Maya Angelou Essay

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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. The African American Activist spent many difficult years moving back and forth between her mother’s and grandmother’s. At age seven, she was raped by her mother boyfriend. After this tragic even Maya didn’t talked for six years, and her teens and early twenties were spent as a dancer, which was filled with isolation and experimentation. (Maya Angelou. (2011). Biography.com.) At 16 she gave birth to her son, Guy, after her birth of her son, she toured Europe and Africa in the musical Progy and Bess. In 1960s she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and became involve in black activism. She spent several years in Ghana as editor of African Review, where she began to take her life and writing more seriously. (Maya Angelou. (2011). Biography.com.) Maya Angelou's five-volume autobiography commenced with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1970. The memoirs chronicle different eras of her life and were met with critical and popular success. Later books include All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986)

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