Maya Angelou College Essays Samples For Students

“I know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is the first and probably the most popular volume of Maya Angelou’s autobiography. The whole collection covers the period between 1930s and late 1960s. The first volume was written in 1969 and in 1970, it was nominated for a National Book Award. The book speaks about Maya’s childhood up to the moment she is seventeen. It focuses on her growing and becoming a premature black girl. The main themes of the book are also family, motherhood and self-knowledge. When Maya Angelou was three years old, her parents divorced so Maya was ...

Maya Angelou’s recurring line “sings of freedom” tells of how much she wanted to set herself free from the situation she was put into at a very young age. The book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a memoir that talks about Maya Angelou’s tumultuous but sobering experiences in life, told in a straightforward manner without any filter. From an adult person’s point of view, her experience was difficult to bear. She and her brother had to deal with their parents’ divorce, then be shuffled back and forth from her grandmother to her mother, then to her ...

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Phenomenal Woman is one of the most notable poetic pieces by Maya Angelou that celebrates womanhood and femininity highlighting the qualities necessary for a woman to be termed as phenomenal. In my opinion, Maya Angelou uses the poem to espouse her belief in inner beauty as the key behind what makes a woman be dubbed as phenomenal (Cullum 27). Her poem takes a critical stance at the biased perceptions bestowed on women by the society regarding what beauty is. I believe her work is based on the contemporary’s society obsession with thinness and a pretty face as the true quality of a woman’ ...

Poetry Comparison – ““Million Man March” by Maya Angelou and “A Farewell to False Love”

Maya Angelou is a 20th century poet who was born in 1928 in the USA, and Sir Walter Raleigh, born in 1552 in England both wrote two poems which are significantly different yet similar in many respects. Maya Angelou speaks strongly about the oppression of a race because the color of their skin makes them from others. It ends on a note of forgetting and forgiving past hurts and to love. Sir Walter Raleigh wishes to forget or to say farewell to the poisonous wrong that was done. He wants to forget that love ever existed. Both poems though written in different ...

INTELLIGENCE TEST

Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an intelligent person. Due to the nature of the works that she has done over the years such as award winning poem collections like “I know why the caged birds sing” she portrays that she has the intelligence. The psychometric approach to someone's intelligence is the rank that someone gets on an aptitude test. An aptitude test shows someone's ability to acquire knowledge or skills in the near future. This is not to be confused with achievement test that test skills and knowledge that someone already possesses. On consideration of Maya Angelou achievements, ...

Maya Angelou died at the age of 86 on May 28, this year. She left the world with her powerful words that can liberate a person’s mind and soul; words that can agitate people from different race around the globe to act for social change. One of her famous quotations is “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated”. She was the first African-American woman to speak of equality, change, and of freedom through her writings like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I Shall Not Be Moved and many other books, poems, essays and ...

English 1101

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
During my Africa Studies, I found a poem that made me do a research on its author. The poem is called Still I Rise, and it is written by Maya Angelou. This woman turned out to have a complicated life journey, but it didn’t prevent her from making an invaluable contribution to the civil rights’ movement of the African Americans. Marguerite Ann Johnson, which is her real name, was born in 1928, and in her born days, she has published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry. It’s hard ...

“The White Man will never be alone” (Chief Seattle 120). Chief Seattle is correct when he says that the White man will never be alone because there will always be other cultures in America. Throughout the ages, America has gone through a lot as a country, events which have torn the nation apart, yet in its own way sown unity within our hearts. The struggles started even as early as the colonization of the Americas, and still continue until this day. Although, there are events in time which helped shaped our country and our people. Over the course of American history, ...

Maya Angelou "graduation" identity and culture

Maya discusses the stereotypical challenges of society faced by black people in term of their culture and identity. This paper aims to examine the essay of Maya Angelou, which is about graduation identity and culture. The subject that the author has been covered in the essay is the sense of identity and the impact of culture on the development of identity. The occasion of the writing is the graduation of Angelou. During the graduation ceremony, the guest speaker made racial comments, which provoked the author to write the essay. Maya Angelou wrote the essay ‘Graduation’ in order to express ...

The article written by Mark Twain is a piece of advice to the youth while the article written by Maya Angelou is a story about her life as a young house help to a white woman. Mark Twain adopted his name from river boat sailors who would utter the words Mark Twain to show that the waters were deep enough for a sheep to pass safely. He was and still remains as one of the most prolific writers in the history of America. Maya Angelou is well known for her memoirs and poetry. She is also a play writer and an actress.
Mark Twain’ ...

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou Poetry Paper

Introduction
It is clear that Maya Angelou, the author of Still I Rise wrote the poem in an effort to communicate her thoughts to oppressors and perpetrators of racism, sexism, and destructive criticism. It would really be a good idea to know who Maya Angelou is as an author and as a person to understand what some words and passages in her poem Still I Rise are for. Maya Angelou is a Black American poet, dancer, film and television producer, playwright, director, author, professor, actress, and civil rights activist. Her real name is Marguerite Ann Johnson. Most of her works revolve ...

Maya Angelou

Introduction
In 4th April 1928, Maya was born and named as Marguerite Ann Johnson, a daughter to Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson who was a dietitian for the United States Navy. Her year old brother, Bailey was unable to pronounce her name and he usually called her either “my-a-sister” or “my sister.” As a result, the brother contributed to the birth of her new nickname as “Maya.” However, the nickname, Maya, was not recognized by other people until her adulthood, when she converted her real name to Maya Angelou, in 1949, as a professional and stage name.

