Distress in Maya Angelou's Life
Marguerite Ann Johnson, commonly known as Maya Angelou, was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She is a famous African-American poet, novelist, and playwright and also worked during the civil rights: "Angelou is a very remarkable Renaissance woman who hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature" (www.mayaangelou.com). She is also an activist in civil-rights. Angelou went through many controversies during her childhood and adulthood; her romantic life was never joyful and there are questions that come consecutively in my mind: how does Angelou's "Artful Pose" demonstrates the attitude toward writing of her poetry? How "In a Time" does reveal Angelou's ambivalence to love?
Angelou describes her feelings in everything she writes, and one thematic element Angelou uses, is the theme of antithesis. For example, in the poem, "Artful Pose" this thematic element is obvious. In the lines,
in their delights some poets sing their melodies tendering my nights [...] (3-5)
words such as, "melodies" "delights" and "hateful wrath" seem to show Maya contrasting the theme of love and of hate, diverging feelings that mirror what's going on in her own life. Maya was married three times but she never convinces that to the society. On the other hand, the lines,
Some poets sing their melodies [...] I need to write of lovers false. (4-12)
support this thematic element because Angelou highlights the difference between love that fulfills and the love that betrays. Angelou must be revealing her emotional pains that she suffered when her husband was having infidelities. Furthermore, the diction used in the poem, with the words such as, "My" and "halts" seem to further suggest that Maya' s rom...
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...ngelou for the book, saying that, "like Richard Wright, she opens with a primal childhood scene that brings into focus the nature of the imprisoning environment from which the self will seek escape" (www. voices.cla.umn.edu). I agree with Sidonie because she talks about the same thing I do to explain Angelou's childhood life and the poem "Artful Pose". Even though, Angelou does not captures environment but she does relate love of environment that how love is nothing but a false obsession that breaks no matter how hard a person tries to keep love together.
Work Cited
Angelou, Maya. The Completed Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. New York:
Random House, 1995.
http://www.mayaangelou.com/
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/bio/MayaAngelou
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/maya_angelou/biography
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/angelou_maya.html
...s of particular importance to women. Angelou's book, although it is meant for a broad audience, is also concerned with conveying the difficulties of being black and a woman in America. Angelou addresses these issues in such a way that they appeal to all her readers for understanding, and also speak to the particular segment of her audience that she represents.
Maya Angelou is one of the well-respected African-American women figures. Maya is a poet, actress, civil right activist, dancer, singer, writer, educator, and a director. Maya’s real name is Marguerite Johnson. Maya was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Maya’s parents divorced when she was three. She was sent to live with her brother and grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. She was very close to her brother Bailey and her brother named her Maya. When she lived in Arkansas, she experienced discrimination towards African-American. At the age of seven Maya was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. “She only told her brother,” but a few days later her uncle has murdered the man who assaulted her. She thought her words have killed
This literary critique was found on the Bryant Library database. It talks about how well Maya conveys her message to her readers as well as portraying vivid scenes in her reader’s minds’. Maya’s sense of story and her passionate desire to overcome obstacles and strive for greatness and self-appreciation is what makes Maya an outlier. Living in America, Angelou believed that African American as a whole must find emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sustenance through reverting back to their “home” of Africa. According to Maya, “Home” was the best place to capture a sense of family, past, and tradition. When it comes to Maya’s works of literature, her novels seems to be more critically acclaimed then her poetry. With that being said, Angelou pursues harsh social and political issues involving African American in her poems. Some of these themes are the struggle for civil rights in America and Africa, the feminist movement, Maya’s relationship with her son, and her awareness of the difficulties of living in America's struggling classes. Nevertheless, in all of Maya’s works of literature she is able to “harness the power of the word” through an extraordinary understanding of the language and events she uses and went through. Reading this critique made me have a better understanding of the process Maya went through in order to illustrate her life to her readers. It was not just sitting down with a pen and paper and just writing thoughts down. It was really, Maya being able to perfect something that she c...
All in all, Maya Angelou's poems have became more inspirational as there years went on and the African Americans got the rights they deserved. She used imagery and a lot of emotions through her poems, as if you could feel the pain they had went through. Her poems had plenty of hope in them. She was hoping for the best during the Civil Rights Movement. In I Know Why The Cage Birds Sing, you can feel how that poem changed from the negative times to the positive. She talked about how the American Dream of giving blacks rights before the movement they had no hope, but as the poem went on you can feel a more positive vibe of hope.
when Maya Angelou was a young woman -- "in the crisp days of my youth," she says -- she carried with her a secret conviction that she wouldn't live past the age of 28. Raped by her mother's boyfriend at 8 and a mother herself since she graduated from high school, she supported herself and her son, Guy, through a series of careers and buoyed by an implacable ambition to escape what might have been a half-lived, ground-down life of poverty and despair. "For it is hateful to be young, bright, ambitious and poor," Angelou observes. "The added insult is to be aware of one's poverty." In "Even the Stars Look Lonesome," her new collection of reflective autobiographical essays, Angelou gives no further explanation for her "profound belief" that she would die young.
