Close friends with Malcom X, she was devastated by his assassination, which happened while she was working with him to develop a civil rights organisation in the USA. Literature to Challenge a SocietyĮventually coaxed out of her silence by a family friend, Angelou went on to use her powerful voice to be part of the American Civil Rights Movement. Taking the guilt as her own, Maya refused to speak for nearly five years because, she explained, she felt that her voice, in naming her rapist, led to his death, and with that power her voice may lead to the deaths of others. However, almost immediately he was murdered, most likely by Angelou’s own family members.
The boyfriend was found guilty, but released from prison after being held for just one day. The themes include racism, sexism, being a single mother (Angelou had her son, Guy, aged 16) and rape.Īt just 8 years old, Angelou was sexually assaulted and raped by her mother’s boyfriend. While the key parts of the story are true to life, aspects of the book are a combination of her own truth and those of others. The book, and those which followed, are some of the first in a genre known as ‘autobiographical fiction’. Maya starts her story aged 3, when her parents divorced and she was sent away to live with grandparents. This book was entitled, “ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”.
Strength maya angelou poems series#
Angelou was persuaded, when she was in her 40s, to write her autobiography, which eventually led to her publishing the first book in a series documenting her life. The road to the strength that Maya Angelou shows in this poem, however, was one of racism and persecution of a kind frequently experienced by people of colour at that time in US history. I am the dream and the hope of the slave. The poem ends: I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,īringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, Performing this poem herself here:, Maya lifts the hearts of all those who have ever experienced oppression, showing that she will overthrow those who attempt to hold her back. Maya, an African-American woman, civil rights activist, poet, author and singer, is best known for her poem “ Still I Rise”. Posted by: Emma Ashworth at 10:00 am, September 2, 2019īorn Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928, Maya’s stage name came from her little brother, Bailey Jr, who called her “Mya Sister”.
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