Maya Angelou: The Invention Of Society

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Who Everyone has their own individual identity and no two people are exactly the same. The invention of who we are as people starts before we actually come into this world. Society plays a major role in our upbringing. The outside influences that shape us are culture, society, and our environment. Society shaped our parents, and our parents along with society shape us as individuals. This invention process is largely out of our hands and our control. The inventing of who we are as people happens throughout our life time. It is not until we are older that we can begin to control the invention of ourselves. We must learn to recognize who we are and how we came to be that we can begin to challenge the things that we do not like or agree with. We learn about this through experience and observation. …show more content…
She is a descendant of the people of West Africa and then ultimately the slave trade here in the United States. Her great grandmother was emancipated sometime after the Civil War. She was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in April of 1928. The nickname Maya came from her older brother.
She was born in St. Louis Missouri and lived there until the age of three. At that time she was sent to Arkansas to live with her grandmother. She lived with her grandmother for four years until her father returned her and her siblings to St. Louis to be their mother. At the age of seven Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He was convicted of the sexual assault, but was jailed for only a day. After leaving jail the man who raped Angelou was murdered. Angelou fell mute and reminded that way for almost five years. She felt responsible for his death and thought that because she spoke up that’s why he