Maya Angelou Term paper
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Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Johnson is an author, poet, historian, conductor, actor, singer, songwriter, playwright, film director, and civil rights activist. She was born in a segregated rural area of St. Louis, Arkansas, and she came from a broken home. The author s father, Bailey Johnson, was a naval dietician, and her mother was Vivian Johnson. She has one sibling, a brother named Bailey after their father. When she was about three years old their parents divorced and the children were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou claims that her grandmother, whom she called momma , loved her and her brother very intensely. Growing up in Stamps, Angelou learned what it was like to be a black girl in a world where boundaries were set by whites. She learned what it meant to have to wear old hand me downs from a white woman. And she also learned the humiliation of being refused treatment by a white dentist. As a child she always dreamed of waking to find her nappy black hair metamorphosed to a long blond bob because she felt life was better for a white girl than for a black girl. Despite the odds, her grandmother instilled pride in Angelou with religion as an important element in their home. After five years of being apart from their mother the children were sent back to Saint Louis to be with her. This move eventually took a turn for the worst when Angelou was raped by her mother s boyfriend at 8 years old. The devastating act of violence committed against her caused her to become mute for nearly five years. She was sent back to Stamps because no one could handle the grim state Angelou was in. With the constant help of a women named Mrs. Flowers, Angelou began to evolve into the young girl who had possessed the pride and confidence she once had. Again in 1940, her brother and she were sent to San Francisco to live with their mother. Life with her mother was constant disorder. Living with her mother soon became too much for her so she ran away to be with her father and his girlfriend in their rundown trailer. Finding that life with him was no better, she ended up living in a graveyard of wrecked cars that mainly housed homeless children. It took her a month to get back home to her mother. Angelou s dysfunctional childhood spent moving back and forth between her mother and grandmother caused her to struggle with maturity. She became determined to prove she was a woman and began to rush toward maturity. Angelou soon found herself pregnant, and at the age of sixteen she delivered her son, Guy. In her early 20 s she was given the name Maya Angelou after her debut performance as a dancer at the Purple Onion cabaret. Angelous first work of literature, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, is an autobiography. Angelou s sometimes disruptive life inspired her to write this book. In this volume, Angelou recounts the chilling incident of her rape, and how afterwards she confided in her brother what had happened, and soon thereafter, the person was found dead. She actually thought her voice had killed him, so she simply stopped talking until years later when someone told her that if she really loved poetry, like she said she did, that she would speak it. This book truly reflects the essence of her struggle to overcome the restrictions that were placed upon her in a hostile environment. Angelou writes with a twist of lyrical imagery along with a touch of realism. The title of this book is taken from the poem sympathy by the great black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. This book has been the target of many censorship attacks. In one case, Round Rock, Texas parents thought that the book was pornographic and just plain filth. The book was also filmed as a two hour special for CBS. Her second book, Gather Together In My Name, centers on Angelou and her brother s move away from their grandmother. This transition takes place from her later teen years through her midtwenties, focusing on her experiences as a mother,...
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