Maya Angelou My Name Analysis

According to the dictionary the meaning of the word name is ; a word or phrase that refers to or that can refer to a specific person (webster dictionary). A name is actually more than that. On December 13, 2000 I was born and given the name Sheena Ailanie Williams. My mom told me that while she was sitting in her bedroom, a movie came on the television screen.Sheena, The Jungle Queen was the name of the movie my mother named me after. For years people would ask me my name and responded with, “ Like the jungle queen!” sooner or later I started to think of myself as queen of the jungle. It made me feel important and special. People

The purpose of a name is to identify an individual. However a name is so much more: a story, a family legacy, a way for people to tie you to your accomplishments and your failures. A name can be passed on through generations, carrying a past that can be traced through ancestral lines, or it can be a new creation, a story all its own. In the Holocaust people were stripped of their names; their identity, their culture, their sense of self, and reduced to a number in an effort to dehumanize them. Yes, in theory a name is merely a way to distinguish one person from another, but ultimately it is so much more than that.

This is shown in these texts, “I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one no one sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes, something like Zeze the X will do.” (“My Name” By Sandra Cisneros), “The name Youngeun is a barcode. The name Rachel is a Made in America sticker slapped onto a Korean flag.” (Names by Rachel Rostad), and “When I was nine years old, I spent the summer at a stay-away camp being called "Tiffany".” (What’s In A Name by Okaikor Aryee-Price).

In I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Angelou uses various stylistic devices and rhetorical strategies such as similes and metaphors. Angelou’s use of similes are used in order to describe her own character. In this, Angelou remarks “For nearly a year, I sopped around the house, the Store, the school and the church, like an old biscuit, dirty and inedible” showing that Angelou's inner feelings of not being good enough to be picked or loved. Correspondingly Angelou felt her skin looked “dirty like mud” showing her inner insecurities of her skin colour being unattractive. The sense of Angelou’s insecurities can also be seen with the use of metaphors regarding Angelou's skin as she remarked “I was described by our playmates

Names are a very important thing that most people are given shortly after birth. A name is “the word or words that a person, thing or place is known by” (Cambridge Online Dictionary (2011), Retrieved November 6th 2012). Names are given to identify an individual in replace of calling someone “it”, a term used to refer to something inanimate or without a name. A name shows that someone loves us enough to name us; to think about it with care and affection. Names surrounding the author have a great influence also and the main character in Frankenstein shares the penname of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley’s husband. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood uses the influence of feminism to create the names of the majority of the female

Names can connect you to your living family, and your ancestors. They shape you and link you to this world. Your name is the first thing that you were given when your life

Through an examination of the female experience, Maya Angelou's Still I Rise (1978) and Anne Sexton's Her Kind (1960) utilise the authors' individual styles to inspire and shape our understanding of oppression and empowerment. In the difference in presentation of their common themes, the implications of different styles are shaped. Though there are similarities between the poets, it is the way they choose to utilise literary devices that creates a text that resonates with the audience in different ways.

“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.

At birth everyone is given a name by their parents. Your name is part of your identity and how you are addressed and recognized by the world. The different verities among the population created other names given to different races. These names are offensive, demeaning and are only used to refer to a person in a disrespectful manner. They can also cause a segregation among a nations people, these names are forced upon people weather they are rich or poor, old or young, male or female and are used to describe the same race of people. In the class reading "What 's in a Name? “by Henry Louis Gates he reminisces about a personal experience of his that he had with his father. In the story he describes his father was a hard worker and, because of this he was in high financial standings and, he was well respected and given privileges that at the time was rare for people of his race but he was still black and his name, his individual identity was not important instead he was given a racial identity, this is the only thing he was known as, this type of negative recognition is something many black Americans can relate to. One’s race is a predominant part of our identity and is what causes discrimination.

Maya Angelou is one out of the best known poets. She has written a lot of poems that inspires and assist people with their lives. She has a “desire humbleness to learn and experience all that life has to offer her” (gale biography in context, “Maya Angelou More than a Poet”) which makes her poems have a meaning to them. In addition, Maya Angelou got a lot of pieces of poems considered equality to her experience as a human of the United States during race times and her experience as a person who worked with other civil right activist. Maya Angelou uses deep themes that leaves the reader to think about the topic is being talked about. In her poem, “Still I Rise” she talks metaphorically about discrimination. In the poem, it states, “does my haughtiness offend you? ( the poetry foundation, “Maya Angelou”). This quote from the poem shows how the rest of the poem is about people believe they is better than other people and that the other people should suffer because they are inferior to the people, but the people being abused should not be embarrassed of who they are and be thankful for life(“Maya Angelou More than a Poet 1”).

In “My Name is Margaret”, Maya Angelou, the author of this short story, elucidates upon a fictional scenario depicting the dictating entitlement and superiority exposed to a myriad of African Americans during her generation. Angelou demonstrates this racial contrast by emphasizing the feeling of irrelevance through the looking glass

The fact that African-Americans were prejudiced and treated in an ill manner stands as a well-accepted historical statement, but the injured emotions, identity and cultural heritage of them are often neglected. is an autobiography of Maya Angelou in which she recollects her childhood memory and sends a strong message to the reader.

In the essay “What’s Your Name, Girl?” Maya Angelou explores the injustice and suffering of her childhood as a black girl living in Stamps, Arkansas. Immediately, as the essay begins, you acquire insight on how Angelou seemed to be envious of white girls: “But Negro girls in small Southern towns, whether poverty-stricken or just munching along on a few of life’s necessities, were given as extensive and irrelevant preparations for adulthood as rich white girls shown in magazines. Admittedly the training was not the same. While white girls learned to waltz and sit gracefully with a teacup balanced on their knees, we were lagging behind, learning the mid-Victorian values with very little money to indulge them.” (17-18). Angelou recognized how unfair black people were treated. They had to scrounge up money whenever they could, while white people would effortlessly “waltz and sit gracefully” whenever they wanted to. She was envious of white people’s social statuses and what little work they had to do in the world and she wanted to be one of them; she wanted to live an easy life.

A name is not just what you’re called, it is who you are. It is what you stand for and ultimately defines you as a person. Growing up, I used to think my name did not fit me and that nothing that my name stood for had anything to do with me. Now that I am older, I understand the real meaning of my name and how the traits that are connected with my name relate to the person that I have become and continue to develop into. My name represents who I am and who I plan to be.

It gives us an identity and it helps us become who we are. People recognize you by your name and it helps you differentiate between people. We have all seen the movies where when a person loses his memories, the first thing she/he asks is, who they are and it’s followed by the person’s name. My point is that everyone indentifies themselves with names and overtimes the name gets a meaning. In spite of language barriers, names can still speak through, the beauty isn’t lost. “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”(Dale Carnegie) Although there is also a darker side to finding meaning in your name and this is usually seen in celebrities, who try to trademark their names. Kylie Jenner tried to trademark her name in 2015 but was denied. Having her name trademark would mean no one else could name themselves ‘Kylie