Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 and passed away on May 28, 2014. Throughout her lifetime, Angelou faced obstacles as an African American woman. Her first obstacle occurred when Angelou was eight year old and was raped by her mother’s boyfriend Freeman. After this experience with her mother’s boyfriend, she later on told her brother who then told the family. Freeman faced 1 day in jail for his punishment. Her uncle’s weren’t happy with this that 4 days after Freeman’s release he was killed by them. On her first autobiography “ I know why the caged bird sings” she explains that “ I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kills someone” meaning that she felt like it was her fault that he died, if it wasn’t for her opening her mouth and saying his name, he would’ve of still been alive. After this experience she was traumatized which made her stop talking which lead to her writing that quote in “ I know why the caged bird sign”. …show more content…
The message that I got from it is, you may not control the things that people say to you, but you may control the feelings and effect you get from it. After Maya Angelou being raped from Freeman she did get traumatized but she didn’t let that stop her, even though she didn’t talk for almost 4 years she didn’t let that stop her. Her becoming a successful women after is an example of what she did. Winning award and many different things show that she didn’t let that moment stop her from doing what she loved to