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Maya Angelou Research Paper

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Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised by her grandmother, who was a Christian woman strong in her faith. Despite Angelou’s upbringing, she wasn’t satisfied with blindly embracing the religion of her family. She took it upon herself to explore a wide arrange of faiths before accepting Christianity as her own. Maya Angelou’s mother abandoned her when she was a child at the young age of 3 years old and sent her to live with her grandmother. Angelou’s grandmother faced racism and ensured her grandchildren were raised respectfully despite the crooked upbringing of their mother, her daughter, and the wicked ways of the racist world they grew up in. Even though Angelou was raised by a Christian woman strong in her faith, she …show more content…

She was unable to enjoy her early years due to the trauma she endured which caused her to live a tainted life. At the age of 8, Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Angelou told her brother, who told her uncles. It has been said that Angelou’s uncles killed the boyfriend which lead her to take fault for the death. This lead her to become mute for almost 5 years because she thought her words had killed him. "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 kill anyone..." (I know Why The Caged Bird Sings). However, it was that time of silence that presented Angelou the opportunity to develop her memory and the ability to take in the world around her. Shortly after these series of unfortunate events, Angelou was sent to back to live with her grandmother. To make matters worse, through the remainder of the time of living with her grandmother, Maya recalled not hearing from her mother for time on end “We didn’t hear from her— we heard maybe twice in seven years or something” (Smithsonian Magazine). Angelou’s life had taken a course unexpected and sent her into a series of harsh thoughts. Though this transition proved rough, Angelou grew closer with her grandmother. The change of motherly influence over her life allowed her to see a woman rooted in

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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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She went to school at George Washington high school California Labor school. Maya Angelou then became an author and civil rights activist poet, having 12 best selling books. She went onto being one of the few inspirational African Americans of all time. Along with her, there were other inspirational coloured people, who became friends with like Martin Luther

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Maya Angelou was a strong African-American women who made an influential impact on the Civil Rights Movement, in bother her actions, and her literature. Her life experiences and courage helped others, and made her work influential. During Maya’s early life, she experienced many hardships that shaped her into the person many remember her as. Born on April 4, 1928, she only lived in St. Louis, MO for three years before her parents got divorced, and Maya, along with her mother and brother, moved in with her grandparents in Arkansas. At the age of eight, raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Maya learned the power that words possess.

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She feared that hate would only come out of her mouth if she spoke. Maya and her brother were forced to move back to their grandmother’s house, since Angelou had refused to talk. At her grandmother’s house, Maya remained mute for several years before she was introduced to Mrs. Flowers. Mrs. Flowers taught Maya more about literature and the power words can have. Maya finally spoke again after Mrs. Flowers lessons.

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The struggle in Angelou’s life started when she was young. At the age of 8 Angelou was left mute for several years after a traumatic rape that also resulted in the murder of her rapist (Britannica 2). Though fastforwarding to 1940, Angelou moved to San Francisco with her mother working a variety of odd jobs until she became a professional dancer and also changing her name (Britannica 3). Work till this point of her life was all she knew and proceeded to continue this trend in order to achieve her dreams. Another look into her future Angelou now working as a professor of an American studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (Britannica 6).

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