Maya Angelou's Literary Analysis
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1931, after her parents’ divorce, Angelou and her older brother, Bailey, moved to Stamps Arkansas to live with their paternal grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson, and her crippled uncle, Willie. Their family resided in the living quarters attached to the back of the small store that they owned. As a young African American girl, Angelou experienced harsh racism and discrimination while in Stamps (Angelou, Maya). At the age of 14, Angelou moved to San Francisco because she had earned a scholarship to study dance and drama at the California Labor School. She dropped out, but became the first African American female cable car conductor. Angelou later finished …show more content…
Walker’s criticism of racial protest, identity, words, and form in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, he reminds the reader of Angelou’s motivation to write her autobiography. She “could not resist” Robert Loomis’s challenge of writing an autobiography “as literature” (Walker). Angelou’s approach to the work is something Walker feels deserves more focus than many “scholarly discussions” give it. As he put, Angelou “arranged and organized [episodes], often undermining the chronology of her childhood story and juxtaposing the events of one chapter with the events of preceding and following ones so that they too comment on each other.” These episodes in Angelou’s life contribute to the “progressive process of affirming identity, learning about words, and resisting racism” (Walker). For example, the scene with the "powhitetrash" girls takes place in the fifth chapter, but occurred when she was about ten. Angelous rape happened about two years before this incident, but appears in chapter twelve. The chapter with the white girls tormenting Angelou’s grandmother begins with Momma teaching Maya not to be dirty or impudent. Momma refuses to succumb to the girls harassment and maintains her dignity. The chapter goes full circle, ending with the symbolic importance of cleanliness and sensibility. This is Maya’s first lesson in silent
Maya Angelou: African American Civil Rights Poet
729 Words | 3 PagesIf you can 't change it, change your attitude. Don 't complain” Maya recieved several awards Two from the NAACP. Timeline of Mays”s life: “April 4, 1928- Maya Angelou is born in St. Louis, Missouri. 1942- Angelou dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first African-American female car conductor.
Maya Angelou Accomplishments
1233 Words | 5 PagesOn April 4th of 1928 Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. She was given the name “Maya” by her brother, Bailey. Both Maya and Bailey were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas after her parents divorced. When Maya went to visit her mother at the age of eight she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend.
Maya Angelou Accomplishments
1041 Words | 5 PagesApril 4, 1929, St. Louis, Missouri was the birth of the multitalented, Marguerite Annie Johnson. Family of Marguerite is mother, Vivian Baxter Johnson, father, Bailey Johnson, and brother, Bailey Johnson, Jr. Later in the early twenties of Marguerite Johnsons’ life, she changed her name to Maya Angelou. Since the divorce of Maya’s parents, her life has been nothing but an uncontrollable rollercoaster. As a youth, Maya Angelou had to eventually overcome her strugglers and regain what she once lost years ago when troubled occurred.
Leaving Home By Maya Angelou Dialectical Journal
795 Words | 4 PagesApproaching the end of the book, chapter thirty-three is about Bailey leaving the house. Angelou notices that she and Bailey have both grown up since she left the house, but Bailey seems to have grown more than her. I could not relate to Angelou’s experience with watching her brother leave the house because my family life has been mostly uneventful. I did find it odd that Bailey thought it was his time to leave the house at sixteen years old. I am seventeen years old now and I would not dream of leaving the house to go out on my own in the world.
Occupation: Conductorette And Like The Sun
795 Words | 4 PagesWhen she says “I would like to claim an immediate fury followed by the noble determination to break the restricting traditions” (Angelou, 143). This shows that Angelou has determination to change the traditions and break the barrier between her race and
Why Maya Angelou Is Important In American History
466 Words | 2 PagesMaya Angelou was not always called by that name, she was originally named Marguerite Johnson. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4th, 1928. Mrs. Angelou was a poet, educator, actress, producer, historian, and a civil rights activist. Maya Angelou is significant in American history because she always fought for women’s rights, her songs always meant something, and people looked up to what she stood for.
Maya Angelou: Nonconformist
862 Words | 4 PagesLouis, Missouri named Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928. Being the second child and first daughter of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and Navy dietitian, and Vivian Baxter Johnson, a professional nurse and a card dealer. Getting her name from her brother, Bailey Jr. Further on with her parents divorce Maya and Bailey traveled from Long Beach, California to a Southern backwash of Stamps, Arkansas, specified as Maya’s birthplace. [Angelou Page 15] Living under the care of their grandmother, and somewhat paralyzed Uncle Willie, they lived in the town 's black quarter. Working in the family business Johnson General Merchandise store.
Maya Encounters In Shaping Maya's Identity
907 Words | 4 PagesMaya Angelou author of I know why the caged bird sings. Writes about her life growing up. Annie Henderson has been their for maya in various ways. One way has been always respecting her. An example of this has been when she respected her silence after she has been raped and her birth mother family didn’t respect it and send her back to Stamps,Arkansas.
