Analysis Of The Poem ' Phenomenal Woman ' By Maya Angelou

Flowers. Mrs. Flowers was the one who helps Maya regain her voice. She used her unusual techniques to gain Maya’s confident. She knew that Maya like poetry and used that as a reinforcement to free her voice. “That’s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning (Street, 2017),” those where Mrs. Flower words to Maya. Furthermore, Mrs. Flowers challenge Maya by stating “you do not love poetry, not until you speak it (Street, 2017).” It was that saying and Mrs. Flower’s actions that encourage Maya to speak again at the age of 13. Maya’s teacher was her motivation to become an educator in poetry and humanities.

Maya Angelou’s poetry occupies a very special position in her development as a writer (Chow 1). As a child, Angelou went through five years of complete silence after she was raped at the age of seven years old, by a man named, Mr. Freeman. As a result of telling about her traumatic experience, her uncle’s literally kicked the man that raped her to death. Beings she spoke of her traumatic experience and the result of the man dying, she then imagined that her voice had the potential to kill. Thanks to her teacher, Bertha Flowers, at school Angelou started writing poetry as a means of expression of her life events through her poetry (Chow 1). Poetry thus played an essential part in the recovery of her voice, which in

As she accepts her role and keeps looking for the chess piece, we can see her walking with a man, what means she’s completely dragged to the adult world.The moment she starts walking with the man, who changes 4 times, it represents the love life. When we enter the adult world, our main relation is with the opposite sex, and Maya symbolized this commitment as they were walking together through a road.

In stanza four Maya Angelou asks a series of rhetorical questions in lines thirteen and fourteen. She knows that people want to see her broken, weak and crying from the criticism and hateful words that have been said to her. She not only had to deal with criticism from being an African-American in a time when whites did not accept them into their society but also dealing with the fact that she was an African-American woman. During the fifties women were expected to marry and be a helping hand around the house. They were not expected to be in the working field. Just imagine how hard it had to be to make as an African-American women trying to achieve her goals. But she refuses to show how difficult it was through her emotion she just rises above it.

Her poems speak about the turmoil our world is in. She encourages us to love, love, and love. (Source card #4)      In her poem "Human Family", Angelou says, "We are more alike, my friends, then we are unlike." Maya's poems, which include "Equality" and "These yet to be United States", show the pain of humanity and the ignorance of the world. My favorite poem "Phenomenal Woman" shows what it's like to be a woman now a days. "I think the most impressive thing about Maya Angelou's poetry is that it is purely honest.

Another use of a metaphor in the last stanza relates back to the key idea of the poem. In the line, ‘I am the dream and the hope of the slave,’ Maya Angelou is directly comparing herself to what a slave dreams about, which is equality and freedom. She is calling herself the ‘ambassador’ of equal rights, and therefore stating herself as a leader who will make the first step to rise up against racism and fight for equal rights. This again shows her strong, powerful approach to overcoming racial inequality.

In that case if anyone who is trying to put her down will end up failing. Maya is really proud of her appearance and not afraid to show that. As shown above it is explain that when you are strong and have confidence nothing will stop you from moving forward in life. As you can tell this poem is a very good advice from the author herself she includes how other people get amazed by the confidence she has. After all it is all about the confidence you carry at all times and putting aside all the negative things you carry that hurts

“You have tried to destroy me and although I perish daily I shall not be moved,” (Angelou, 2014), says Maya Angelou in her Commencement speech to the 1992 Spelman College graduates. Poet and award-winning author, Maya Angelou, is most well known for her poetry, essay collection, and memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou happened to be the first black female cable car conductor who later started a career in theatre and music (Maya Angelou: Poet and Historian, n.d.). Once her acting and musical career began to take off, Angelou began touring with productions and released her first album Miss Calypso (Maya Angelou Fast Facts, 2017). Later, Angelou earned a Tony Award nomination for her role in the play Look Away and an Emmy Award nomination for the work she performed in the television mini-series Roots (Maya Angelou: Poet, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Activist, 2017). Angelou was also the first African American woman to have her screenplay produced (Maya Angelou: Poet, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Activist, 2017). Out of the number of poetry collections Angelou published, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die happened to be her most famous collection that was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (Maya Angelou: Poet, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Activist, 2017). The focus of this paper is to critique Angelou’s credibility, sincerity, and appeal to her whole audience in her delivery during the Spelman Commencement Address in 1992.

