for a world tour of \"Porgy and Bess,\" in which she was a featured dancer. But she eventually got her chance again on Broadway in 1973 when she appeared in \"Look Away,\" a play about Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress. It closed after only one performance, but that single run was enough to earn Angelou a Tony Award nomination. \n\nMaya Angelou appears in Roots in January 1977.She famously appeared in the television mini-series Roots in 1977, and that same year she played Willie's wife in the TV movie The Richard Pryor Special?, for which she received a writing credit. But she was also in several films and TV series throughout the 1990s and early 2000s: Poetic Justice (1993), There Are No Children Here (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and even Madea's Family Reunion (2006).  \nTeacher\nWith the hard lessons and diverse experiences that made up Angelou's life, it seems fitting that one of her final jobs would be as a teacher. In 1982, Angelou took the position of Reynolds professor of American studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. \nAs Oprah once said, Angelou \"is the quintessential teacher because she has paid attention to everything [...] she hasn't missed a moment.\"\n  \nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nBONUS: Maya Angelou's life in photos \n\n\nMaya Angelou's Life in Photos\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAmerican writer and poet Maya Angelou in New York City, April 1994. \n\nImage: Michael Brennan/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFirst Lady Michelle Obama and Maya Angelou on stage at BET Honors 2012 at the Warner Theatre on January 14, 2012 in Washington, DC.  \n\nImage: Paul Morigi/WireImage/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMaya Angelou and Gloria Steinem on their way to the March on Washington on August 27, 1983 in Washington, DC.  \n\nImage: James M. Thresher/The Washington Post/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, embracing the poet Maya Angelou after a reading at his inauguration ceremony on January 20, 1993.\n\nImage: Arnold Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAmerican poet and author Maya Angelou gestures while speaking in a chair during an interview at her home on April 8th 1978.\n\nImage: Jack Sotomayor/New York Times Co/Getty Images)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDr. Maya Angelou onstage at the Women 2 Women 2014 Inaugural Conference Luncheon at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on March 1, 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. \n\nImage: Paras Griffin/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMaya Angelou around the year 1970.\n\nImage: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAmerican poet Maya Angelou reciting her poem 'On the Pulse of Morning' at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in Washington DC on January 20, 1993.\n\nImage: Consolidated News Pictures/Hulton Archive/Getty Images\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMaya Angelou in her role as Nyo Boto in the series 'Roots'.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDemocratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and poet Maya Angelou, left, acknowledge the crowd during a campaign stop at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., April 18, 2008. \n\nImage: Chuck Burton/Associated Press\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMaya Angelou, left, and Oprah Winfrey share laughs during a star-studded double-taping of \"Surprise Oprah! A Farewell Spectacular,\" on May 17, 2011, in Chicago. \n\nImage: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSen. Edward M. Kennedy shown with three of this year's six women in the field of communications who received the thirteenth annual Matrix Award from the New York Chapter of Women in Communications, Inc. in New York on Monday, April 11, 1983. From left, the winners are: Jane Bryant Quinn, contributing editor, Newsweek and Woman's Day; Maya Angelou, author; and Mary McGrory, syndicated columnist, The Washington Post.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nU.S. first lady Betty Ford, third from right, poses with six other women who took part in the taping of the television special presentation of Ladies' Home Journal \"Woman of the Year 1976\" in New York City, April 8, 1976.  From left are, Betty Furness, Bettye Caldwell, Maya Angelou, singer Kate Smith, Ford, Dr. Annie D. Wauneka and Micki King.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAuthor Maya Angelou admires a blow-up a of a Ghana postage stamp in her honor during a ceremony in Washington Thursday Nov. 13,1997. \n\nImage: Patsy Lynch/Associated Press\n\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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