Dance has been around for hundreds of years. Today there are many forms of dances, yet in my opinion they all have one thing in common. All forms of dances move our souls; rhythm of the music feels like butterflies moving through our bodies. Dance is a form of escaping to a different world of happiness. Dr. Angelou is a great example of what dance and music can provided to our hearts, soul and spirit. Dr. Angelou sees life as rhythm, and we people are moving to the beat of life. It is our choice to go with the rhythm of life and enjoy our everyday beats. As Dr. Angelou has said “Everything will be okay, just go with the rhythm. See life as a dance floor if you fall you get back up and continue dancing your way into life”. Dance has the power to move us humans and the ability to bring satisfaction into our hearts, body and mind. Maya Angelou brought peace to world by through her literature, poets, films, and her presence.
Dr. Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis Missouri. All though born in Missouri, Dr Angelou was raised in Stamps, Arkansas. Dr. Angelou’s birth name was Marguerite Annie Johnson. Maya’s parents divorced and at age three she and her brother Bailey were sent to live with their grandmother. Maya lived with grandmother, Annie Henderson until the age of thirteen (Angelou, 2013). She then left Arkansas to be home with her mother Vivian Baxter in California (Angelou, 2013). Maya was scared and felt as if she was not beautiful enough to be the daughter of Vivian Baxter. Vivian would call Maya beautiful something Maya was never called before. Living with Vivian, Maya learned that she could be a giver simply by bringing a smile to another person’s face (Angelou, 2013). In Arkansas Maya experienced racism ...
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...icentennial Commission and President Carter invited her to serve on the Presidential Commission for the International Year of the Woman. President Clinton: requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world. President Obama: awarded her the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
My favorite quote, “Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances” – Maya Angelou. In my opinion the quote relates to life as rhythm, everything in life moves and after all collaborates into a beat, one that can’t be seen but felt through the rhythm of everyday life. “Everything will be okay, just go with the rhythm. See life as a dance floor if you fall you get back up and continue dancing your way into life” –Maya Angelou.
This piece of autobiographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction
...exiled Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Jesse Jackson asked her to stop risking her life for the cause. After this, she was awarded Haiti’s highest medal of honor by President Aristide.
... rises in the end and will continue to rise every day until the end of time. Just like moons and like suns (Angelou 8). By using this comparison it gives off an aura of invincibility because there is really nothing in this world that can stop the sun and moon from rising every day.
"I had decided that St. Louis was a foreign country. In my mind I had only stayed there for a few weeks. As quickly as I understood that I had not reached my home, I sneaked away to Robin's Hood's Forest and the caves of Alley Oop where all reality was unreal and even that changed my day. I carried the same shield that I had used in Stamps: 'I didn't come to stay.'"
"Angelou, Maya (née Marguerite Annie Johnson)." Encyclopedia of African-american Writing. Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 12 March 2014.
Angelou faced many obstacles but still was able to accomplish many things. Did she ever think she was going to get this far, leaving an impact on many people lives, such as Oprah Winfrey, President Obama, former president Bill Clinton and overall the general public? Perhaps, she did know. In her 20’s the public icon, met Billie Holiday, who told her, “You’re going to be famous. But it won’t be for singing.” Angelou is a three time Grammy winner who was also nominated for a Tony, a Pulitzer, and an Emmy for her role in the 1977 miniseries “roots.”
As stated in Agnes De Mille (1905 ~ 1993), To this day, the remarkable impact she’s made not just on American dance, but in the world of dance are distinctive achievements worthy of constant recognition and a place in major dance and theater history” (Agnes De Mille (1905 ~ 1993), (n.d.). Even after Agnes de Mille death, she wasn’t forgotten: “At the time of her death in October, 1993 at the age of 88, was still an influential and productive leader in the cultural life of our country” (Agnes DeMille Dances – Biography,
Before delving into a discussion of celebrated writer Maya Angelou, a fuller understanding of the worldview that shapes her work can be gleaned from a brief review of a few lines from the 1962 Nobel Prize winning speech of another celebrated writer, John Steinbeck:
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.
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.
She also published several collections of poetry, including Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. One of Angelou's most famous works is the poem "On the Pulse of Morning," which she wrote especially for and recited at President Bill Clinton's inaugural ceremony in January 1993 marking the first inaugural recitation since 1961, when Robert Frost delivered his poem "The Gift Outright" at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Angelou went on to win a Grammy Award (best spoken word album) for the audio version of the poem. In 1995, Angelou was lauded for remaining on The New York Times' paperback nonfiction best-seller list for two years the longest-running record in the chart's history. Seeking new creative challenges, Angelou made her directorial debut in 1998 with Down in the Delta, starring Alfre Woodard. She also wrote a number of inspirational works, from the essay collection Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1994) to her advice for young women in Letter to My Daughter (2008). Interested in health, Angelou has even published cookbooks, including Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes (2005) and Great Food, All Day Long (2010). Angelou's career has seen numerous accolades, including the Chicago International Film Festival's 1998 Audience Choice Award and a nod from the Acapulco Black Film Festival in 1999 for Down in the Delta; and two NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category, for her 2005 cookbook and 2008's Letter to My Daughter. Martin Luther King Jr., a close friend of Angelou's, was assassinated on her birthday (April 4) in 1968. Angelou stopped celebrating her
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
Maya Angelou is one of most well-known poets ever. Her work is a reflection of her hardships during her childhood and her life as an adult. She expressed many of her opinions through her poetry and other writing. Many of her poems revolve around equality and freedom because she grew up in the segregated era and worked with civil right activist. The poems she writes are to inspire the lives of others. Till this day, Maya Angelou is still continuing to write inspiring poetry.
Civil rights activist and writer, Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. At the age of three, Angelou witnessed a divorce between her parents and was sent to live with her grandmother. At the age of eight, she was removed from her comfortable lifestyle