Maya Angelou added to the Literary Canon Maya Angelou is an editor, performer, singer, filmmaker, dancer, educator, but one thing she does best is writing. Angelou, born April 4, 1928, has had many influences throughout her lifetime. She has been influenced by her hardships, writers, religion, and the African American community. Maya Angelou should be included in the literary canon because she is best known for her autobiographies, which involved her childhood and her early life experiences. Her autobiographies influenced many African Americans and specifically women.
Zora Neale Hurston Research Paper Zora Hurston was a bright, young woman with great talent for writing books with a goal to portray and capture the everyday life of African Americans in the hardships during the 1930's through the 1950's. In "Standards Focus: Author Biography--Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)," an informative article by John Doe, Hurston is described as a large figure to the African-American culture in the United States during this hard racial time period. Zora Hurst attended two academic schools after she left high school. She attended "college preparatory courses at Morgan Academy (Now Morgan State University) in Baltimore, Maryland, and in the fall of 1918 entered Howard University," (Doe 1). It is obvious that Hurston wanted a good education from the beginning, to start off in the already rough everyday life of the racial period for African Americans.
After attending Spelman for two years, Walker was given a scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She accepted and became a part of the scarce population of young African Americans to attend the prestigious school. She was mentored by writer Jane Cooper and poet Muriel Ruykeyser, who ultimately kindled her passion and talent in writing. However, by her senior year, Walker had gotten pregnant and suffered from a large amount of depression. She constantly contemplated committing suicide.
Proud Shoes is an emotional account of Pauli Murray’s African-American family from mid-nineteenth through mid-twentieth century. Her American family was free blacks and enslaved blacks, poor whites and wealthy whites, all contributing to the family tree. This is an absolutely fascinating family history. The time is a few decades after the Civil War, in the early 1900's. It's mostly the story of Murray's grandmother, who had been a slave (and a mistress of the household at the same time), and her grandfather, a scholar and teacher and Civil War veteran who brought education to the newly freed slaves following the Civil War.
This is one of the examples of the misogynistic mindset in the age she was raised, that certainly fueled her writing. Young 2 Though there are many parables to pull from the text, one sticks out among the rest, explaining the range of emotions that Mrs. Mallard felt upon hearing of her husband's alleged death. "There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to
Madam CJ Walker was also like a business woman. She gave lectures on black issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions. She also had a college where students were trained to do hair. She donated large amounts of money to the NAACP campaign and later in her life revised she will support black schools, organizations, individuals, orphanages, retirement homes and YWCAs. “I got to start by giving myself a start.” Madam CJ always took upon herself to make something she does count.
Her whole world went black and gloomy that day, and after her son’s death she just didn’t feel as if her life had meaning anymore. Aibileen has a quite strong dislike for whites now because when her son was severely injured at work, his fellow white coworkers did very little to help him; resulting in his death. Her bitterness emerges throughout the book, specifically when Mrs. Leefolt suggests that blacks were dirty. In response to this comment she said “I feel that bitter seed growing inside a me, the one planted after Treelore died. I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty isn’t a color, disease ain’t the Negro side a town.” Her son is her main motivation to keep pressing on through life no matter what.
Eventually Truth became a mother to numerous children, most of whom were sold as slaves to various families. In 1826, when her master refused to honor his offer of freedom in exchange for her hard work, Truth took her youngest child and fled. In 1827, she attained legal freedom pursuant to a New York statute. Truth moved to New York City and became involved in organizations assisting in the attainment of rights for both blacks and women. Though it was well known that Truth could neither read nor write, she overcame such limitations by becoming a powerfully adept activist fighting racial discrimination, and persuasively championing for blacks' rights to vote.
V.B.” about her mother Vivian Baxter, who was one of the first black females to join the merchant marines. It also contains an untitled poem about the similarities between all people, despite their racial and cultural differences. In this reflection, I will talk about certain chapters in the book that relate to my life either professionally or personally. New Directions This chapter talks about a woman named Mrs. Annie Johnson. She found herself a single mother with not much education and two young sons to care for and raise.
The narrator is clearly miserable with her life and considers suicide to be the only solution. Killing herself would relieve the pain she feels on a daily basis. “Daddy” is another poem that demonstrates Plath’s common death by suicide theme. In the poem, she writes that “At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. / I thought even the bones would do (Plath 58-60)”.