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…
Words 1372 - Pages 6
Maya angelou was a civil rights activist that helped and changed the lives of many and the way people think. She was very inspiring and influential. Maya battled racism through her life and made literary history by being the first African-american woman to have a nonfiction best-selling book called I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Angelou received many honors in her career such as two NAACP awards for outstanding literary work (nonfiction) in the years 2005 and 2009. In Maya’s early years she was…
Words 876 - Pages 4
Impact and Roots of Racism In the poem “Sympathy”, the caged bird sings to express the anguish of watching opportunity available to those outside the confines of it’s prison pass by. Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, explores similar themes of limitation and pain created by a racist and discriminatory society. Throughout her youth, Angelou dealt with overt displays and subtle effects of racism. One of the book’s most blatant scenes of racism, Maya’s trip to the dentist…
Words 1281 - Pages 6
Maya Angelou was one of the most influential voices of our time. She is very well-known and she has made a difference. She was born and raised in times that racial discrimination was typical. All of her experiences as a child were her inspiration for her literary successes. She has received many awards and recognition for her writing and all her other successes. Angelou was born as Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4th, 1928. She was born in St. Louis. She was raised in Stamps, Arkansas by her grandmother…
Words 806 - Pages 4
In the novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, the author reflects on her own experiences as an African American female throughout her adult life in the 1930’s and 40’s. Maya Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri and had one brother, Bailey Johnson Jr. She was the younger sibling but was still the one who always took care of her older brother. At the age of four or five Angelou and her brother traveled regularly back and forth between her mother, Vivian Baxter…
Words 1358 - Pages 6
Maya Angelou wrote I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in 1969. In her book, she uses a several rhetorical devices to help us better understand her perspective on how poorly black peoples lived and were treated during this time. One theme in this book is race, the reader gains more knowledge on the subject of living life as a black young woman. Maya also applies imagery in her book to give the reader context and to bring them in while reading the story. Another strategy this author uses is symbolism…
Words 619 - Pages 3
Maya Angelou, the author of the famous poem “Still I Rise”, uses vivid imagery and metaphors to describe the hardships she, an African-American woman, rises above. “Still I Rise” touches on the themes of perseverance and overcoming the evils of racism. Throughout the poem, Maya Angelou describes how African Americans have been negatively categorized for so many years that its now embedded into our minds. Maya takes the cruel things once said about her and gives them a new meaning. In the poem, she…
Words 774 - Pages 4
“ 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. It is an unnecessary insult.” (Angelou 4); is one of many vivid metaphors throughout Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that likens the experience of growing up as a black girl in the segregated American South to having a razor at one’s throat. In contrast to Angelou’s vividity, Lorraine Hansberry’s magisterial choice of words…
Words 639 - Pages 3
A chapter “Champion of the World” from the novel, “Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, canvas this racial pride having ambition unity factors of segregation. To who is cogent this chapter is Maya Angelou when she was a young black girl from her perspective of discrimination of “white beliefs”. This proposes towards African Americans trying to gain freedom, unification, and tolerance. Additionally, towards the government to abolition segregation laws. It takes place around the 1930’s a boxing…
Words 654 - Pages 3
poets is Maya Angelou. Angelou was one of the many poets that wrote about very rough experiences in her childhood. Although Angelou is now known for being a civil rights activist and an amazing poet throughout her life she had faced troubles like no other (Overview of Maya Angelou). Angelou wrote the raw literature that led many to ask what obstacles did Angelou have to overcome that influenced her to write her poetry. The life of Maya Angelou was a very hectic life, but from these…
Words 1835 - Pages 8