Thesis: The paper focuses on the life of Maya accompanied by the events that accompanied her during her life.

At the age of three, ...

“Men” by Maya Angelou

The poem “Men” is about Maya Angelou’s experience with men and the way she understands them. Men are the stronger sex and they can get what they want from women. Inexperienced, young, women fall prey to men who are the dominant gender. A life of a woman is not fair because she is deprived of making a choice in life and she can only decide to accept what men are offering or not.
The poem “Men” deals with the desire the narrator feels towards men as she observes them through the window: “They knew I was there. / ...

Throughout our lives, we grow up thinking that we know about some things, but up reading and doing research; we either confirm our notions or find out that they are misplaced. John Henslin, in his book ‘Sociology; A Down to Earth Sociology’ shares the social realities that shape the world around us. Our interactions with people enhance our knowledge and get different perspectives into issues that affect us each day. In this paper, I will discuss some notions I knew about culture, social class as well as bureaucracy. I will also discuss the things I never knew.

Culture

I have ...

Essay 1

Maya Angelou was born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her experience of the brutality and inhumanity of slavery were pivotal in creating a literature giant whose works have continued to inspire generations of readers and writers. In the poem “I know why the Caged Bird Sings” Angelou utilizes stylistic technique to unwrap the themes of freedom and segregation (“Maya Angelou: Global Renaissance Woman”).

This poem is fashioned around the experiences of two birds. One is free and the other is caged. The free bird is able to scale heights and enjoy its unrestricted life. In contrast, the caged bird ...

4thMarch 2014

Similarities between Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave
Introduction
Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing” and Solomon Northrup, “Twelve Years a Slave” are two memoirs with similar themes that encompassed their societies. These literally works depicts many life stories in which thematic concerns of religion, racism, chauvinism, education, poverty and seclusion carry an American dream. One quickly notices that they both relate in the way they pass out their different themes especially the theme of religion in this case. Religion is the main concern in ...

Comparing Langston Hughes’s & Maya Angelou's Understanding of Spirituality in Their Childhood

The narrative of Langston Hughes’s “Salvation” and Maya Angelou's “Sister Monroe” is quite similar, especially since both essays are written from a child’s point of view and are based on the authors’ previous childhood experience in their respective churches. Both Hughes and Angelou support their thesis by giving vivid descriptions of the reflections they had about their encounters at the church. Hughes and Angelou take a very similar approach towards narrating their childhood experiences and the purposes of their respective narrative essays inform their audience their understanding of their spirituality.
Personally, I was very satisfied with both the ...

The stereotypes and bias have always put the minorities in the corner of the society where the dominant culture looks upon the members of such social groups with a vague outlook which in fact demeans the cultural root of the minority and challenges the tenets of humanity and equality among the members of the human race. Champion of the World by Maya Angelou and Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan explores the psyche of the individuals who belong to such minorities and create literary representation of the thoughts and views of the members of the communities in regard to the dominant ...

I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing
In her autobiography, “I know why the Caged Birds Sing”, Maya Angelou illustrates her life in the American South and then in California. From the memoir, it was evident that racism and segregation was a dominant factor in the 1940s and the 1950s America. The plight of African American Child was first demonstrated when the Maya’s parents abandoned them and they were forced to go stay with the maternal grandmother, Momma. Maya faced various instances of racism and discrimination through her early life. She felt out of place and ugly as ...

It is no doubt that Maya Angelou is a force to reckon with when it comes to matters poetry. She is a poetic giant who infuses many themes and symbolic meanings in her works. Her readers well understand her genre, and the language that she uses in her works is easy to decipher. In her poem ‘Africa,’ she talks about the oppression of Africa and its people by European forces by turning them into slaves. She uses imagery in order to personify Africa to elicit the tone and imagery of this particular poem. Representing Africa as a beautiful woman gives the continent a ...

Introduction

- Impact of Literature on Racism

- The world has changed a lot as compared to the earlier times, but still we often find people to be distinguishing them on the basis of race and color. We all know about how the blacks were treated as slaves by the whites. On the other hand, there have been several poems and other literature written on racism and trauma. The journey of life for any individual becomes difficult once they are affected with racism (Peters 50).

- Racism and evolution that began

- Racism has been prevailing since ages, and due to ...

“The White Man will never be alone” (Chief Seattle 120). Chief Seattle is correct when he says that the White man will never be alone because there will always be other cultures in America. Culture is the presentation of the values from generation to generation, which reflects the history of a country’s mode of life, heritage, and tradition (Kalman 1). People find every Individual within the vicinity of the culture learns it difficult to understand and accept cultures other than their own.it. It is also shared as the people have common values norms and language. For this reason, culture ...

Response Essay- "Momma, the Dentist, and Me" by Maya Angelou

Living in an age where racism, color discrimination and disparity are almost nonexistent the essay on ‘Momma, the Dentist and me’ is a touching account on the days bygone. It is basically about a child having toothache due to cavities but it touches the hearts of those who understand discrimination based on skin color. When the basic necessities like emergency health care are denied the child recounts the agony of pain and also the imaginative irony of revenge in a humorous way. This leads us to think that freedom, as we enjoy today – freedom from discrimination, to visit any place, freedom to ...

‘Still I Rise’ by Maya Angelou

The poem, Still I Rise by Maya Angelou focuses on the idea of overcoming difficulty, and standing tall despite adversity and problems. The speaker in the poem presents various scenarios, for example:
“You may kill me with your hatefulness,
It is inspiring and reminds me of the idea that my mother used to tell me when I was younger: the age-old ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’
As a child, some of the other children at school were mean to me and would mock ...