Maya Angelou Research Paper

Dr. Maya Angelou Known as an author, historian, and one of the greatest voices of contemporary African-American literature, Maya Angelou was born as Margierite Johnson on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri (Bloom). She was raised by her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas but later moved to San Francisco and attended George Washington High School and California Labor School on a scholarship on dance and drama (Contemporary Authors Online). Shortly after Maya graduated high school, she gave birth to a son whom she named Guy, and she worked as the first female African American street car conductor in San Francisco (Contemporary Authors Online). In 1954, Angelou began a theatrical career in a touring “Porgy and Bess” and in off-Broadway shows

Literary Criticism). Critics have praised her dynamic style, poignant humor, and illumination of African American history through her portrayal of personal experiences (Cont. Literary Criticism). Arensberg, a critic, said “that since style is such a revealing element in all autobiographies, hers, especially, seems a conscious defense against the pain felt at evoking unpleasant memoires.” The basic motive for writing one's autobiography, some believe, is to be understood, accepted, and loved (Arensberg). One critic states that Pierre A. Walker said that “the structure reveals a sequence that leads Maya progressively from helpless rage and indignation to forms of subtle resistance, and finally to outright and active protest (Eller). Another critic, Karen Chandler, states that “Angelou uses funeral imagery to structure her account of a childhood and adolescence spent in environments where contentment, security, and even existence itself remained

inauguration, On the Pulse of Morning (Wiloch). Critic Wiloch states that On the Pulse of Morning continues Angelou’s attempt to speak to diverse audience, invoking the unity of a broad range of Americans. The breadth of such a topic illustrates Angelou’s ability to consider a larger literary panorama, while her series of autobiographical works continue to express the particulars of African American experience through the details of her own life (wiloch). Other sources like Critic A. R. Coulthard feels otherwise about the poem. Coulthard states “that Angelou’s poem makes even the cherished liberal totems of tolerance, long-suffering endurance, and brave new beginnings sound superficial and mundane, therefore, the poem fails not only as poetry but also as politics.” He also states that at times, Angelou forgets that her symbols are meant to represent the oracular (Coulthard). According to Coulthard, the poem is so poorly crafted that it would be fatuous to take it apart were it not put together to the faulty specifications of the politically correct of thought that is debilitating the study and production of literature in the United