In her autobiography, Maya Angelou tells the story of her coming into womanhood in the American South during the 1930s. She begins with the story of an incident she had on Easter Sunday in which she’s in church reciting a poem in front of everyone; however, she messes up leaving her unable to finish the poem, so she runs out of the church crying and wets herself. Growing up her parents had a rough marriage, and eventually they got a divorce when Maya was only 3 years old. Their parents send her and her older brother Bailey to live with their grandmother Mrs. Annie Henderson in Staples, Arkansas. Staples is a very rural area and their grandmother owns the only store in the black section of the town, so she is very respected amongst the people …show more content…
living there. Maya and Bailey call their grandmother Momma who basically raises them as her own and the children look up to her. Maya feels very insecure about her looks and does not feel pretty enough or accepted by other children which contributes to her self-consciousness; however, her brother Bailey sticks up for her in front of her tormenters. When Maya is 8 her father visits them in Staples, he has a more luxurious lifestyle making it seem as if he’s white. He takes them to their mother, Vivian in St. Louis, Missouri where the children find themselves shocked at her beauty. Maya and Bailey meet many family members, including Grandmother Baxter and various uncles; these relatives work in organized crime, and contain a lot of power within the city. In St. Louis, the children live with Vivian and her boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, who after some time molests Maya twice and then rapes her while no one is home. He threatens to kill her and Bailey if she tells anyone, which forces her into silence and she hides the dirty clothes from the rape under her bed. Later Vivian finds the clothing, they go to court, and Maya decides to deny the molestations but confirms the rape. Mr. Freeman is sentenced for a year and a day of jail but he gets out that afternoon; however, he gets beaten to death once he gets out. Maya blames his death on herself and decides to not speak to anyone except Bailey for a while. After the rape incident, Maya and Bailey go back to Staples to live with Momma, and here Maya experiences some more racist Southern attitudes and harsh experiences.
She takes a job in a white lady named Ms. Cullinan’s home as a maid, who calls her Mary for her own convenience and lack of respect. This enrages Maya and in order to get away she smashes the finest china to get her fired. At her eighth-grade graduation, a white man comes to speak in front of everyone and he states that black students can only become athletes or servants which makes Maya furious. Later, when Maya develops a nasty toothache, Momma decides to take her to a white dentist who refuses to work on her. Momma claims that she lent him money during the Great Depression so he owes her a favor but he says he’d rather stick his hands in a dogs’ mouth. Lastly, one day while Bailey is walking home he sees a dead black man rotting in a river and a white man present at the scene says he will put both the dead man and Bailey in his truck. This terrifies Bailey and Momma wants to get them out of Staples so she sends them to Vivian’s again in San Francisco. There they live with Vivian and her husband Daddy Clidell who is a nice man to Maya, and has a lot of money from his businesses. One summer Maya goes to live with her father Big Bailey and his girlfriend Dolores, who are poor and live in a trailer. Maya and Dolores do not get along and constantly fight, so Maya runs away and lives with a group of homeless teens
in a junkyard. Eventually, she travels back to San Francisco to Vivian, where Bailey has grown very distant from the family and now hangs out with prostitutes and other bad influences which incites Vivian to kick him out. Maya on the other hand fights for a job and becomes the first black streetcar conductor at just 15 years old. When she’s just 16 she has sex with a boy to dispel her conflicting thoughts on her sexuality. She becomes pregnant with him and her autobiography ends as she begins to raise her newborn son with a newly found sense of confidence.
The poem “On The Pulse of Morning” written by Maya Angelou, this poem explains the effects of cultural diversity among the American people during the late 20th century. Maya states in the sixth stanza of her poem; “Each of you, a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more.” (Angelou, 6)
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...
In the book Letters to My Daughters, poet Maya Angelou wrote “I am a spring leaf trembling in anticipation of full growth” (163). Anticipation is a good description of how I feel about being a thirty-six year old college freshman. Anxiety, self-doubt, and dogged determination are on my list of emotions alongside anticipation, if I were being honest I would add. Providing my children with security, find true happiness in my career, and conquer my fear of failure are just a few things that hold my hand as I take this leap into higher education. Friends and family are surprised that I have gone back to school. In January of 2015 when I applied to South Plains College, I was working for AT&T making a good living. My mother especially couldn’t
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.
In the beginning of the book the Maya and Bailey moved to a place called Stamps. They moved in with their Grand mother. She owns the store in the middle of the black part of Stamps. During the cotton picking season their grandmother gets up at four in the morning to get the lunches to the people who pick the cotton. In chapter two the young girl falls in love with reading epically William Shakespeare. Then later momma (aka the grand mother) found out that a black man messed with white women and the white people were on a rampage. When people call Maya ugly her sister steps in and bags down on the people who are saying it.
