Maya Angelou on Politics, Obama and Her New Book

Maya Angelou says this presidential election would cause civil rights leaders of the past to weep with joy, and in her latest book, calls on national leaders to raise the country’s spirit.

In an interview at her Harlem, NY, home with CNN, the bestselling author says that even at the age of 80, her "knees are not all that swift and my lungs need some extra help but other than that, my desire to learn and to share, that has not abated."

She shares what she’s learned during her life in her bestselling new book, Letter to My Daughter. Angelou was only the second poet invited to read at the swearing in of a new president, when she read her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Clinton’s first inauguration.

In Letter to My Daughter, Angelou writes about birth, life and death, about the ways people misunderstand each other and then transcend their conflict. She calls on Americans to remember that this is the nation that defeated the Nazis more than half a century ago and expanded people’s freedom through the civil-rights movement.

"Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow," she writes. "Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone."

She also warned Americans that the country will not be repaired overnight, no matter who is elected president.

"I would encourage every voter to say to his or her candidate, go in and do it, and you will not do it alone. I will help," she told CNN. "You have to get up off that sofa or off that couch and give something to the country — even if it’s one hour every other week to an old people’s home — I will read, go into the children’s ward and read, or give to your church or your synagogue or your mosque."

Angelou, who supported Sen. Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic nomination before she backed Barack Obama, worked with civil-rights leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

"I think everybody would be weeping tears of joy really,” she said when asked what they would think of a black man being so close to winning the presidency.

“I think of my grandmother who raised me. She was a daughter of a former slave. She knew this was going to happen."

Click here to read more of the interview.