Maya Chapter 30

Similarly, in her narration, Maya shows the extent of racial discrimination during her life. Finishing School suggests

When Maya returns to Stamps after spending time with her mother, she endures the shame of having been sexually abused by Mr. Freeman, her mother’s boyfriend. Maya stops speaking to everyone except her brother, Bailey. Her real mother accepts her silence at first as trauma, but she later gets angry at Maya’s “disrespectful behavior”. Much to Maya’s relief, she is sent back to live with Momma in Stamps along with her

As she grows, she learns what it means to stand up for herself, and gradually begins to do so. When Maya is enamored by the idea of working on the streetcars in San Francisco, she gains a glowing pride in herself, and confidence she will achieve the job, even against the white community that wishes to stand her down. With her perseverance, Maya begins to strive for the job, constantly claiming, “I WOULD HAVE THE JOB. I WOULD BE A CONDUCTORETTE AND SLING A FULL MONEY CHARGER FROM MY BELT.

Namely, losing her confidence when her experiment begins to fall apart. It starts to fall apart when her crush doesn’t accept her invitation to her farewell party and then when she finds out everyone’s going to Allison’s birthday party, a girl in her choir, instead. It gets worse when she messes up her solo at the choir concert and everyone makes fun of her. Maya stops talking to others and goes back to her old self. As proof of this, “Why did I believe I was anything but an inside joke?...I’m not special, I’m just a crazy girl in Grandma shoes. I don’t have balls at all...All my confidence and inner strength-how do I find it again?” (227-228).This reflects how Maya feels about herself. Maya brings herself down by letting everyone else get to her. She cancels her party and decides to give up on her experiment because she feels so bad about herself. Maya’s popularity disapears and even her friends have abondened her. Furthermore, Maya realizes that she was closest to popularity when “I was talking to people. It was when I opened up my introverted circle and allowed everyone I met in. It was when I included everyone” (230). As a result of this realization, Maya understands the true meaning of popularity. It was more then looks . It’s more than the right clothes, hair or what you owned, it was who you are and how you treat others. After determining this, Maya decides to invite anyone who doesn’t have a date to prom to go with her. Instead of excluding people like she did for her farewell party, she includes everyone. Maya beomces confident and positive again. By putting the past behind her, Maya can move forward and continue her experiment. In the end, Maya learns that to be confident, she has to let go, find that light inside of her and show it to the

She and the receptionist had a conversation discussing when the receptionist's manager would be back because he was the only one who could officially hire her for the job. At the moment, the company was only accepting people from agencies; however, that was for a different application. “We were firmly joined in the hypocrisy… 144” In this passage, Maya Angelou essentially initials that she and the receptionist were trying to be as friendly and professional as possible because of the circumstances where Maya Angelou is Black and the receptionist is white. In the case of those circumstances, it’d be discriminating (which at the time was acceptable) and unprofessional of Maya Angelou if something negative and regretful had happened, Maya Angelou compares the situation with a play, a recurring dream.

During her graduation, two speeches were given, one was from a fellow black student who directed his speech in the way of pathos in which he tried to evoke emotion and motivate all the students to be their best despite their backgrounds. The other speaker was a white man, who was an elected official and went more the way of ethos, using ethical words, which made him lose the audience. He implied that all the white kids would go on to do great things and all the black kids would go to be athletes or do some sort of social work. In Maya’s essay titled “Graduation,” Angelou mentions “The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren’t even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises” (51). From this quote I can resonate with the fact that people, including my mother thought that white kids had more of an opportunity to be great as opposed to minorities, which is why she moved me so I could be a Galileo, or a Madame Curie. Also, that shows how I might relate to Maya in the fact that even though they are two completely different times, the reality is that based on race or being colored there is a pre-placed weight on one’s shoulder to break past that. Another quote that resonated with me personally is when Angelou discusses the speech made by Henry Reed- “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” (Reed qtd. in Angelou 53). I personally think that this quote compares Maya and I’s thinking because she felt like she had no control over her life and it was determined, and at one point my mother felt like that was going to be my path, however we both chose to be the “captain of our own soul”. I could of chose to be a stereotype and be like the majority but I decided to take my life into my own hands

