Maya Angelou Caged Bird

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Through Maya Angelou’s poetry, she demonstrated that she had several talents. She was not only a poet, novelist, actor, musician, and civil right activist, but was also known as one of the most influential voices of her time. Not only were these roles critical to her credibility, but she was also African American, a race that was discriminated against at that time, but she gathered a large sum of people to agree with her issues with racism and sexuality. Due to her constant struggle of dehumanization as she grew up, she wrote poetry and novels to send to the masses, letting her readers know her brawl for equal rights. One of her works that denotes this belief is “Caged Bird.” Maya Angelou’s poem, “Caged Bird,” demonstrates her emotional stress …show more content…
One of these was writing. As she grew up, specifically through the ages 3-17 years old, she encountered many afflictions which are stated in her best-selling novel, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Angelou speaks through a character that is extremely relatable to herself, Marguerite Johnson. She was brought up in a house in the Jim Crow South. Furthermore, she believed that she was a displaced in her neighborhood and in the entirety of America. She says, “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat” (Fox, “Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86). The dreaded color on her skin caused her to be an outcast. She had to keep to herself and survive with the constant threats and dangers that people around her gave her. Although these thoughts crowded her head, she lifted her head and kept moving forward leaving her to be a successful writer. Not only was she successful because she sold many copies, but because she sold copies to a diverse set of people, not only blacks and women, but all kinds. Therefore, her ideals reached to the culprit and the innocent, ultimately leading to an increase in peace between the
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