Throughout the years, sports have become a major part of society. Sports, a large percentage of the time, are a part of peoples’ lives in one way or another. Whether they participate in them or just enjoy watching them, sports are a big deal to the majority of people. There are also some individuals who have redefined the expectations when it comes to certain sports. For instance, Babe Ruth redefined the way people think about baseball, or Michael Jordan completely changing the game of basketball. But Joe Louis and Venus and Serena Williams have changed their games in a way no one could have imagined. Although “Champion of the World” by Maya Angelou and “Woman Who Hit Very Hard and How They’ve Changed Tennis” by Michael Kimmelman are different, they are similar in the ways they show how the respected athletes, Joe Louis and the Williams sisters, changed the game and were seen using symbolism in racial and sexual progression.

This chapter marks a turning point because Maya is now a mother. She now has to genuinely care for someone other than herself; she needs to provide it with the love she never received. At first she viewed the pregnancy as a “nightmare,” that the air “had been sucked away in a monstrous inhalation.” She eventually takes responsibility, carrying the weight “on [her] own shoulders where they belonged.” The newfound motherhood finally gives Maya a title: mother. She no longer is displaced, lost among an Earth that rotates without her. Maya’s mother helps her come to this new understanding when she points out that the baby had fallen soundlessly asleep in the crook of her arm. She explains that if she is “for the right thing, then [she will] do

This quote again shows us that Maya feels like she is trying to be someone she is not, she wishes for a life where she doesn’t have to be someone else just so she can fit in. Maya tries to fix her problems by marrying Evan who has an American background, good looks, and makes up for Maya’s failure in her academic career. After a couple of years of marrying Evan she starts thinking about her decisions that could have changed her future with Evan she says “ life with Evan was too tempting, an easy guarantee that she would not end up like Shyamma.” This just states once again that she did not want to end up like her aunt and just wants to fit in with the people in

Maya Angelou employs similes to demonstrate how she will not hurt because of others’ opinions about her. In the first stanza, she says, “You may trod me in the very dirt, / But still, like dust, I'll rise” to make her oppressors know she is confident with herself (3-4). Angelou utilizes a simile to compare herself to dirt and then dust, the dirt represents how her oppressors include her in the lowest class,which has no power, while the dust symbolizes her potential. With this comparison, Angelou makes the reader know she is a strong person and cannot be put down easily, she does not care what others think about her. Maya also mentions, “Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines/Diggin’ in my own backyard”(19). This simile compares her laugh to gold mines. Gold mines usually represent being rich or having a lot of money, so here Angelou says she doesn't need to be rich to be happy because of what she has is enough.

Maya was a fighter who suffered most of her life with female bond. One of her features is quite interesting was her strength. Even though she experienced a variety of problems in her life, she never gave up and she kept pushing for the prosperity of her life. Maya Angelou is a woman with a strong character. She teaches how to keep ourselves up

At the end of every line Maya Angelou says that she will rise. The repetition is important in showing that no matter what comes against her she will still rise. She has learned to fight to stay happy. Even through all the adversity’s she faces she can still stay happy. The repetition of the phrase throughout the poem help signify its importance to the author. While saying that nothing can bring her down she is also saying that she will overcome adversities and rise

Analyzing the word, "beautiful" in this stanza, one should perceive that she is not actually singing about the outside of her, but what she consists of emotionally and mentally on the inside. She reveals that her thoughts and emotions are of worth and value and they are of her opinion. They are consumed through her, and no one else and if anyone disagrees, she does not take that into affect. Her diction is actually pretty precise. To quote a famous cliché, beauty is not skin deep. She explains that the beauty is the sentiment.