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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Essay

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You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.” To fully understand and apprentice the meaning of Maya Angelou novel“ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”a person has to first understand her eclectic lifestyle, the reason why she wrote the novel and the reasons why it's still important to readers today. When Maya Angelou was three and her brother, Bailey was four, her parents divorced and shipped their children off with their grandmother, Annie for parental guidance. Maya’s grandmother lived in a black community where she owned a general store that served food and sundries. She also owned a extra house the she rented out to a poor white family that occasionally came into the store to harass her and her family.(Telgen 134)

During the depression Mrs. Henderson was able to lend out money to poor black and white families. Maya and her brother Bailey learned many things from there grandmother which was how to be kind ,they became wise, and she taught them how to be confident, she soon became their role model- yet she was strict she taught them cleanliness, godliness, and the respect for others . There lives revolved around the church and around the customers at her general …show more content…

Sadly, high school and college students all over America are forced to wade through her written bath of dung because it’s chic among the brainless radicals who dominate American education at all levels. It’s absolutely unreadable” And after that statement she tweeted “ Buh-bye Maya Angelou , One of America's most overrated Writers” (

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Maya Angelou’s excerpt from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” will imaginatively take a reader away from their deskbound position to envisioning the stage of a play ornamented with fashioned rabbits, buttercups, and daisies, hearing children as they actively perfect their performance, and stimulate the readers’ appetite with the expressive words she uses to describe sweet whiffs of cinnamon and chocolate from the food samples being prepared. From Angelou’s portrayal of the play an individual will be capable of picturing white rabbits crafted from construction paper and cotton balls modelling puffy tails, together with, yellow and pink card board cut outs resembling buttercups and daisies decking a stage. The person who reads this excerpt

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Maya Angelou published her novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the late 1960s to shed light on her personal experiences as a girl growing up in the segregated South. She writes unfiltered depictions of rape and sexual abuse, along with topics such as racism and teenage pregnancy. Her novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became censored in America in 2002 due to these topics. Regardless of this novel being censored, it holds significant value in the lessons it teaches.

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III. a. Maya Angelou was an avid writer, speaker, activist and teacher. As a result of the many hardships that she suffered while growing up as a poor black woman in the south she has used her own experiences as the subject matter of her written work. In doing this she effectively shows how she was able to overcome her personal obstacles. Her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) tells the story of her life and how she overcame and moved forward triumphantly in spite of her circumstances.

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Maya Angelou recalls the first seventeen years of her life, discussing her unsettling childhood in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya and Bailey were sent from California to the segregated South to live with their grandmother, Momma. At the age of eight, Maya went to stay with her mother in St. Louis, where she was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Maya confronts these traumatic events of her childhood and explores the evolution of her own strong identity. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement, caused by these incidents of sexual abuse, are mediated through her love for literature.

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Maya Angelou is a well-known author whose writings are used in ELA classrooms around the United States. Many fans of literature hold her writings in high regard. The article “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” by Francine Prose is about Prose’s belief that American educators should not teach Angelou’s work to American students. Prose published the piece in 1999 in response to Angelou’s rising success and her writings being used to teach ELA. Prose believed that Maya Angelou’s work being used to teach literature was not necessary, as To Kill a Mockingbird was more than sufficient.

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Renowned author, activist, and poet, Maya Angelou is a woman of extraordinary talent and strength. Angelou is recognized as a significant historical figure amongst American culture and literature, becoming a prominent role model for thousands of women across the world, and embodying a symbol for hope and success for people of color. Maya’s beginnings were humble, moving from Missouri to Arkansas due to conflict within her home, during which she found comfort in literature, consequentially, sparking her passion for the written word. Throughout her career, Angelou achieved remarkable success, leaving behind an everlasting legacy. Her fame is cemented by her infamous autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which propelled Angelou into the spotlight, becoming the first Black

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In I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, the section I chose to analyze was chapter 36. In this particular chapter Maya feels alone, like her world is crumbling down around her. She didn't know how to approach the fact she was pregnant and about to have a baby. When she told daddy Clidell, he assured Maya that she “nothing to worry about”Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

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Kathryn Eifert DeLotell 1 August 8th, 2014 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings tells the story of Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Anne Johnson on April 4th, 1928. Maya was sent at three years old from her home and parents in St. Louis, Missouri alongside her older brother Bailey, from whom which she acquired the name Maya, to live with their paternal grandmother Annie Henderson and her disabled adult son.

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First and foremost, Maya's father, Big Bailey Johnson, had treated maya with ignorance and carelessness. In the beginning of the autobiography Maya's self-esteem was very low because she hated the way she was turned into "a too-big negro girl, with nappy hair" as she envisioned herself having long blond hair and light blue eyes (2). When she first

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Identity Essay “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is an autobiography written by Maya Angelou, in which she takes us through the early chapters of her life. Throughout her childhood, her main caregiver was Annie Henderson, her grandmother. Miss Henderson, also referred to as Momma throughout the book, is a religious black woman who owned the only black store in Stamps, Arkansas. Her strength from decades of experience and discrimination as a black woman played a big part in how Maya established her values throughout life. In this document, we’ll be diving into how Momma is affected by ethnocentrism

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Maya Angelou worked as a professor at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, from 1991 to 2014. As an African American women, one whose life was full of racial discrimination and gender inequality, she had plenty of experience and wisdom to share with her students. During her time working at the university, she taught a variety of humanities courses such as “World Poetry in Dramatic Performance,” “Race, Politics and Literature,” “African Culture and Impact on U.S.,” and “Race in the Southern Experience” (Wake Forest University,

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Maya’s experiences throughout her childhood and “adulthood” convey the idea that nobody can dictate someone else’s identity except the person themselves. Maya’s experiences throughout her childhood show the idea that nobody can dictate someone else’s identity except the person themselves. At only eight years old, her mother’s ex-boyfriend molested and raped her. During his trial, Maya lied about what he had done and denied that he’d ever touched her before he actually raped her.

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In the autobiography written by Maya (Marguerite) Angelou titled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya tells the story of her and her little brother Bailey who was sent to live with their paternal grandmother who is referred to as Momma Henderson in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and her brother both lived a pretty normal country life with their grandmother in a southern state that at the time still had segregation. During one Christmas season, gifts arrived for Maya and her brother. Up to that point, Maya and her brother believed that their parents were dead. (Angelou, 52) Shortly after that Maya and her brother was brought back to reside with their mother, Vivian in St. Louis.

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(Although rudeness of her classmates, and even teachers, did not discourage Maya and her brother.) Due to living in a city of liberals, from both end of the spectrum, the people started Civil Right’s movement which gave Maya a chance to go out of the American American stereotype.

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“Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou in 1968 announces to the world her frustration of racial inequality and the longing for freedom. She seeks to create sentiment in the reader toward the caged bird plight, and draw compassion for the imprisoned creature. (Davis) Angelou was born as “Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St Louis, Missouri”. “Caged Bird” was first published in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? 1983.

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