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Example research essay topic: Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou - 1,968 words

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Maya Angelou is often labeled many things. Feminist writer, activist, filmmaker, poet, singer, actor, and storyteller. She learned French, Italian, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, and Fanti. Marguerite Ann Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Angelou acquired the first half of her pen name from her brother, Bailey Junior, whose babyish chatter transformed my sister into Maya.

In 1931, Maya and Bailey were dropped off by train from Long Beach, California, to Stamps, Arkansas- which contrasted strongly with Maya s birthplace. Under the care of Mama, the children s old south paternal grandmother, and their semi-paralyzed Uncle Willie, they lived behind the Wm. Johnson General Merchandise Store. They took in religious and ethical training. Maya s escapism from her harsh, obedient everyday life lead her to classic literature. She read particularly white writers- Shakespeare, Kipling, Poe, Thackeray, and Butler- and notable black writers- Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, W.

E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson. In 1936 her father came and whisked Bailey and her back to St. Louis, to live with her mother Vivian and uncles. Her mother drank and danced in gambling halls, lived with a new man, and motivated the children to do all the things they didn t have in Stamps.

Maya idolized her mother. This stage in her life ended abruptly. It ended after Vivian s lover, Mr. Freeman, raped the eight year old.

Maya was forced to testify against him. Her uncles murder the rapist. The eight year old went into a world of guilt, refusing to speak, and being very frightened. Vivian was unable to deal with an emotionally damaged child and returned Maya to Stamps, where she rebuilt her self-respect by shielding herself from the outside world, reading classic literature and excelling at school. She enjoyed Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a southern black aristocrat who helped Maya by pampering her when she needed it.

Maya graduated eighth grade from Lafayette County Training School in 1940, with honors, and moved to Los Angeles. Eventually, Vivian married Daddy Clidell Jackson and the family eventually settled in a fourteen room house in San Francisco s Fillmore District. Maya took a short vacation at her real dad s trailer. After a thirty-day disappearance, she became San Francisco s first black streetcar conductor.

Shortly after summer school graduation from Mission High, she bore a son, Clyde Bailey Guy Johnson, who was fathered by a neighbor hood boy. To Support her child Maya moved about CA with a variety of jobs- dancing at night clubs, cooking at a Creole Cafe, and serving as a madam and prostitute at a San Diego brothel. She applied for the Army where she was accepted then later sent away. She eased her rejection with marijuana. When returning her attention to family matters, because of Bailey s deep despair of the death of his wife, Eunice, he forced her to give up this risky life, and seek an official job. Already being married one time, to white man Tosh Angelos, Angelou left Guy in Vivian s care and toured Europe and Africa with a U.

S. Department of State production of Porgy and Bess. Angelou went on to New York and linked herself with the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 50 s. Years of private music and drama training and dance classes with Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, and Ann Halprin prepared her good for a career. She danced and sang calypso and blues at San Francisco s Purple Onion, New York s Village Vanguard, and Chicago s Mr.

Kelly s. She sang at Harlem s Apollo Theater and appeared in off-Broadway productions including Heatwave and Jean Genet s The Blacks. Spurred by civil rights gains she joined comedian Godfrey Cambridge and wrote and produced Cabaret for Freedom. Living in Africa, where her chocolate brown skin and nappy brown hair were accepted as correct and normal, she served as the first female editor of the Arab Observer. Moving on to Accra, she settled Guy into college and remained to nurse him after an automobile accident broke his leg, neck and arm. The African phase of Angelou s life ended with a growing sense of her American-ness.

Angelou has received a gratifying share of public acclaim. In 1987, she accepted the North Carolina Award for Literature. She was also named one of USA Today s 50 Black Role Models, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a Golden Eagle film award, an Emmy for acting, and the Candace Award. In 1993, she read her poem on the Pulse of Morning at the presidential inauguration Ceremonies. I had decided that St. Louis was a foreign.

In my mind I had only stayed there for a few weeks. As quickly as I understood that I had not reached my home, I sneaked away to Robin s Hood s Forest and the caves of Alley Oop where all my reality was unreal and even that changed my day. I carried the same shield that I had used in Stamps: I didn t come to stay. In Maya Angelou s autobiographical novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a fragile Marguerite Johnson discovers all the splendors and torture of growing up in a one-sided, early twentieth century America. California taught Maya several random points of life while showing her segregated America from coast to coast.

