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Maya Angelou's Literary Analysis

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Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1931, after her parents’ divorce, Angelou and her older brother, Bailey, moved to Stamps Arkansas to live with their paternal grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson, and her crippled uncle, Willie. Their family resided in the living quarters attached to the back of the small store that they owned. As a young African American girl, Angelou experienced harsh racism and discrimination while in Stamps (Angelou, Maya). At the age of 14, Angelou moved to San Francisco because she had earned a scholarship to study dance and drama at the California Labor School. She dropped out, but became the first African American female cable car conductor. Angelou later finished …show more content…

Walker’s criticism of racial protest, identity, words, and form in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, he reminds the reader of Angelou’s motivation to write her autobiography. She “could not resist” Robert Loomis’s challenge of writing an autobiography “as literature” (Walker). Angelou’s approach to the work is something Walker feels deserves more focus than many “scholarly discussions” give it. As he put, Angelou
“arranged and organized [episodes], often undermining the chronology of her childhood story and juxtaposing the events of one chapter with the events of preceding and following ones so that they too comment on each other.”
These episodes in Angelou’s life contribute to the “progressive process of affirming identity, learning about words, and resisting racism” (Walker). For example, the scene with the "powhitetrash" girls takes place in the fifth chapter, but occurred when she was about ten. Angelous rape happened about two years before this incident, but appears in chapter twelve. The chapter with the white girls tormenting Angelou’s grandmother begins with Momma teaching Maya not to be dirty or impudent. Momma refuses to succumb to the girls harassment and maintains her dignity. The chapter goes full circle, ending with the symbolic importance of cleanliness and sensibility. This is Maya’s first lesson in silent

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1233 Words | 5 Pages

On April 4th of 1928 Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. She was given the name “Maya” by her brother, Bailey. Both Maya and Bailey were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas after her parents divorced. When Maya went to visit her mother at the age of eight she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend.

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795 Words | 4 Pages

Approaching the end of the book, chapter thirty-three is about Bailey leaving the house. Angelou notices that she and Bailey have both grown up since she left the house, but Bailey seems to have grown more than her. I could not relate to Angelou’s experience with watching her brother leave the house because my family life has been mostly uneventful. I did find it odd that Bailey thought it was his time to leave the house at sixteen years old. I am seventeen years old now and I would not dream of leaving the house to go out on my own in the world.

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729 Words | 3 Pages

If you can 't change it, change your attitude. Don 't complain” Maya recieved several awards Two from the NAACP. Timeline of Mays”s life: “April 4, 1928- Maya Angelou is born in St. Louis, Missouri. 1942- Angelou dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first African-American female car conductor.

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1041 Words | 5 Pages

April 4, 1929, St. Louis, Missouri was the birth of the multitalented, Marguerite Annie Johnson. Family of Marguerite is mother, Vivian Baxter Johnson, father, Bailey Johnson, and brother, Bailey Johnson, Jr. Later in the early twenties of Marguerite Johnsons’ life, she changed her name to Maya Angelou. Since the divorce of Maya’s parents, her life has been nothing but an uncontrollable rollercoaster. As a youth, Maya Angelou had to eventually overcome her strugglers and regain what she once lost years ago when troubled occurred.

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466 Words | 2 Pages

Maya Angelou was not always called by that name, she was originally named Marguerite Johnson. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4th, 1928. Mrs. Angelou was a poet, educator, actress, producer, historian, and a civil rights activist. Maya Angelou is significant in American history because she always fought for women’s rights, her songs always meant something, and people looked up to what she stood for.

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795 Words | 4 Pages

When she says “I would like to claim an immediate fury followed by the noble determination to break the restricting traditions” (Angelou, 143). This shows that Angelou has determination to change the traditions and break the barrier between her race and

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1348 Words | 6 Pages

Martin Luther King Jr. amid that time, accurately from 1960 to 1961 she served as Northern facilitator for the Southern Christian LeadershipConference(SCLC). Angelou had numerous renowned works, however, she was extremely recognized for her self-portrayed: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Which served as her autobiography, I know Why The Caged Bird Sings depicted initial 17 years of her life in a very dramatic way. She wrote, if growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl,being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat (Angelou 4). Maya Angelou, I know Why The Caged Bird Sings, a woman's voice heard loud and clear through her writing narrating her ordeal growing up with her parents, grandmother, uncle, stepfather, brother and so many other people in Stamps,Arkansas and California during the Civil Right

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862 Words | 4 Pages

Louis, Missouri named Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928. Being the second child and first daughter of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and Navy dietitian, and Vivian Baxter Johnson, a professional nurse and a card dealer. Getting her name from her brother, Bailey Jr. Further on with her parents divorce Maya and Bailey traveled from Long Beach, California to a Southern backwash of Stamps, Arkansas, specified as Maya’s birthplace. [Angelou Page 15] Living under the care of their grandmother, and somewhat paralyzed Uncle Willie, they lived in the town 's black quarter. Working in the family business Johnson General Merchandise store.

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802 Words | 4 Pages

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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514 Words | 3 Pages

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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625 Words | 3 Pages

Maya Angelou was born into a life of segregation. This would make one think that she had little to no education, but it was quite the opposite for her. Angelou went to high school at George Washington High in San Francisco, and later went to the California Labor School after winning a scholarship to study dance and acting (Angelou, Maya p.5). Before establishing herself as a writer, Angelou worked as a nightclub entertainer, a streetcar director, and a shake dancer (Maya Angelou Biography). When growing up, she had her mom and brother.

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736 Words | 3 Pages

Maya Angelou is a very influential person because she did things that have changed the world, she worked hard all her life, and her poems were inspirational to many people. Early Life Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou or Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri (Source 3). Even though she was born in St. Louis she was raised in Arkansas with her brother and grandmother because of her parent's divorce (Source 4). When she was 13 she and her brother moved to San Francisco, California to live with their mother (Source 5).

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476 Words | 2 Pages

Once again, Maya Angelou manages to touch our hearts again with her poetic skills in Chapter 19 titled The Champion of the World in her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She recalls a time in her life where the African American community gathered at her grandmother's and uncle's store to hear a boxing match via radio. The boxing match was between the former champion Joe Louis and a white boxer. Maya Angelou takes the meaning of a simple boxing match into something more complex; she demonstrates the suffrage of her people fighting against oppression during that time period.

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783 Words | 4 Pages

Angelou’s childhood home in Stamps, Arkansas was segregated it was split in two: the white side and, the black side. The white side was you’re simple run-of-the-mill town, but the black side was a poor, grubby town. The rules were that whites could cross to the other side but blacks

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1456 Words | 6 Pages

In 1970 she was appointed as writer-in-Residence at the University of Kansas and as a Yale University Fellow. Maya published here, the first of her five-volume autobiographical series, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Through the device of autobiography, Angelou has celebrated the richness and vitality of Southern Black life and the sense of community that persists in the face of poverty and racial prejudice, initially revealing this celebration through a portrait of life as experienced by a Black child in the Arkansas of the 1930s (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1979). The second volume (Gather Together in My Name, 1974) delineates a young woman struggling to create an existence that provides security and love in Post-World War II America. The third (Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting’ Merry like Christmas, 1976) presents a young, married adult in the 1950’s seeking a carrer in show business and experiencing her first amiable contact with the Whites.

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