Prudence Mackintosh, a writer of both novels and magazines articles, was born and raised in Texarkana and now lives in Dallas where she raised her family. Mackintosh went to college at the University of Texas in the sixties. She wrote and still is writing about Texas womanhood and what it is like to be a mother in Texas. Prudence Mackintosh has influenced the world's perception of Texas and the rest of the West through her humorous writing about everyday life in Texas.
Prudence Mackintosh has three sons who are grown up now that she raised in Highland Park. All three boys are different. Her oldest son is very well organized and willing do anything she asks him to do, her middle son is very disorganized, and the youngest son is very adventurous. Mackintosh supported them in their decisions and always helped them know how to chose right from wrong. Mrs. Mackintosh wrote a story about when her oldest son he didn't want to play football anymore, and how all the other boys made fun of him. To help him, she wrote a story telling how not all boys had to play football to be tough.
Prudence Mackintosh's mother and father were the main influences as she was growing up. She was born into a family of writers, who both worked for the newspaper, her mother wrote articles and her father did editing. Her parents took her to their office where she observed the hectic yet exciting environment of the writers using adult language that children shouldn't hear. So she grew up to think that writing was the job for her.
Besides her parents, Maya Angelou was another huge influence on Mrs. Mackintosh. Angelou and Mrs. Mackintosh grew up only twenty five miles apart, but there lives were extremely different. Maya Angelou is sixteen years older so she started her writing career when Prudence Mackintosh was a child. Mackintosh says, "Maya Angelou's first book, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", was an especially strong stuff for me. Maya Angelous' black childhood experiences in Stamp, Arkansas, occurred only twenty-five miles and sixteen years from her very different white childhood in Texarkana, Texas. Angelou's writings influenced her views on racism in her small town.
An old friend of hers from college became editor of Texas Monthly Magazine. He remembered how fabulous a writer Mackintosh was from their college years. Their first meeting was in a poetry class when he laughed at her name.
Paula Gunn Allen was an American Indian Poet that was the middle child of five siblings. She grew up on the Cubero Land Grant Reservation in New Mexico where she started her early education at St. Vincent Academy, followed by attending Missions School until the seventh grade at San Fidel in Pueblo town. She furthered her education by attending Colorado’s Woman’s College. Paula obtained her B.A. in 1966 and her M.F.A. in 1968 at the University of Oregon, that led to her receiving her Ph. D at the University of New Mexico in 1976. Paula was best known as the best Poetic, Novelist, and Critic. She wrote six volumes of poetry including her poem Recuerdo.
Sharon Creech’s childhood memories, college experiences, and creative brain significantly affected her writings. She rarely thought of being an author growing up, but as time progressed, she began to really think about it. Creech first became interested when she entered college and something sparked her career. She wrote multiple books with her much thought and creativeness leading her to an outstanding writing career.
Sophie Treadwell was born on October 3, 1885 in Stockton, California. She is known mostly as a playwright, but wrote in various other genres also. Her written works not only include plays, but also books and novels, fiction and non-fiction. Her journalism career was quite successful. Her commentaries and articles were always captivating to the public eye. Sophie frequently followed sensational stories in the news, some of which gained much acclaim, one being her interview with Pancho Villa.
Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in a small town in Maine. She was always encouraged by her mother to pursue her writing and musical talents. She finished college and moved to New York City where she lived a fast-paced life pursuing acting and play writing. Her liveliness, independence, and sexuality inspired her writing styles and gave her poetry a freshness that no others had. She is famous for writing sonnets like “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.”
Similarly, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, which I first read the summer after I graduated high school, is a tale of oppression that translates into a deeply moving novel chronicling the ups and downs of a black family in the 1930’s and 1940’s. A myriad of historical and social issues are addressed, including race relations in the pre-civil rights south, segregated schools, sexual abuse, patriotism and religion. Autobiographical in nature, this tumultuous story centers around Marguerite Johnson, affectionately called "Maya", and her coast-to-coast life experiences. From the simple, backwards town of Stamps, Arkansas to the high-energy city life of San Francisco and St. Louis, Maya is assaulted by prejudice in almost every nook and cranny of society, until she finally learns to overcome her insecurities and be proud of who she is.