This book gives the viewpoint of growing up as a southern Negro girl in three completely different towns: Stamps, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Maya s protected and plain world in Stamps helped her hold holy and moral family values, that were then mostly contrasted when she was whisked away to Missouri and California. Living with her maternal mother gave Maya a glimpse at the future world, and helped her to control her tender heart and emotions, however Maya seemed always happiest in Stamps with her grandmother. Maya discovered why the caged bird sings when she herself was protected in the enclosure of the simple, hard-life town in which she was raised in. Angelou s book was one of the items on Round Rock s list of challenged material.

In 1994, parents questioned the use of this autobiography in the classroom because of it s pornographic content, scorn language and the fact that it encourages premarital sex and homosexuality. In Southlake, Texas and Volusia County, Florida it was also banned because of pornographic depiction of Maya s rape as an eight year old girl. Besides from the rape scene, there are a few other distasteful incidents. Bailey s affairs in the tent, his innocent affair with Joyce and his own confusion about sex can lead to some disapproval. Maya as a young girl fails to make judgment on the situation.

Through her eyes, everything seemed okay. Her brother, whom she saw so greatly, could do no wrong in her eyes. Maya s own affair with the boy up the street also is an example of premarital sex- and one that resulted in teen pregnancy. Both of these issues are rather sensitive and are dealt with through a child s eyes.

Maya saw nothing greatly wrong in her actions, and her family did not pass any harsh judgments either. Her son represents hope and her bright future. As the book ends with her nestled in bed with her son, she is doing right, and her life begins the path to freedom and honor. The reasons listed for banning I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings do not explain the popular debate around the world about the novel. There is reason to believe that the question of the novel is in it s intense portrayal of race relations. This explains why the novel is most controversial in the south, where the book takes place and racial hostility is worst.

One early example occurred when the white children confronted Mama in front of the store. The children were represented as awkward, dirty and silly. On the other hand Mama simply stood there and sang the Gospel. Her beauty of soul VS their nasty antics creates a powerful scene about the nature of the oppressed and the oppressor. As the scene goes on, Maya understands that despite the difference of power between the white trash and Mama, Mama has won.

Another example is also shown later when Maya attends her eight grade graduation ceremony. The critical remarks having to do with white VS black ability filled Marguerite with despair. When the young boy giving the commencement address turned and sang the black anthem, it changed that despair to hope. It showed her the ability of her race, to survive and overcome hard odds. It is examples such as these that impact Maya and form the woman she became later in her life.

For example, when Maya works as a maid in a white house, her employers change her name for their convenience. After being called Mary, she determines that she must leave this employment. Her inability to adapt to this situation which was considered normal, shows the inflexibility of character which was more fully developed later in her life. When considering the persuasive power of Angelou it is no shock that the book has had a great many critics. The novel Even the Stars Look Lonesome is not very different from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings at all.

Both novels are Maya s personal experiences which she has told through her strong words. In Even the Stars Look Lonesome is not in story form, its more like a collection of autobiographical essays. Angelou had a profound belief that she would die young. I was thirty six before I realized that I had lived years beyond my deadline and needed to revise my thinking about an early death, she recalls, With that realization life waxed sweeter.

Old acquaintances became friendships, and new clever acquaintances showed themselves more interesting. Old loves burdened with memories of disappointments and betrayals packed up and left town, leaving no forwarding address, and new loves came calling. Maya decided to live fully from now on. From this passage you can see the intensity that Maya writes with and how extra ordinary she is in her writing style. Oprah Winfrey has said in a recent interview that Maya and her have a mother-sister-friend relationship. Oprah feels that reading the words on the pages of Maya s books were like validating her experience as a young black girl.

When she is with Maya she feels as though unimportant matters melt away and share her triumphs, be chided with hard truth, and soothe her with words of comfort when I call her in her deepest pain. During their interview Maya reveals that the best age is seventy two, and that the Seventies are hot. Both novels are compelling experiences of this woman s life that make everyone who reads them stop and think. The events in the novels are plausible because they are written in words so visual and they are true stories about her struggling and hardships. I think that the most compelling novel of the two was definitely I know why the Caged Bird Sings because it was so much more interesting and I felt it was smoother to read. The style she wrote it in was much more like a narrative story was being told rather then a collection of different essays.

In Even the Stars Look Lonesome I didn t really relish reading it as much although it showed her to be stronger and go through even more then you think she goes through in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She is amazing and went through, what I think, are the most unfortunate things for a person to live through. She turned out brilliant and is living her life the premium she can.


Free research essays on topics related to: premarital sex, san francisco, maya angelou, caged bird sings, didn t

Research essay sample on Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou

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