Essays on Maya Angelou

“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. / ...

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 ...

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 ...

___________ University

Abstract

Many people never had the opportunity to travel. Some refuse to travel and prefers to remain ignorant of other cultures and societies. Those who do travel can sometimes still lead very ignorant lives because they refuse to accept the reality of other cultures or societies. However, some travelers can accept the reality of foreign societies and can not only immerse themselves in the foreign culture but also educate others about what they had experience. Through traveling, I was able to learn about the social issues of other countries firsthand. I also learned that many cultures have been ...

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 ...

“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 ...

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 ...

“Still I Rise”, “Phenomenal Women” and “Alone” are one of the well known works by Maya Angelou, and all three are associated with the reflections of human nature with two of them dealing with women specifically. If we read the biography of Maya Angelou we will relies that in all three poems she has actually highlighted the issues that she has faced in her life which were basically related to racism, sexist image of women and the desire to go away from the evils of the society. The beauty lies in the internal character and not the outer ...

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, ...

Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, published in 1969, is an autobiographical look into the coming-of-age years of the African-American author. Throughout the novel, Angelou’s discusses themes such as racism and segregation that she experienced, simply for being African American. She also discusses experiencing displacement throughout this period in her life, living in seven different homes in a relatively short period of time. There is also an overwhelming theme that speaks to Angelou’s resistance to racism; all of these culminated to form Angelou’s social identity. She covers many different events that helped shape ...

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 ...

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’ ...

Poems are literary forms that use rhythmic and aesthetic qualities of languages. They often use ambiguity, irony symbolism among other stylistic devices which leave the poem to numerous interpretations. Some poems may be specific to particular cultures, religions or genres. This paper intends to analyze Maya Angelou’s poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”. The paper shall also highlight the themes addressed in the poems, use of symbolism, and the message of the poem. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography of Maya Angelou that he uses to explore various themes of racism, ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

“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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

In the year 1903, W.E.B Dubois wrote the book The Negro Church. This book was later to be recognized as one among the most instrumental literary works in the Harlem Renaissance of 1918 to 1937. Dubois, much like other African American writers contributed greatly to American writing through philosophical thinking and ideology. James Baldwin is among the most prominent writers whose works are a portrayal of the prominent role of religion in African American literature. His book, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which narrates his life as the son of a Christian minister, is an explication of the role of ...

Human Dignity and Conscience in the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Maya Angelou

At first glance, it seems like a very difficult task to find any real connection between the writings of Maya Angelou on the one hand and Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson on the other. After all, Emerson and Thoreau were Northern white men of the 19th Century who had never personally experienced the oppression of slavery of the type of segregation and inequality that Angelou grew up with in Stamps, Arkansas in the 1940s. Even though they both opposed slavery, and Thoreau was willing to defy the law and go to jail to uphold his principles, in the ...

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 ...

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’ ...

Chapter I

The stereotypes and micro-aggressions suffered by a Black woman in a toxic workplace leads to deleterious effects. The effects reported here include oppression, shame, and isolation. Internalizing these feelings of isolation systematically caused the body, mind, and spirit to suffer physiologically and psychologically. The overall strategy is termed disconnection; this concept is reinforced by the “power over” (Jordan, 2010) by a dominant group who wantonly exercise shame and isolation to discourage mutually empowerment relationships (Jordan, 2010, p. 105). This Black woman is me. The terms Black and African American are used interchangeably. It is my preference to identify with the Black ...

Chapter I

The stereotypes and micro-aggressions suffered by a Black woman in a toxic workplace leads to deleterious effects. The effects reported here include oppression, shame, and isolation. Internalizing these feelings of isolation systematically caused the body, mind, and spirit to suffer physiologically and psychologically. The overall strategy is termed disconnection; this concept is reinforced by the “power over” (Jordan, 2010) by a dominant group who wantonly exercise shame and isolation to discourage mutually empowerment relationships (Jordan, 2010, p. 105). This Black woman is me. The terms Black and African American are used interchangeably. It is my preference to identify with the Black ...

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 ...

Black like me

Plato, one of the most famed philosophy, reiterated that it is only in the light of justice that we can be able to truly define the real measure of an individual’s view; whether it existed or not. He further reflected that the non-existence of justice is the non-existence of what defines one as a man. This statement manages to capture what author Griffin faced during his self imposed experiment. In addition, the saying covers the widespread racial discrimination when he was writing his book; black like me. During this time, justice was a mirage to the black community in the ...

‘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 ...

Black Music

What’s happening? Black Music. 1. (a) Reggae artist, Duane Stephenson

Duane Stephenson is a non-dancehall reggae artist. The reggae sound and beat are not the up-front of the sound; they are the foundation on which his singing voice and his message comfortably perch. His voice is serious even when he sings; he sounds like an old man, probably because he is mature and thoughtful. His fans describe his voice as wise.1

Stephenson’s albums may be too mellow and well, boring to some. His lyrics are strong so he doesn’t let the music overwhelm his message. He ...

Part of the enjoyment of poetry is the acceptance that some poems or parts of poems cannot be pinned down to a single meaning. Explore this view of poetry, and the ways in which poets use of language and from invites different readings.

In this essay I will be exploring ‘Blackberry-Picking’ by Seamus Heaney, ‘Two Scavengers in a Truck’ by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ by Maya Angelou. In different ways they show that poems cannot be pinned down to a single meaning.

The structure of ‘Blackberry-Picking’ is essentially that of two, not-quite-equal halves. The first 16 ...