How Does Maya Angelou Show Courage

Maya Angelou was a grammy-winning author, memoirist, poet, and a civil right activist. As Maya Angelou once said “ I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” This reflects a lot on her poem Caged Bird because she will never forget how the people in her town made her feel like her feet were tied and her wings were clipped. As an African American Angelou suffered at the hands of racial prejudices and discrimination as she was growing up whether it was in her town or in her own home. In her poem Caged Bird Angelou talks about how the free bird doesn’t have a care in the world, but she also talks about how the caged bird longs to someday be free. Although Maya Angelou died as a well-known famous poet and used her knowledge and her words to overpower racial discrimination she grew up in an oppressed society because of darkness, pain, and fear.

II. BODY – Darkness, Pain, and Fear

First Reason

According to the poem Maya Angelou shows her feelings in Caged Bird because in the poem the Caged Bird was her during her childhood which represents the darkness she went through. The fifth stanza depicts the bird in its cage, the cage that has now become the grave of the birds dreams, and once again the caged bird sings of freedom. Angelou had to face a lot of darkness when she was growing up first of all because she had to face racial discrimination and

Castorena 2 sexism for the simple fact of being an African American women and second because at age eight she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend who was then killed by her uncles after this Angelou became mute for the next six years. Angelou overcame her darkness and changed the mindset of a lot of people for the better. Maya Angelou used her voice to speak up and told her story to advocate for all of the people who are in the same position as she was when she was younger.

B. Second