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Who Is Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings?

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Racism, it’s a “touchy” subject for most people. We were all born in a world where people still are unable to treat people of a different ethnicity with respect and kindness. In the novel I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, written by Maya Angelou, you are taken through the eyes of the well known civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Her original name was Marguerite Anne Johnson, and was born April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She got the name Maya because her brother couldn’t pronounce when he was little. At the age of three, Maya’s parents got a divorce and they were sent to live with their Grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. During her teenage years she was sent to live with her mother in Vivian Baxter, California. Maya began her career as
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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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Rhetorical Analysis: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings In her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelo commemorates and admires strong independent black women and strives to become a well-educated woman herself. Through the use of visual imagery, Angelou describes Mrs. Flowers as a refined black woman to convey to the audience a feeling of pride and recognition for all sophisticated black women and a sense of empathy for Maya. Maya compares Mrs. Flowers to the “women in English novels” who had the luxury to sit “in front of roaring fireplaces” and drink “tea incessantly from silver trays” (93). The visual description of the “fireplace” and “tea” demonstrates to the reader the value that white women have in this society.

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Marguerite, “Maya,” Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of three, Maya’s parents divorced, and she and her brother, Bailey, moved to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their grandmother. The family owned and operated a general store at which many people shopped. When Maya was seven, she and Bailey moved back to St. Louis to live with their biological mother. One year later, Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman.

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Maya Angelou published her novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the late 1960s to shed light on her personal experiences as a girl growing up in the segregated South. She writes unfiltered depictions of rape and sexual abuse, along with topics such as racism and teenage pregnancy. Her novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became censored in America in 2002 due to these topics. Regardless of this novel being censored, it holds significant value in the lessons it teaches.

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Black History Month is an amazing month. It 's a month where incredible things have happened, many great people have done incredible things in this month. Black History month is based of many people, my favorite is Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a great man and he did many great things until unfortunately on April 4,1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot and killed by a white racist man James Earl Ray was sentenced into 99 years in prison. James escaped prison and then was soon recaptured and added one more year to total of 100 years in prison.

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III. a. Maya Angelou was an avid writer, speaker, activist and teacher. As a result of the many hardships that she suffered while growing up as a poor black woman in the south she has used her own experiences as the subject matter of her written work. In doing this she effectively shows how she was able to overcome her personal obstacles. Her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) tells the story of her life and how she overcame and moved forward triumphantly in spite of her circumstances.

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She moved to San Diego, worked as a waitress in a nightclub, got involved in prostitution and drugs, and danced in a strip club. Incidentally, the strip club saved her vocation: A group of theater goers came across her there. She was selected for a role in the international tour of Porgy and Bess. On a train, Maya and her four-year-old brother traveled alone to Arkansas.

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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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After informing her family of this traumatizing encounter, the perpetrator was hunted down and beaten to death. Maya didn’t speak for the next five years. Maya found joy in singing, dancing, and poetry, after moving to San Francisco in 1940. However, this joy was put on hold after having a son at age 16, and moving to San Diego. Being young and reckless waitress, Maya got tangled in drugs, prostitution, and strip dancing.

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Fabyan In the story “ I Know Why the caged bird sings” written by Maya Anelou in 1969, Angelou uses a truthful and adoring tone to describe the relationship between her long time mentor and herself. As Mrs. flowers Anelou's mentor, is talking to her about reading and speaking, she states, “ It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning” (65). Angelou uses a truthful tone when Mrs.Flowers said’s “It takes the human voice to infuse” words with “ deeper meaning.” The use of the word “Infuse” shows how the spoken words add life to the words written on paper.

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Throughout Maya Angelou’s autobiographical series, we get to know a lot about the relationships she gets involved in throughout her life. As the reader, some of her relationships made you want to yell at your book, but in some cases, you rooted for the both of them because you hoped she would find love. Over the course of the books, you learn why her relationships failed and how they influenced her and her decisions later on in life. Although you learn early on how independent Maya is, you see her with a variety of men in her life: some for pleasure and others who she really cared for. For example, Maya’s marriage with Tosh was something she didn’t expect to happen or was necessarily looking for, but this failed relationship made a crucial impact on her which led her to the successful life she had later on.

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She shows us that despite the injustices that may occur, there will always be victory for those who truly deserve it. Maya Angelou's perspective as a young African American girl is described in Chapter 19 of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, titled Champion of the World. Her community is gathered to support Joe Louis, the former champion, in a boxing match that determines if he'll continue being champion or not. As the story progresses in her grandmother's and uncle’s store, the tone transforms from hopeful to defeated, to triumphant.

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Although the situation about racism in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is the same as the first novel, the dynamic of it all is entirely flipped. The main character, Maya, lives with her brother, Bailey, grandmother,

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In the story “I know why the caged bird sings” Maya Angelou makes a statement about the power of names to point out that name calling, and calling someone out of their name isn't always appropriate. When I was younger, I was always taught that calling an adult out their name was disrespectful. My parents weren't the kind that were strict about “yes ma’am” and “yes sir” but they always wanted us to call everybody by their first name. Nicknames aren't always bad, but there not always good either.

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“Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou in 1968 announces to the world her frustration of racial inequality and the longing for freedom. She seeks to create sentiment in the reader toward the caged bird plight, and draw compassion for the imprisoned creature. (Davis) Angelou was born as “Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St Louis, Missouri”. “Caged Bird” was first published in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? 1983.

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