This poem is Maya Angelou speaking to the audience as she explains the problems she has overcome such as; racism, sexism, bullying and other problems in her life that she has managed to move on from.This poem is set in a first person narrative, Angelou explains to the audience about the good and bad times within her life, presented in a graceful way. By the poem being set in first person narrative, this allows the audience to connect to the poet on a deeper level because the tone of the poem is more intense throughout, making it more real for the audience. This genre of poetry is lyric poetry, relating to Angelou’s feelings and thoughts throughout the poem, addressing the audience directly.
Maya Angelou’s poem is structured in a quatrain format. The first few paragraphs are set out in such a way that it explains to us why she is rising; the poem compromises of a stanza of four lines, each of the same length.
By the end of the first book, Maya ends up being a high school graduate, so she has the mindset as most teens in high school (possibly more mature because she has a child). This puts her in the position as many of her readers. This goes without saying---at that age no one completely knows who he/she is, but it is possible to learn about oneself. Sexual abuse and Racism clouded the natural healthy development of Angelou. People go through things in their lives that to them seems like the worst thing imaginable. It is reassuring to know that people can still find themselves despite their circumstances, as Angelou shows to her
Maya Angelou is an author and poet who has risen to fame for her emotionally filled novels and her deep, heartfelt poetry. Her novels mainly focus on her life and humanity with special emphasis on her ideas of what it means to live. The way she utilizes many different styles to grab and keep readers’ attention through something as simple as an autobiography is astounding. This command of the English language and the grace with which she writes allows for a pleasant reading experience. Her style is especially prominent in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", where the early events of Angelou’s life are vividly described to the reader in the postmodern literary fashion.
The early 1930’s a time where segregation was still an issue in the United States it was especially hard for a young African American girl who is trying to grow and become an independent woman. At this time, many young girls like Maya Angelou grew up wishing they were a white woman with blond hair and blue eyes. That was just the start of Angelou's problems though. In the autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou goes into great depth about her tragic childhood, from moving around to different houses, and running away and having a child at the age of 16. This shows how Maya overcame many struggles as a young girl.
In her first autobiography, Maya Angelou tells about her childhood through her graduation through, “Graduation”, from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” when she is about to graduate. She starts as an excited graduate because she was finally going to receive her diploma, a reward for all her academic accomplishments. On the day of her graduation finally comes, that happiness turns into doubt about her future as she believes that black people will be nothing more than potential athletes or servants to white people. It wasn’t until Henry Reed started to sing the Negro National Anthem that she felt on top of the world again. Throughout her graduation she felt excited to disappointed, until Henry Reed sang and made her feel better.
Maya goes through a rough patch in the hands of a man, even after being abandoned by her father at a tender age. This, however, does not completely set her against men but rather opens up her mind enabling her to view them objectively.
Maya Angelou is a very inspiring and courageous woman who says how she feels through her poems without coming off in a hateful manner, but rather a sophisticated and intelligent way. Her poems varies between subjects such as love, passion,racism and the way of life. However, in her poem “Phenomenal Woman” she speaks for all women around the world who doesn’t feel they fit in with today’s society.
The tone can be confident, proud, complementary, cheerful and sassy. Confident because, in each stanza Maya states some type of criticism that has been said, then overpowers it using her voice to reveal what she thinks. She uses “I say” in every stanza is a cue that she is about to speak her mind. In stanza four she describes her confidence, saying “Now you understand just why my head 's not bowed. I don’t shout or jump about or have to talk real loud. When you see me passing, it ought to make you proud”. The message that she is trying to say is that when she is put down by others, she does not get down or have to attract attention, because of her confidence, she attracts attention when she walks by. Another example, proud because of the several times she uses phenomenal throughout the poem. When she explains why she is a phenomenal woman it sets the tone that she is proud of who he is. Complementary because if reading the poem aloud, it would sound like the reader is complimenting themselves. With Maya Angelou writing all the positive things of being a phenomenal woman, the readers are complimenting themselves of being phenomenal and should be proud of it. Although, the poem may come across as cheerful, when the reader deeply analyzes the poem a serious tone is displayed. Angelou wants the reader to actually feel what she is saying, not just read it as if it has no meaning. This poem shows her strength
Her vivid images juxtapose the struggles of the past with those of the present, providing a connection between the two. For example, the description of a woman “in Virginia tobacco fields, / leaning [...] into the palms of her chained hands” is compared with the modern picture of a woman “stand[ing] / before the abortion clinic, / confounded by the lack of choices” (“Our Grandmothers” 29-34, 99-101). Angelou uses the two images of injustice from vastly different time periods to show how oppression of African Americans, specifically women, has continued to dominate society. The poem is a “catalyst for deep understanding of the pain her people have endured” over many years (“Our Grandmothers”, 2011, 1). Placed in the era of American history in which slavery was rampant in the South, Angelou paints a picture of one of her ancestors being chained in tobacco fields. Because Angelou was raised by her grandmother, she developed a substantial amount of respect for her relatives and learned that she must continue the fight for equality that they began (“Maya Angelou Biography” 2). She also describes an image of an African American woman in a modern society that is not offering her everything that she needs, specifically abortion rights. This image is likely a reflection of her life. Being a pregnant teenager with