Maya makes her decision to study in the States because she wants to forget about her troubled past. She applies for a university in Virginia and receives the acceptance letter. Her parents agree to let her go, but her other relatives and close friends are not too keen on the idea. Maya is warned that moving to a new country takes a lot of decision making skills. This affects her relationship expectations because she is expected to keep everyone happy, yet wanting to pursue her dreams and future careers and has difficulty doing both.

Her muteness taught her many aspects of life, and meeting Bertha Flowers was a cornerstone of her self-confidence and identity. She faced different events, which made her become aware of social reality. Her confrontation with Mrs. Cullinan proved to be a turning point in her life. McPherson explains: “Mrs.Cullinan’s attempts to change Maya’s name for her own convenience echoes the larger tradition of American racism that attempts to prescribe the nature and limitations of a Black person’s identity.

Race, gender, age, and social class are things sometimes used to define a person. Mrs. Cullinan assumed because Maya was African American she had no say. The blacks have suffered so much harassment from the whites for many years that being “called out of his name” was an offense. It was such an insult to take away Marguerites name just for the convenience of Mrs. Cullinan it was like taking part of her away from her. Maya describes how this impacted her and how she decided to get vengeance. Times have now changed but there are still some people who believe that one gender or one race is superior and better.

Young Maya lives under the threats of terrifying lynch mobs and the daily realities of discrimination and humiliation. Each racist incident contributes to Maya’s self-awareness and shapes her views about injustice. This is a place where her brother witnesses white men fishing the rotting corpse of a lynched black man out of the river and then making jokes, where her grandmother is humiliated by a group of poor white girls, and where her crippled uncle spends the night in a corn crib to avoid a lynch mob. (Sickels,

This quote is important because based on stereotypes developed by other people, black people are violent and rude. Maya would likely have been punished for standing up for her grandmother while the white girls would be sympathized for harassing an elderly woman.

Maya really values her freedom, and the one of all Blacks. That is why she fight for their equality. An example of this, is when she left Make because he wanted her to be a traditional" wife. Maya, who already had little money for her and her son, decided to put all her time and effort into the Cabaret of Freedom. What had started as an idea between friends became an important even because of her investment. She quit everything she had been doing to organize, pick the cast and the theater, and she even requested to take care of addressing the envelopes. During that time, she was not working, so her son was the only income source, and her friend lent her money for rent. She said : "This is important. It’s for Martin L. King, for the SCLC, for black

Maya Angelou describes what her life with her grandmother is like while constantly being discriminated against her race. She then found her father, and he leaves Maya and Bailey off to their mother’s house. There, the mother’s boyfriend rapes Maya. After suffering from psychological shock, Maya then moves back to her grandmother’s. As a teenager Maya gets nervous about her sexual identity and tries to discover it. Through these harsh times, the naïve and softhearted Maya grows to become a strong, independent woman.

From what time frame this is, it addresses the racism from 1930s to the 1950s. Maya's view on the 'whitefolk' is that they seem to all be self-indulge, disrespectful, and can not keep their money in their pockets. She believes they talk in a way that they're talking above you and looking down at you. The 'whitefolk' view African American believe are undeserving of their time. They do look down on the African American and believe no matter their social or financial status, that African Americans are lower than them. We learn that an African American man was killed for sleeping with a white woman. Maya just keeps feeling like she is alienated from the Caucasians around her.

An example of Maya facing racism is during her eighth grade graduation. Maya was so excited to graduate. The school she attended enrolled both whites and blacks. First of all during the assembly the blacks had to recite their own national anthem titled “ The Negro National Anthem”. The principal gave a speech the the students and instead of treating the kids equal, he proudly stated the new achievements the whites were going to have, and