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.
“You’re ugly and you're fat!”, said Carlos to Amanda. Amanda is 15 years old and is a bit overweight for her age, she's been told so many things, so she started working out and eating healthy. Later in life, Amanda ended up getting a job in a modeling industry. She is very beautiful, had a great body, and now a large amount of money just because of the comments from others, The truth is Amanda was beautiful before she lost all the weight and the reality is Amanda got bullied because of her appearance and that motivated her and now she's traveling around the world . Truth and reality are the same because they're both based on opinions, they're different because the truth is what one says and reality is the actual fact.
Momma is the epitome of a Southern African-American woman. She is the only African-American woman that owns a store in the neighborhood and is a rather well off for a rural black woman. The children do not suffer any economic hardship - not even during the Great Depression. Her store is the center of the town and is at its busiest during the cotton season. Momma is typically referred to as “Mrs” by the people in town, further showing that she is a respectable figure in town. She manages a strict household with necessary routine and goes to church every Sunday. She keeps a distance from white people, whom she refers to as “they,” because she has been taught from a young age that they are powerful and not to be questioned. Despite her strong-willed nature, Momma doesn't ever speak out about white people because she doesn’t want to cause trouble for her friends and family. Momma becomes a significant figure in Maya and Bailey’s
Maya never had a very functional family. Her mother, Vivian Baxter, was a nurse and realtor and her father Bailey Johnson was a navy dietician. When Maya was just 3 years old her parents divorced. Maya's father shipped her and 4 year old brother Bailey to live with his mother in Arkansas while their mother moved to California. Because her parents divorced when she was so young, Maya never really knew what a healthy relationshop looked like and in the long run this affected her own love life. In 1950, however, when Maya was just 22, she married Tosh Angelos, an ex-sailor. They didn't have much in common though and 3 years later they were divorced. Maya did have other relationships with men but they never seemed to work out. Although her relationships involving love weren't successful, her friendships were. In 1964, Maya met Malcolm X. The two became great friends and he even offered her a job to help him build a new civil rights organization, the Organization of African American Unity. Unfortunately, he was assassinated shortly after she began working with him. After Malcolm X's assasination, Martin Luther King Jr. contacted Maya and asked for her help to organize a march ...
Maya Angelou was born in Missouri on April 4th, 1928. She was a poet, singer, memoirist and civil rights activist and has won an accolade of prestigious awards. Despite having a myriad of professions and only beginning her career as an autobiographer at the age of 41, she is perhaps best known for her autobiographies. On top of this, she was nominated for the Pulitzer prize in 1972 with her book of poetry “Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie,” (Moyer, Homer E., 2003). In the same year, Angelou became the first black woman to have her original script produced with her screenplay “Georgia, Georgia” (Brown, A.,1997)
Society creates the thought of what makes an ideal woman; however, Maya Angelou shows us what truly makes an authentic woman in her poem, “Phenomenal Woman.” The word “Phenomenal” is defined as something that is magnificent, remarkable, breathtaking, as well as extraordinary. This poem illustrates confidence and beauty from within, instead of the conventional view that society tends to have, which only focuses on the appearance. She shows how to acknowledge womanhood. One is able to appreciate the poem, even further, by analyzing many of the poetry elements that Maya Angelou illustrates, such as imagery, tone, and diction.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings both take aim at the same topic: racism in the American South. And they do so through a similar medium too. In both cases, the protagonist of the tale is a young girl, an innocent, who is observing the corruption around her. The biggest difference between them, however, is the difference of race. The protagonist of Lee’s work, Scout, is a white girl born into a position of privilege, and Angelou’s self-styled character Maya is a black girl experiencing the disadvantages that come not just with her skin color but also from living with poverty as well. The experiences that each girl lives through are very different because of their positions in society, but
It is said that when we look in the mirror, we see our reflection; but what is it that we really see? Some people look through the glass and see a totally different person. All across the world identity is an issue that many women have. Woman today must be skinny, tall, thick, fair skinned and have long hair in order to be considered beautiful. Maya Angelou feels otherwise, as she gives women another way to look at themselves through her poem "Phenomenal Woman".
Maya Angelou is a well acclaimed poet, author, and civil rights activist. Though she passed away in 2014, her work continues to awe and inspire people worldwide. Angelou had written numerous poems, but in this analysis I will be focusing on “Caged Bird,” “Phenomenal Woman,” and finally “Touched by An Angel.” In these works we see her approach issues such as equality, racism, feminism, love and many more issues as well. Angelou is a very skilled poet; though some people find her work too straight forward and little more than common text broken into stanzas. Maya Angelou 's poems are easy to understand; and though I do enjoy her work, I find that how she structures her poems can be confusing