Maya Angelou Analysis

Words: 406
Pages: 2

Maya. To add to the emotional torture, she was forced to testify against her attacker. After her uncle murdered the rapist, the tender hearted eight year old, refusing to speak, crept into a wounded, private world of fear and guilt. Unsuited to the demands of an emotionally damaged child, Vivian returned Maya to Stamps, where, with Momma's guidance, she rebuilt self-esteem by cocooning herself from the outside world, reading classic literature, excelling at school, and imitating the genteel, bookish tastes of Mrs. Bertha Flowers, an old-school black Southern aristocrat who ministered to her need for pampering. Following Maya's graduation with honours from the eighth grade at Lafayette County Training School in 1940, Momma escorted her to Los Angeles, where Vivian met them and helped them move into an apartment. After Bailey joined them a month later, Momma returned to Stamps, and Maya and Bailey joined Vivian in Oakland. Later, after Vivian married Daddy Clidell Jackson, the family eventually settled in a fourteen-room house on Post Street in San Francisco's Fillmore district. Matriculating by day at George Washington High School and in the evening at the California Labor School from 1941 to …show more content…
Her skill at interweaving varied sounds, diction, metaphor, verse, hymns, scripture, and rhythms enlivens the narrative with texture and spirit. The resulting facile, readable blend covers the fourteen years of her childhood — from her arrival in Stamps, Arkansas, in 1931, at age three to her graduation from Lafayette County Training School and subsequent bonding with her three-week-old son at her mother's house in San Francisco in October 1945. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou's first venture into autobiography is, like the author herself, packed with promise. Like most autobiography, the story line follows the