Finding A Voice Through Maya Angelou

1252 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Lesson from maya angelou graduation

Finding a Voice Through Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou’s parent’s were divorced when she was three years old, resulting in her being relocated between family members several times. In addition to that hardship, when Angelou was only eight years old, she was left alone with her mother’s boyfriend and he raped her. Because of this experience, she chose not to speak for five years. Maya Angelou later began to speak and show her true self through poetry. Poetry is what ultimately helped her to begin physically speaking again. Maya Angelou regained the strength to speak for herself, and make a difference for her culture and women worldwide. Maya Angelou’s poetry has the power to inspire confidence within the conflicted individuals who lack the courage to speak for themselves. Maya’s intention to inspire confidence to others was best shown through her poems “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “Still I Rise,” and “Phenomenal Woman.”
Marguerite (Maya) Ann Angelou was born in St. Louis on April 4, 1928. Maya definitely did not have an easy start to her complicated and successful life. According to L. Patricia Kite, Maya was only three years old when her parents, Bailey Sr. and Vivian Johnson, got divorced (Maya Angelou 6). This source also states that years later, at eight years old, Maya was left alone with her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, when he raped her (23). Mr. Freeman told Maya that he would “...kill her if she screamed…[and] he would kill Bailey [Jr.] if she told anyone,” (23). Kite continues to say Maya was so afraid of Mr. Freeman that she lied in court saying that he had never touched her (26). Only hours later after Mr. Freeman’s conviction, he was found kicked to death, and Maya became so scared her lying had killed him, t...

... middle of paper ...

...nneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1999. Print.

"Maya Angelou." Maya Angelou Global Renaissance Woman. Dr. Maya Angelou, n.d. Web. 08
May 2014. .

Thursby, Jacqueline S. "'Caged Bird'." Critical Companion to Maya Angelou: A Literary
Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc.,
2011. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 23 Apr. 2014
/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&WID=97485&SID=5&iPin=CCMA0033&SingleRecord
=True>.

Thursby, Jacqueline S. "'Phenomenal Woman'." Critical Companion to Maya Angelou: A Literary
Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc.,
2011. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 2 May 2014 activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&WID=97485&SID=5&iPin=CCMA0561&SingleRecord =True>.

Show More
Related

  • Maya Angelou

    955 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1970, a child with skinny legs and muddy skin was introduced into African American literature. Born marguerite Johnson she became known as Maya Angelou (Lupton 51). Her critically acclaimed works have changed the way of the African American autobiography is written.

    Read More

  • The Powerful Leader Of Maya Angelou

    1382 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • A Biography: A Biographical Biography Of Maya Angelou

    639 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dr. Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps she was faced with the brutality of racial discrimination, and a very traumatic incident where she, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was eight, but because of this she also developed an unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family. (Angelou)This shaped her poetry and her involvement in the arts. Where she began to sing and dance and planned to audition in professional theater but that didn’t work out well because she began working as a nightclub waitress, tangled with drugs and prostitution and danced in a strip club. In 1959, she moved to New York, became friends with prominent Harlem writers, and got involved with the civil rights movement. In 1961, she moved to Egypt with a boyfriend and edited for the Arab Observer. When she returned to the U.S., she began publishing her multivolume autobiography, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as well as several books of poetry and the third being Still I Rise in published in 1978. (Maya Angelou is born) Because of this life of hardship shaped her to who she is and was the inspiration for a lot of her poetry.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography Of Maya Angelou

    2111 Words  | 5 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. In her early years, Angelou was an author, screenwriter, actress, dancer and poet. Her and her brother had a difficult childhood as her parent’s split up when she was young and they were relocated to live with their paternal grandmother in Arkansas. It is in Arkansas where Angelou experienced the true horrors of her childhood. Along with encountering racial prejudices and discrimination, Angelou dealt with feelings of abandonment and rejection, which stemmed from her parents lack of presence in her life. However, the worst of Angelou’s childhood came at age seven, when her mother’s boyfriend raped her. He was later murdered in response to the sexual assault. The assault itself

    Read More

  • The Struggles in Maya Angelou's Life

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    At a young age, Maya Angelou’s parents got divorced. After the divorce was final Maya and her older brother, Bailey, were sent away to live with their grandmother. Angelou’s not so perfect life started when she was a young girl. “When she was about three years old, their parents divorced and the children were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou claims that her grandmother, whom she called ‘momma, had a deep-brooding love that hung over everything she touched’” (Burt). In the first chapter of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the book starts with Angelou talking about her parent's divorce. “Our parents decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and father shipped us home to his mothers” (Angelou 5). After living with her grandmother, or as Maya begins to call her “momma”, for 4 years Maya Angelou and her brother Bailey are sent back to St. Louis Missouri. In St Louis they lived with her mother and her boyfriend Mr.Freeman. Mr.Freeman makes a huge impact on young Maya’s life. When she was only 8-years-old he rapes her, after being raped Angelou becomes mute and will ...

