Similarities Between The Fourth Of July By Andre Lorde And Maya Angelou

How would you feel if you realized that your thoughts and personal views have been misconstrued to hide you from the harsh realities of this world? Could you imagine what it’s like to have your very innocence ripped from you without any preconceived notion? Both Andre Lorde and Maya Angelou know the feeling of these experiences first hand. Through the essays “The Fourth Of July” written by Andre Lorde and “Sister Flowers” written by Maya Angelou, the authors depict a specific event that altered their perceptions of society. Though the essays are quite different, the authors both characterize on the tragic experiences they had as children and how it lead them to a certain revelation. In “The Fourth of July” Andre Lorde was a just a young, thirteen year old girl. Innocent, and naïve to the world around her, yet it was all beyond her control. Her parents, being of African-Caribbean decent, did not cope well with the crushing reality of racism and discrimination they encountered after coming to America, “they handled it in a private woe.” (141) It became something that was often ignored by Andre’s mother, which in turn resulted in sheltering her children from certain truths. From Andre’s words we see this all too clearly, “My mother never mentioned that Black people were not allowed into

Despite this, we have to think about what the outcome could have been otherwise. What if Andre was introduced to racism at an earlier age? What would have been the outcome if her parents never hid the truth? She may have been a completely different person. The same goes for Maya; who would she be if she never experienced what she did? She never would have met Mrs. Flowers and quite possibly never would have become a writer. Our experiences shape us to become the people we are meant to be in life. It’s those revelations that make the significant differences in our lives. This goes especially for Andre and