Mildred D Taylor was born on the 13th of September 1943 in Jackson, Mississippi. I think she thought of the story because she was born in Mississippi (where the novel was set) and she was born during the Great Depression where black people where discriminated against. Many of her books are based on stories of her family that she heard whilst growing up. She experienced some of the unfairness so decided to show her hurt in literature so everyone could see how hard it was to live during the Great Depression. The plot is well written and is told in first person narrative by Cassie.
After graduating with a Masters in Fine Arts O’Connor spent the next several years living and writing in New York State until she was diagnosed with Lupus, the disease that had killed her father. At that point she moved with her mother to their family farm Andalusia where she would spend the last 13 years of her life writing and raising exotic birds. It was here that Flannery would be inspired to write her longest short story “The Displaced Person” A story which, like much of her work, borrowed heavily from her own life. “The Displaced Person” was a critical commentary on the times in which she lived and she fearlessly confronted controversial issues like racism and emigration. The inspiration for “The Displaced Person” came from an emigrant family that moved to her mother’s farm Andalusia in 1953.
The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) Write a brief a biographical sketch of your author: ( at least 250-500 words in paragraph format) ( do not cut and paste from a source... this should be in your own words) Alice Walker was born in rural Georgia in 1944 and was the youngest of eight children. I chose to write about Alice Walker because she is such an inspiration and her writings catch my eye. At the very young age of eight, she lost her right eye due to an accidental shooting by her brother. She became blind in this eye and immediately felt like an outcast. She was stared at and taunted because of her eye and because of that she started writing.
Marian was 11 years old and her parents forced her to marry a blind, 41 years old. Her price was $1,200. When she was living with her husband and his mother, they began to beat her when she failed to conceived a child. After 2 years of abuse, she sought help at police station in Kabul after the police delivered her to a residential neighborhood " Women's shelters", something that was unknown in Afghanistan before 2003. Marian said she felt fortunate to have found refuge.
Antoinette wakes up several weeks later at the home of her Aunt Cora in Spanish Town. She learns that her brother has died and that her mother has had a mental breakdown. Aunt Cora enrolls Antoinette in a convent school, where she spends several years learning how to be a lady. During this time Antoinette is largely alone; her mother is confined to the home of a care-taking
Her life greatly influenced literature today and the censorship that follows. On February 8, 1850, Katherine O’Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Thomas O’Flaherty and Eliza Faris. She was their second born child and later in life became known as the famous author, Kate Chopin. Growing up in the South with and Irish father and a Creole mother, she was bilingual with English and French. (Ewell) Kate experienced much loss at a young age, three of her family members died by the time she was thirteen.
PLOT SUMMARY AND THEME OF THE NOVEL: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou begins with a little girl named Marguerite “Maya” Johnson and her older brother, Bailey Jr. arriving in Stamps, Arkansas. They move into a store with their grandma whom they call “Momma”; she takes care of them for three to four years. When they are at age seven and eight, their father comes to get them, and he drops them off at their mother’s house; they stay with their mom whose boyfriend rapes Maya. After that event, Maya moves back to Stamps. Maya moves back in with her mother; she begins to seek male attention and has sex with a boy from up the street of her mom’s house.
Overcoming Adversity In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou deals with adversity in many different ways throughout her life such as racism, rape, speaking disability, sexism, her pregnancy, and numerous other ways. People still may deal with these struggles even though we don’t live how we did back when the book was written. The book teaches many ways to deal with times of hardship that you can take from, and use as your advantage to strengthen from. Maya Angelou lived in a hard period of time when the hopes African Americans had were low and the pursuit of happiness had vanished. Instead was a devastating amount of racism and a struggle for the black community.
Throughout Maya Angelou’s entire childhood, she hated how she looked, and her entire being. In chapter 4, she tells of her playmates calling her “shit color” and having a “head of black steel wool”, while Bailey was “small, graceful, and [...] lauded for his velvet-black skin,” (17). Angelou continuously compares herself to her older brother, Bailey. But as she grows older, she realizes that “everybody is worth everything” (interview). Angelou forgives herself for not loving herself, and begins to gain self-respect.
In addition, many Caucasians including the female protagonists in both texts felt some kind of racial guilt for what transpired in the past. In Disgrace and A Blade of Grass the female characters who reflect this racial guilt experience a loss, which leads to a tense friendship with a black African character that is resolved only to a degree by the novel’s conclusion. Firstly, Marit in A Blade of Grass and Lucy in Disgrace feel racial guilt and experience a loss. To begin, Marit believes that “blacks deserve fair treatment and are not receiving it” (Desoto, 276), and Lucy recounts a story where “blacks were beaten and evicted from their homes” which is “inhumane” (Coetzee, 124). In addition, both characters endure a loss: Marit’s husband, Ben, is killed by a land mine that he runs over while driving, and Lucy is raped by several black African males.