An Essay About Maya Angelou Life

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Johnson, lived through an unstable early life. She was born in St. Louis, Arkansas, but moved away to Stamps, Arkansas at age three due to her parents’ divorce. There, Angelou lived with her brother, Bailey, and her paternal grandmother (Galenet - Self and a Song of Freedom in the Southern Tradition). As discussed in her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, seven-year old Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The man was consequently murdered by her uncles, and Maya, feeling responsible for his death, ceased talking and remained speechless for five years.

In the sixth grade, she dropped out due to the lack of family support throughout the school. As a child before reaching her middle teens, Nancy was molested by some men from her area. There were no reported early criminal acts completed by Nannie Doss before her serial killings. Her household was very strict and she could not get out and do things with others. She committed 11 murders.The Giggling Granny completed her first murder while being with her first husband.

She tells the story of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old college student who was secretly filmed kissing another man. Overcome with shame, he committed suicide. While Clementi’s tragic story is a stunning narrative on its own, Lewinsky powerfully connects it with her own life. Her breath catches and she pauses. Emotional – choking up – she tells of how Clementi’s story resonated with her mother: She was “reliving a time when she made me shower with the bathroom door open, reliving a time when both my parents thought I would be humiliated to death – literally.” Jay Heinrichs’ book Thank You For Arguing analyzes the effectiveness of pathos-based arguments as emotional appeals.

In the final chapters we learn more about Joe Christmas’ past, how his mother was to have her child alone and died in the process of childbirth. From the beginning Joe Christmas has had to face hardships because after the death of his mother his grandfather did not even want him. His black heritage condemned him and that would only lead him to have even more hardships as time went on. However a scene that Faulkner really focuses on is the birth scene of Joe Christmas as well as the birth of Lena’s child; the scenes are parallel to each other in many ways. The birth of Joe Christmas was a very difficult one because of the fact that Milly had to give birth on her own because those that were with her did not care for her or for her child.

Maya Angelou proceeded not to speak for the next five years in fear that others might die. Eventually she acknowledged her blamelessness in her sexual assault and the man’s death. Soon after she found that she had a talent with words and the same strength and attitude as her mother. At sixteen, she became pregnant with her son Guy and raised him despite her young age. She worked various jobs, until working as a prostitute, nearly losing her son, changing her ways, and taking up performing.

Although, Jesse James was just another outlaw, her had a supporting family and a conflicting lifestyle that led to his infamous death. Jesse James had a total of seven siblings. (Three blood siblings and four half siblings.) After his father had gotten ill and passed away, Zerelda James, his widow, remarried and abandoned her four kids. She quickly came to realization that she was not happy with her current marriage and left her husband and once again remarried, taking her kids with her.

Melinda in Speak suffers during her freshman year of high school, when she gets raped by a senior at her school. She is terrified of telling anyone and whishes it never happened, as seen in the book "Anything to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head too?" (Anderson, 165). In The Odyssey Odysseus had been trapped on Calypso's island for years, and was forced to lay with Calypso, as seen in the reading, "Though he fought shy of her and her desire, he lay with her each night, for she compelled him."

I base this opinion on my own experience. For year I had a recurring nightmare, about a woman insulting and attacking my parents; it was a hazy dream that most of the time was forgotten by the time I woke up. I never commented the recurring situation of the dream with my parents, mostly because I thought it was just a bad and silly dream; it wasn’t until I was 10 years old and by chance I met the woman in my dream; to make a long story short, she was my father ex-wife, and my supposed dream was an actual fight between my parents and her, when I was 4 years old. My point is, it took me years to recognize the event, let alone understand the nature of the feelings behind it. Mostly, because I was not exposed to those feeling and my innocence was not very disrupted.

Aylmer wasn’t for sure what he was getting himself into because his mind stayed focused on his wife defect. The desire for perfection no only kills Georgiana, however it also ruins her husband. “Aylmer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the sesame texture with the celestial” the author stated, (Hawthorne 349). Georgina tiny mark is all he can see. It develops in Aylmer’s mind until the good sight of gorgeous Georgiana fade.

My mom was surrounded by criminals, people who had killed and raped. Sadly, the continual chaos and the death of my grandfather all contributed to the deterioration of my mother’s health. She eventually had a stroke, was removed from the jail, and was hospitalized for three months. During that time, she was rehabilitated and granted house arrest. Her getting house arrest was huge since she did not had a trial/hearing until her heart attack.

Only a few days later, Nefertari met the charming Chsisi (secret), and brought him to the palace. Nefertari felt Chsisi understood her and her hardships, but one night, Chsisi murdered her father and robbed her family’s tombs. The last words she ever heard from Chsisi was, “You are weak in this world, and will never be able to protect anybody or anything.” Nefertari locked herself in her rooms for 4 days, each day mourning a member of her family. On the 5th day, she came out to be crowned