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A brief biography of maya angelou
A brief biography of maya angelou
A brief biography of maya angelou
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Have you ever faced a life-changing experience that changed your life and country? If so, you are similar to Melba Pattillo Beals in Warriors Don’t Cry, Jackie Robinson in I Never Had it Made, and Feng Ru in “The Father of Chinese Aviation.” They all took a risk and faced life-changing experiences that changed their lives and their countries in some way. Melba Pattillo Beals faced life-changing experiences that helped improve education for African Americans. She endured challenges like facing threats from white people and coming across discrimination.
Maya Angelou is told by her mother that people of color are not allowed to work on the streetcars, but she refuses to take no for an answer and eventually she “was hired as the first Negro on the San Francisco streetcars” (Angelou 31). Immediately after her mother told her that she could not be a conductorette, Maya feels disappointed and defeated, a detail that
Maya Angelou philosophy and teachings are timeless. There is a lesson to be learned in her more than 30 published works and her lessons taught as a professor and lecturer. More important she lived what she preached. She had a strong belief in humanity as a whole, in the human spirit and in the African American community. She fought tirelessly to change extinguish racism, prejudice and discrimination during a time when she herself as a black woman experienced its effects.
I believe that one individual can be great at multiple things. The reason being is because Maya Angelou is a woman who has accomplished several things in her 86 years of life which is highly impressive. She’s a poet, an actress chef and countless more. She had numerous occupations and has succeeded in each and everyone despite the fact that she was experiencing racism and discrimination. For her hard work, determination, and passion she won the Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for writing.
Angelou, later on, became a writer, dancer, and poet. She went on to prove that no matter what skin color you may be, you can still go on to be successful. Throughout life, you should never judge a person because of how they look on the outside. You never know, that person could go on to be beyond than what you believed.
On example of this critique can be seen in Maya’s meeting with Mrs. Bertha Flowers. Angelou presents the older black woman as a direct opposite of young Maya, stressing that Mrs. Flowers rules both her words and body. “She had the grace of control to appear warm in the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer days it seemed she had a private breeze which swirled around, cooling her” (Angelou 77). Mrs. Flowers makes Maya proud to be black, and claims that she is more beautiful and “just as refined as whitefolks in movies and books” (Angelou 79). Although Maya begins to respect and admire the black female body, the white body still provide her standard for beauty, and Angelou pokes fun at the literary writing that whitens Maya’s view of Bertha Flowers and
Growing up in the 1930s as an African American was not a walk in the park. Angelou had to
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.
Laziness is people’s natural instincts, that’s the reasons people prefer to read comic books than purely prose narration, they are easier to be understood. Artie uses animals to caricature the situation of Jews’ during WWII. These information are based on his father’s experiences. The main characters are Jewish, German, Polishes, and Americans. All of them are represented in different animals.
Angelou had used anecdotes to describe the situations when Maya had been discriminated by her colour and appearance by the White Americans. Maya and Momma had to go to the dentist because Maya had two rotten teeth. However there were no Negro dentist in her area, and the nearest Negro dentist was in Texarkana which was far. So Momma had decided to go to Dr. Lincoln's since he owned her a favour from the past. Momma talked to Dr. Lincoln about Maya’s tooth problem and he replied “‘Annie, you know that I don’t treat nigra, colored people.’
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,
Most African Americans could not do anything about being put in those situations but just deal with them and grow from them. They also faced being called derogatory names that were carried along through their hard times. Maya worked for Mrs. Cullinan that was disrespectful to African Americans that worked for her. Maya was called the word “nigger” by the boss for breaking plates. She had no respect for Maya and had no sympathy for using suck a negative word.
In Maya Angelou’s “Graduation” she spoke about a fictional character named Marguerite Johnson and her eighth-grade graduation. Marguerite was always kinda of lost and selfish at times, and never look at how others seen things. But as the story goes on Marguerite starts to find herself and understand others. “Graduation” isn’t just about how Marguerite pass on to the next grade but how she has grown from a lost girl to a young intelligence woman. In this story the reader is going to follower her on this surprising journey.
I chose Maya Angelou for my character. I like Maya Angelou because she’s a big role model of mine. She has inspired me to do things more with my life then to sit around most of the day. She has inspired me to do better on my grades, work at home, and even to write more. Maya Angelou was from St. Louis Missouri and was born on April 4, 1928.
I have not read much poetry, which does not mean I do not enjoy it. I do enjoy reading the ones about success, confidence, and love. Although I like Shakespeare, it is hard for me to follow all of his work. I enjoy reading anything Maya Angelou does. Her work inspires me in every way.