Maya Angelo was born marguerite Johnson in Saint Louis in the year 1928. Broken family, raped at the age eight, unwed mother at sixteen years old she had an unpleasant eventful youth. She wrote six book of poetry, produced a TV series in Africa, and acted in a television series and serve as a coordinator for a southern Christian leadership conference. She is best known for her books I know why the caged bird sings, song flog up to heaven, hallelujah! The welcome table. She was also a Reynolds professor of American studies at wake Forest University.
She was a writer who suffered from Lupus. Her father died of the same illness when she was thirteen. Her Catholic beliefs reflected in her work, as well as the implementation of violence and darkness ironically used in her short stories. The titles in the stories give the readers an idea that the stories are the opposite of what the titles really state. She uses metaphors and similes to describe the characters and the settings of the stories. Each story relates to the darkness of the characters: people with racial prejudice, ignorance, and evil. Each story ends in a tragedy. The use of irony allows her to transport a meaning to each story that is not easy for readers to understand.
O’Connor became an editor of the Corinthian, a literary magazine at Georgia State College for Women. There she wrote and submitted fiction essays and some poems which drew a good bit of attention. O’Connor, a social science major began to write. After attending college
There are many obstacles in which Maya Angelou had to overcome throughout her life. However, she was not the only person affected throughout the story, but as well as her family. Among all the challenges in their lives the author still manages to tell the rough and dramatic story of the life of African Americans during a racism period in the town of Stamps. In Maya Angelou's book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings she uses various types of language to illustrate the conflicts that arise in the novel. Among the different types of languages used throughout the book, she uses literary devices and various types of figurative language. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou the author uses literary devices and figurative language to illustrate to the reader how racism creates obstacles for her family and herself along with how they overcome them.
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.
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 was born as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. After her parents’ divorce, Maya Angelou and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother, in Stamps, a poor section of Arkansas (Handford). Her grandmother was very religious; she made sure they went to church. According to Salem Press, Angelou loved her close relationship with her brother Bailey, who gave her the name “Maya.” At a young age Angelou was a victim of violence. Angelou was raped by a friend of her mother during one of her visits in St. Louis. Later after her mother’s brothers found out about the rape, they killed the man(Poets.org). Angelou felt that she had caused the man’s death by telling her mother what happened, so she refused to speak for five years about her rape. With the encouragement from a well-educated black woman from Stamps, Mrs. Flowers, she regained her voice. With the help of Mrs. Flowers Angelou began to read the works of, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare and also Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Angelou’s popular works; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Harlem Hopscotch and On the Pulse of Morning she uses pride, identity, poverty, racism and violence to show her readers that she survived, she rose above them. She was loved by stars, Angelou was a mentor to Oprah. In 1981, she received a lifetime appointment as Reynolds Professor of Americans of American Studies at Wake Forest University (Merriam Webster). With over 50 honorary doctorate degrees Dr. Maya Angelou became a celebrated poet, memoirist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist (Caged Bird Legacy). Sadly, Dr. Maya Angelou passed away on May 28, 2014. “Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.” –Dr. Maya Angelou
She visited Kentucky, saw the life of slavery, she is affected by strong anti slavery sentiment father school. This feeling into her novels tone. In 1850, with her husband moved to Maine, where the discussion of anti slavery made her very excited, so spare time to write the novel ...
“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” (Maya Angelou “Quotes”). Maya Angelou is an African American author who wanted the whole world to know who she was. Even though Maya Angelou’s life was full of disappointments and miseries, she still managed to rise above them all to become a successful poet. Racism played a really big role in Maya Angelou’s life. Maya Angelou witnessed slavery when she was very young and wished that someday all men will be free. Maya Angelou had many difficulties, and her family was one of them. None of her marriages worked out, and had a son to raise on her own.