The list of her published verse, non-fiction, and fiction now includes more than 30 bestselling titles. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Dr. Angelou has received over 50 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Her words and actions continue to shake our souls, energize our bodies, liberate our minds, and heal our
Abstract This paper will examine the Life and Works of Maya Angelou and how she managed to become a author, a poet, writer, actress, director, play writer, civil rights activists and a composer. This paper will also discuss her life as a little black girl that went through the white society being discriminated because of her skin color, and how she was respected as an artist of such great work, after going through traumatic experiences during her childhood that improved her childhood to be great filled with happiness and wisdom. And now Maya Angelou is a author of ten best selling books and many awards from her different accomplishments. The Life and Works of Maya Angelou “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song” (Maya Angelou). Maya Angelou who real name is Marguerite Johnson was born on April 4, 1928 in St.Louis, Missouri.
This book is about the obscured settlers who laid the foundation for African American culture; it is also about the recent beginning of African American Archaeology as a means for learning about that culture. African Americans felt strong ties to their native African culture, while it was commonly believed that most Africans had lost their cultural traditions and skills during the disorienting relocation from their home to the New World, it can be easily proven through the use of different sources which include artifactual and architectural data, that the African American people were trying to maintain their racial identity and cultural traditions. Ceramics are what make up a majority of the artifacts which archaeologists uncover at a site. By examining the different pots and colonoware plantation slave workers owned, historical archaeologists can determine a great deal about their daily lives. For example the typical colonoware associated with slaves were unglazed wares, which differ from the glazed wares used by wealthier Europeans.
Throughout the course of United States history, the experience of African Americans has taken many big turns. Through these turns, African Americans have managed to hold on to culture and ways of life that stem from their very roots. Margaret Walker, an African American writer, once said, “Handicapped as we have been by a racist system of dehumanizing slavery and segregation, our American history of nearly five hundred years reveals that our cultural and spiritual gifts brought from our African past are still intact.” The fact that Africa American people have managed to hold on to such gifts and culture is a true testament to their resiliency in the face of oppression. Over the years, few races have faced the same level of struggle and sacrifice as those of African American people. Many still face injustices of racism even in today’s world, where major inhumane actions such as slavery are largely a thing of the past.
African-American author Toni Morrison’s book, Beloved, describes a black culture born out of a dehumanising period of slavery just after the Civil War. Culture is a means of how a group collectively believe, act, and interact on a daily basis. Those who have studied her work refer to Morrison’s narrative tales as “literature…that addresses the sacred and as an allegorical representation of black experience” (Baker-Fletcher 1993: 2). Although African Americans had a difficult time establishing their own culture during the period of slavery when they were considered less than human, Morrison believes that black culture has been built on the horrors of the past and it is this history that has shaped contemporary black culture in a positive way. Through the use of linguistic devices, her representation of black women, imagery and symbolic features, and the theme of interracial relations, Morrison illustrates that black culture that is resilient, vibrant, independent, and determined.
Biography of Kate Chopin Kate Chopin was a famous author during the late eighteen hundreds publishing many famous short stories and novels such as The Awakening and Bayou Folks. She has often been referred to as “a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity” (Seyersted 1). She led the way for feminism and was praised after her death once her style of writing became more accepted. Chopin wrote about the passion that other authors during her time would not dare to speak of. Her life greatly influenced literature today and the censorship that follows.
Alice Walker Alice is known for novelist, poet, short story writer, literary critic, children’s fiction writer, editor, and educator. A prominent figure of contemporary African American literature and an avid civil right activist and feminist, Alice Walker is a versatile and prolific writer who won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her best-selling, best-known novel, “The Color Purple”. Like many of her fictional characters, Alice Walker was the daughter of black sharecroppers from the rural South; she was the eighth child of a sharecropping farmer and his hard-working wife. The poems in Walker’s first book, “Once”, written in 1968, reflected her burgeoning commitment to the civil rights movement and the acute depression she had suffered during her college years. Writing poetry, she later remarked, was a way to celebrate each day with the knowledge that she had not committed suicide.
There are certain cultural practices that came to America with the enslaved Africans that have long been forgotten as the years went by. A good example of these differences is the conflict between American born Blacks and the immigrated Africans in Bronx. According to the Oscar Johnson research Both African immigrants differ from their black predecessors, not only culturally, but in experience and perspective. Those differences are rarely discussed but widely understood to be at the root of a great divide. While some African Americans are "very nice," he said, "The difference is the way we have been raised.
BLACK IDENTITY WITH REFERENCE TO ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE In the 1920s black writers and artists of America led a flourishing new movement in the literature, theatre and jazz known as the Harlem Renaissance or the Negro movement. The Harlem Renaissance is unusual among literary and artistic movements for its close relationship to civil rights and reform organization. It was an unprecedented outburst of the creative activity among the black writers. The impact of the movement hit all the areas of art, literature, politics and social life paving way for the people of colour a constructive outlet to voice their need against all odds. In 1960s, the feminist movement emerged against the dominant patriarchal society.
In the South, however, the Whites tried to prevent their equality in social, economic and political life through secret terrorist organizations such as Ku-Klux-Klan. As racial prejudice existed both in the North and the South, the Negro leaders tried to establish Negro colleges and schools in the towns, where the Negroes were most highly concentrated. Since 1954 there has been no legal segregation in public education, employment or housing. The musical culture of the Negroes has always been very rich and the distinctive rhythms of their blues, jazz and spirituals are known all over the world. 1672 – new company was established = The Royal African Company 1831 – Nat Tylor´s rebellion – Abolitionist movement, Civil War 1901 – black organization was established, called NAACP = National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (against racial discrimination) 1960 – some movements were radical, e.g.