Angela Angelou Analysis

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri (1928) as Marguerite Johnson; however she grew up in Stamps, Arkansas where her grandmother ran a general store. Angelou has acted and written several plays, poems, and a six-part autobiography “I Know Why the caged Bird Sings” making her one of this country’s foremost black writers. In this story Angelou tells about how her grandmother (momma) triumphs over a pack of taunting neighborhood children. I feel very strongly about this particular piece given the time set and the way black people were treated by the whites, and how without harsh words or threats some black people overcame the taunting and cruelties of the whites.

In an excerpt from her novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings called “Graduation,” Maya Angelou narrates the anticipation surrounding graduation in her small town of Stamps, Alabama. Angelou effectively contrives noteworthy differences between paragraphs 1 through 5 and 6 through 10 through the use of emotional and descriptive diction, powerfully bold comparisons, and a shift in perspective in order to instill pride and dignity in Angelou and her race despite the era’s highlighted social injustices which she endures.

While Angelou is on her journey to the museum , she stays at a hotel where she has an interesting encounter with a Bell captain. She describes that boy as “Neat and proud of his efficiency the young black man deposited my luggage…” (Angelou, 90). She notices he’s very young. She asks him, where the Rural museum is. As Angelou describes it, his face goes blank and he is totally dumbfounded with her question. After a moment, the young man goes

Angelou's concern for her son, whom she gave birth to at sixteen, brought her back to the United States. By thirty, Angelou made a commitment to become a writer. She was inspired by her friend, social activist, John Killens. She moved to Brooklyn to be near him and learn her craft.

Before and during the Civil Rights Era, the United States was extremely biased against African Americans, and especially against African American women. Not only was Angelou black and female, she was also growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, during a time when the south was not welcoming of African American rights. In her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou describes her upbringing and states,“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being

Maya Angelou journey from her traumatising childhood to adult life…. Being that her life was so traumatizing caused her to express her struggles by the “sound of language.” Maya was born in Stamps, Arkansas on April 4,1928, and grew up during discrimination time period and racial prejudice. When she was young her mother and father split up. At seven years of age her mom sent her and her brothers to stay with their father’s mother.

Maya Angelou moved to San Francisco, California. She had won a scholarship to study acting and dance at the California Labor School. Later on she moved to Cairo, Egypt where she was associate editor of the Arab observer. “Ms.Angelou also contributed articles to The Ghanaian Times and was featured on the Ghanaian Broadcasting Corporation programing in Accra Ghana.” (World Biography).

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a timeline of Maya Angelou’s life, starting at the age of three and including sixteen. In the book she talks about her the hardships she faced in life. Maya Angelou grew up in a society that when African Americans were not accepted. Angelou faced tough situations at a young age, suffering abandonment from her family and being raped by her mothers boyfriend Mr. Freedom. No matter what obstacles she faced she did not let that ever stop her from becoming the person she was meant to become, which is the strong, independent black woman.

This rumours caused a great unrest to her close friends and family worldwide. According to her close friend Oprah Winfrey, in 2013, Angelou narrated to her that she had taken courses offered by Unity church which was very spiritually significant to her. Despite that she never earned a degree, she preferred that she was intonated as Dr Angelou by her close friends and people out of her family. She did this because she wanted to have a sense of achievement in her life regardless of the popularity of her works. Angelou’s life work Maya had a vast volume of poetry including “I wouldn’t take anything for my journey now, “I shall not be moved”, “shaker, why don’t you sing?”, “oh pray my wings are gonna fit me well” and “just give me a cool drink of water ‘fore I diie” which had her nominated for the Pulitzer prize.

Later they go to court for the incident, but Mr. Freeman doesn’t get a sentence and is later kicked to death. A while after that, she and Bailey return to Stamps to live with their grandmother again. A major rising action after this is when Angelou visits with Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a woman who later, would make an impact on her life. During their meeting, she talked to her about how language is our way of communicating and it is what makes humans, humans. She also introduced Angelou to poetry. After this meeting, Angelou had a bit of meaning back into her life. Another important part of the story is when Angelou meets her first friend, Louise Kendricks. This is a major part of the story because Louise is one of her first childhood friends that allows her to enjoy her childhood and not be so grown up. Another rising action is when Bailey witnesses a white man smiling about the death of a black man. After hearing this, Momma decides that it is time for them to move to California with their mother, away from the harsh things in Arkansas. They move and live in an apartment in Oakland for a while until Angelou’s mother has everyone settle down in San Francisco. Angelou’s mother had married a man named Daddy

Angelou went from being a victim of racism and inferiority complex into self-awareness, develops a sense of self-identity, responds to racism with dignity, and shows the lives and identities of women in male dominated society. She says, "The black female

Angelou shows that through the character and the time she is in the struggle one had with the color of their skin. Our first look that Angelou gives us into the life of Marguerite Johnson takes place in the town of Stamps. The obvious separation of whites and blacks in the town is shown to us straight away. Her young age made her act in the way to point out the obvious and not look at things into full perspective. The colored cotton pickers labored intensively for a small day's pay to feed their families, while the white folks tramped into the stores buying

Ms. Angelou aim is to showcase personal growth through analyzing, comparing and contrasting different elements of her childhood graduation day.Through out the essay, her voice remains unchanging in order to persuade the reader to understand her point of view. She compared the different learning environments children had to deal with by comparing the black schools and the white schools. It is disturbing that her voice throughout the essay depicts the biased environment black children grew up in for example; black schools didn't have such mere things like lawns, tennis courts and hedges while white school did. This

Angelou was born in “St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928” (Angelou 1). Her given name was “Marguerite Annie Johnson” (Biography.com Editors 1). However, her parents split up when she was very young, she and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother in Arkansas. When Angelou was 7, she was sexually harassed by her mother’s boyfriend while visiting her mother in St. Louis. “So traumatized by the experience, Angelou stopped talking. She returned to Arkansas and spent years as a virtual mute.” (Biography.com Editors 1). She was silent for 5 years.

In the beginning of the story, Ms. Angelou’s mother was making her a new dress, which is the sweetest thing ever; “Her dark fingers ducked in and out of the lemony cloth as she embroidered raised daisies around the hem. Before she considered herself finished, she had added a crocheted cuff on the puff sleeves, and a