Maya Angelou Still I Rise Essay

Obstacles through life soon became a story to tell. Maya Angelou lived an interesting and eventful life. Throughout the many trials and tribulations of Mrs.Angelou’s life she made the way for many people.

Mrs.Angelou led an engrossing life. Maya Angelou was born and Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928 in the state of Missouri to Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson (Williamson).At the age of three Mrs.Angelou and her four-year-old brother were both sent to Stamps, Arkansas ,to live with their paternal grandmother due to their parents’ going through a divorce (Smelstor). When Maya Angelou was eight years old and she went to visit her mother and she was raped by her mothers’ boyfriend and when her uncle’s became aware of this situation they then beat the man accused of raping her to death (Peck). By the time Mrs.Angelou was thirteen she had grown closer to her mother and by sixteen she was a mother herself (Taylor). Angelou graduated from Layette County Training School in 1940 and was sent to San Francisco Bay where her mother was residing (Smelstor). She also taught at various American universities since the 1960s (Peck).

Mrs.Angelou’s poem ”Still I Rise” is a nine stanza poem offering words of motivation to those who have been enslaved (Bouchard). Maya Angelou also read her famous poem ”On The Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clintons’ inauguration in January 1993 ,this was a supreme moment for her career (Chow). Her poetry is also a supplement to the search for self-identify as an African American woman. The first seven lines in her poem ”Still I Rise” are each four lines long and the second and third lines rhyme with one another (Bouchard). All of Angelou’s poem hold special spaces in the formation of her career as a write