Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is an astonishing American scribe, bard, performer, actress, playwright, producer and controller, historian and municipal privileges activist. She is best known for her portrayals of powerful African American women.

Born April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Angelou's granted title was Marguerite Johnson, Maya and her male sibling Bailey spent most of their childhood living with their grandmother in rural Arkansas. Maya increased up in postage and wise what it was like to be the very dark girl in the world whose boundaries were set by whites. After five years of living with her grandmother she moved back to her mother's home in Missouri (Braxton, 36). This initiated her to labor with maturity. She became determined to verify she was the woman and started to hurry in direction of maturity. She soon discovered herself with child, and at age of sixteen she consigned her child, friend and started the series of occupations, encompassing cooking and waiting tables. In 1950s she became the nightclub performer and began careers as the singer, dancer, actor, playwright, magazine editor, civil rights activist, poet, and novelist (Foerstel, 185).

In Maya Angelou's autobiographical novel, "I understand Why Caged Bird Sings", tender-hearted Marguerite Johnson, renamed Maya by her refined male sibling Bailey, discovers all of splendors and agonies of growing up in the prejudiced, early twentieth years America. Rotating between slow homeland life of postage, Arkansas and fast-pace societies in St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco, California taught Maya some random aspects of life while showing her segregated America from coast to coast.

When Maya was three years old, her beautiful and successful mother dispatched her and Bailey from California to Stamps to stay in care of their grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson. Soon considered of as their real mother, "Momma" raised her grandchildren with firm south principles such as, "wash your feet before you proceed to bed; always plead to savior and you shall be pardoned; chores and school come before play; and help those in need and you shall be assisted yourself." Bearing those rudimentary values, Maya and Bailey increased older and wiser in postage, each year observing Negro cotton-pickers arrive and proceed with burdens and homage comparable to no white individual in county.

However, one day their father travelled extravagantly into postage and called for his young kids to come back dwelling with him to St. Louis. Bailey, an adventurer keen to leave quaint, easy family life in Arkansas, acquiesced immediately, but "tender-hearted" Maya was frightened by concept of big towns and strange people. In St. Louis, where she was offered an entirely distinct way of life, Maya experienced harrowing moments that caused her craving for quiet security of Stamps. Her "Mother Dear's" boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, sexually misused her two times, and when she testified in court against him, "important attachments" her mother had to gangsters in St. Louis beat Mr. Freeman to death to disburden disgrace from family. In court, Maya lied; saying that he only touched her once, and guilt of laying ...