Maya Angelou Contributions

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.

Maya Angelou, named at birth, Marguerite Johnson was on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her and her family moved from St. Louis to Stamps, Arkansas, where she was raised growing up. Maya Angelou was an American author, dancer, screenwriter, actress, poet and civil rights activist. Angelou gained a majority of her fame with the memoir she wrote in 1969, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This memoir made literary history as being the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. Angelou received many awards and honors throughout her entire career. These awards included two NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category, in 2005 and 2009. Angelou became one of the most legendary and influential

Maya Angelou is a phenomenal woman. She rises through all things that come her way and she refuses to back down. Angelou chose at a very young age to be a writer and a role model for many people. She believes that everyone should be treated equally and that the world should come together as a unity. Angelou had many careers but is known mostly for her poetic creations. She has come a long way from where she started and I think anyone can agree with me when I say, she has made us all proud with her accomplishments. Angelou writes poetry to inform and encourage others to carry on through the worst of times. She is a strong, confident, inspirational woman and I am more than honored to be doing my senior paper on her.

Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928. Her real name is Marguerite Johnson, but she later changed it to Maya. She was born in St. Louis, shortly after her birth her family up and move to Arkansaw. Maya grew up there in the rural parts of Arkansaw, and later married to a South African Freedom Fighter. She lived in Cairo with him, there she began her career as editor of the Arab Observer.

Maya Angelou is a leading literary voice of the African-American community. She writes of the triumph of the human spirit over hardship and adversity. “Her style captures the ca-dences and aspirations of African American women whose strength she celebrates.” (Library of Chattanooga State, n. d.) Maya has paved the way for children who has had a damaged

Maya’s younger years were filled with pain and tragedy. When she was only three years old, her parents separated, moving Maya and her brother into the home of their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. While growing up in this area, Angelou became aware of the discrimination and racism that was prevalent during this time in America. (Hyperlink.com) At the age of eight, Angelou was reinstated into the care of her mother. It was during this time period that Maya was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Shortly after this incident occurred, Angelou became mute and would not speak again for five years. This time period in Maya Angelou’s life would

Maya Angelou was very brave. One of the things that makes her brave is being able to talk about being sexually abused. At the young age of seven, Angelou was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. This happened while she was briefly staying with her mother in St. Louis. For the rest of her life, she would have that memory in her brain, reminding her of such a traumatic experience. In 1970, Angelou had an autobiography that was on the New York Times’ bestseller

“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.

Perhaps the reason that Maya’s poetry has had such a lasting impact on Americans is because of her poems such as ‘Caged Birds’ and ‘Still I Rise’ that demonstrate the issues that African – Americans faced, which she has done through the power of her words. She also challenges the readers with the theme of oppression that is carried out through her pomes as she felt very strongly about it by being surrounded by it her entire life. Maya Angelou has left an everlasting mark by influencing the society through her poems by inspiring others to persist towards their goals and dreams with strength and pride. Overall, Maya Angelou’s work can be attributed to the fact that her personal and cultural experiences of power have not been forgotten by overcoming adversity and oppression, which is clearly reflected in her inspiration body of work seen

Maya Angelou, who was the first African-American to work in the San Francisco streetcars, accomplished many things in her life. This fact proves that Angelou was a woman who believed in doing what needs to be done in order to accomplish her goals. Angelou made an influence on the world with her books and poems that related to diverse people in different situations, but most importantly, she fought for African-American right in the early and middle 1900s.

This is when she met a teacher named Mrs. Bertha Flowers; Flowers helped Angelou find her voice again through teaching her about communication and reading popular literary works aloud (Angelou, Caged Bird 98-101). To protect Maya and Bailey from racial discrimination, their grandmother sent them to live in San Francisco, California, where their mother had been living for some time. In California, Angelou experiences homelessness and her father’s alcoholism, but she has many accomplishments, such as becoming the first African American streetcar conductor in San Francisco and graduating high school (Angelou, Caged Bird 237-245,267-269). Soon after graduating, Angelou gave birth to her son (Angelou, Caged Bird 289-290).

The words Multi-talented barely describes Maya Angelou's lifelong accomplishments and notoriety. She was a woman born during the difficult times of prohibition and abandoned at a very young age and faced the most painful of challenges during her youth. From transferring for place to place without her biological parent(s), unfit living environments, physical and mental abuse/ trauma, to simply just wanting to find a place to belong. These were the trials of Maya Angelou, in her youth, she moved more than four times across the country. The second time involved her father taking her and her kid brother back to California, but instead of taking them all the way he decides to drop them off to live with their mother in St. Louis where gambling and

Unlike Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou devoted her life to inspiring African Americans to do whatever they wanted to do no matter what other people said. She also wanted to inspire people. Her poems Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise inspired not only the African American people, which is was intended to, but the whole world including men. Like Hughes, Maya Angelou did not think that one day she would be reading one of her poems at President Clinton 's inauguration. But she did think that she would inspire young African American writers that they too could become wonderful writers in a white society. Angelou is hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary black literature and as a remarkable Renaissance woman.

Angelou’s parents had a divorce when she was still a young child. Once the marriage was over, Angelou and her brother were sent off alone on train to rural Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother, Annie Henderson. Her grandmother had made her living off of owning a general store. After living with her grandmother for four years, her father came to Arkansas, without warning, He hauled both of his children back to their mother in St. Louis. While under the care of her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Freeman.

Maya Angelou has greatly influenced writers and audiences alike. She was born Marguerite Johnson to Bailey and Vivian Baxter Johnson. At age three, Marguerite Johnson was sent to live in Stamps, Arkansas with her paternal grandmother, Annie “Momma” Henderson. Momma taught her the three most important things in life: “work, duty, religion.” During a brief period in which she lived in St. Louis, seven year old Marguerite Johnson was raped by her mother’s boyfriend.