Champion Of The World By Maya Angelou Analysis Essay
476 Words | 2 PagesOnce again, Maya Angelou manages to touch our hearts again with her poetic skills in Chapter 19 titled The Champion of the World in her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She recalls a time in her life where the African American community gathered at her grandmother's and uncle's store to hear a boxing match via radio. The boxing match was between the former champion Joe Louis and a white boxer. Maya Angelou takes the meaning of a simple boxing match into something more complex; she demonstrates the suffrage of her people fighting against oppression during that time period.
Maya Angelou
1755 Words | 8 PagesMarguerite Annie Johnson was Maya Angelou’s name at birth. She was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou started going by Maya because her little brother could not pronounce Marguerite, so he would call her “My-a sister” which later turned to Maya. Maya Angleou was the daughter of “her mother Vivian Baxter who was a nurse and part time she worked as card dealer in a casino, her father named Bailey Johnson he was a doorman at an apartment building. Then she had an older brother named Bailey Jr. that was one-years old.”
Maya Angelou Sexual Abuse
802 Words | 4 PagesMaya Angelou recalls the first seventeen years of her life, discussing her unsettling childhood in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya and Bailey were sent from California to the segregated South to live with their grandmother, Momma. At the age of eight, Maya went to stay with her mother in St. Louis, where she was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Maya confronts these traumatic events of her childhood and explores the evolution of her own strong identity. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement, caused by these incidents of sexual abuse, are mediated through her love for literature.
Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou Analysis
1141 Words | 5 PagesAlthough not many schools approves Angelou’s work because of censored content, others appreciate the ways of Angelou’s writing. She points out certain situations through racism, which many sees “her poetry becomes both political and confessional”, critic Priscilla R. Ramsey says (Bloom, 76). Ramsey also says, most readers enjoy “ her full length creative writing” rather than pointing out parts of her autobiographies are not for every type of audiences (Bloom, 76). Her most controversial writing was based on her sexulality as a young adult and she faced in her traumatic childhood. From these topics, is was what her works were almost banned in public schools and libraries (Williamson).
Maya Angelou's Life
1513 Words | 7 PagesShe had a hard life and overcame her struggle and became a very influential person to so many people including me. Maya Angelou born Marguerite Annie Johnson born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents are Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian,
Feminism In Maya Angelou's Still I Rise
1945 Words | 8 PagesHailed as one of the immense voices of contemporary African American writing, Maya Angelou 's scholarly works have created basic and well known enthusiasm for part, since they portray her triumph over unimpressive social impediments, her battle, as a woman, to accomplish an identity and gain self-acknowledgment. Such themes tie Angelou 's writings closely to the concerns of the feminist literary movement. Dr Angelou has additionally been noted for her clear depictions of the strongest ladies throughout her life. Angelou’s one of the most inspiring poems Still I Rise will be one of the texts for analysis. The other three are as follows:
Maya Angelou's Autobiography
1456 Words | 6 PagesIn 1970 she was appointed as writer-in-Residence at the University of Kansas and as a Yale University Fellow. Maya published here, the first of her five-volume autobiographical series, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Through the device of autobiography, Angelou has celebrated the richness and vitality of Southern Black life and the sense of community that persists in the face of poverty and racial prejudice, initially revealing this celebration through a portrait of life as experienced by a Black child in the Arkansas of the 1930s (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1979). The second volume (Gather Together in My Name, 1974) delineates a young woman struggling to create an existence that provides security and love in Post-World War II America. The third (Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting’ Merry like Christmas, 1976) presents a young, married adult in the 1950’s seeking a carrer in show business and experiencing her first amiable contact with the Whites.
More about Maya Angelou's Literary Analysis
Maya Angelou: African American Civil Rights Poet
729 Words | 3 PagesMaya Angelou Accomplishments
1233 Words | 5 PagesMaya Angelou Accomplishments
1041 Words | 5 PagesLeaving Home By Maya Angelou Dialectical Journal
795 Words | 4 PagesOccupation: Conductorette And Like The Sun
795 Words | 4 PagesWhy Maya Angelou Is Important In American History
466 Words | 2 PagesMaya Angelou: Nonconformist
862 Words | 4 PagesMaya Encounters In Shaping Maya's Identity
907 Words | 4 PagesChampion Of The World By Maya Angelou Analysis Essay
476 Words | 2 PagesMaya Angelou
1755 Words | 8 PagesMaya Angelou Sexual Abuse
802 Words | 4 PagesMarguerite Annie Johnson Angelou Analysis
1141 Words | 5 PagesMaya Angelou's Life
1513 Words | 7 PagesFeminism In Maya Angelou's Still I Rise
1945 Words | 8 PagesMaya Angelou's Autobiography
1456 Words | 6 Pages