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou

    984 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Angelou was one of America’s greatest writers in history.  She was known for her many writings and for her part in Civil Rights Movements. Maya Angelou went through many hardships during her childhood, the most prevalent of those, racism over her skin color. This racism affected where she grew up, where she went to school, even where she got a job. “My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drops s’s from plurals and suffixes from past tense verbs.” (Angelou 221) Maya Angelou was a strong believer in a good education and many of those beliefs were described in her

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou: The Strength of the Human Spirit

    1752 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Maya Angelou’s third book of poetry And Still I Rise, the personal struggles of the African American Woman are brought to life through poetic works. With inspirations drawn from personal journeys of Maya Angelou herself, powerful poems praise, celebrate, and empathize with the feminine colored experience. Angelou’s writing sheds glaring light on themes of feminine power, beauty, and perseverance, raising the African American Woman to a pedestal that demands respect and adoration. For Angelou’s audience, the everyday woman is presented equipped with all the necessities to thrive and shine in the face of adversity. In Maya Angelou’s works “Phenomenal Woman”, “Woman Work”, and “Still I Rise”, audiences are able to connect to the strength and virtue of the woman that is brought to life through the praising of femininity, and through its power to make an impact on society.

    Read More

  • Biography Of Maya Angelou

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the age of 7, Maya Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The boyfriend turned up dead later by hand of her uncle. Traumatized by what had happened, she thought her words had killed her rapist so she became mute so her words couldn’t harm anyone else. "Angelou maintained nearly complete silence for five years,"(Author Study: M. Angelou). She moved to Arkansas where she continued to stay mute. “During these years, she retreated to a sheltered world of writing in which her creative being spawned and flourished” (Gaines 1). She started to dig her head into the books and that is known to be the beginning of her writing. “She read black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe”(Maya Angelou).

    Read More

  • The Writing's of Maya Angelou

    1907 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maya Angelou’s excerpt from her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” reveals the challenges facing a young black girl in the south. The prologue of the book tells of a young Angelou in church trying to recite a poem she has forgotten. She describes the dress her grandmother has made her and imagines a day where she wakes up out of her black nightmare. Angelou was raised in a time where segregation and racism were prevalent in society. She uses repetition, diction, and themes to explore the struggle of a black girl while growing up. Angelou produces a feeling of compassion and poignancy within the reader by revealing racial stereotypes, appearance-related insecurities, and negative connotations associated with being a black girl. By doing this she forces the

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou Research Paper

    628 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Love arrives 
and in its train come ecstasies 
old memories of pleasure 
ancient histories of pain.” This is one of many stunning and thought provoking phrases coming from the Poem, Touched by an Angel by world-renewed poet, Maya Angelou. Originally born as Marguerite Johnson, Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St Louis, Missouri. Maya Angelou was raised by her paternal grandmother, and brought up with righteous principles and values. Angelou’s work is filled with subtle as well as forthright criticism and commentary on a variety of themes such as racism, and family, making her one of the most influential writers and civil right activists in the world.

    Read More

  • Book Report I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

    398 Words  | 1 Pages

    The book thus explores a lot of important issues, such as: sexuality and race relations, and shows us how society violated her as a young African American female. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou clearly expresses the physical pain of sexual assault, the mental anguish of not daring to tell, and her guilt and shame for having been raped. Her timidity and fear of telling magnify the brutality of the rape. For more than a year after the rape she lives in self-imposed silence, speaking only very rarely. This childhood rape reveals the pain that African American women suffered as victims not only of racism but also sexism.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman

    1436 Words  | 3 Pages

    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".

    Read More

  • Maya Angelou Poetry Analysis Essay

    1548 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

More about Finding A Voice Through Maya Angelou

Open Document