maya angelou research paper thesis

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Archives & manuscripts, maya angelou papers 1927 - 2009 [bulk 1961 - 2009].

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Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was one of the most renowned and celebrated voices in American literature. The Maya Angelou papers consist of original manuscripts, computer generated typescripts, galleys, and proofs of published work as well as manuscripts for unpublished work and dozens of poems. Additionally, there is personal and professional correspondence, teaching files, printed matter, and materials from public and academic appearances and engagements.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was one of the most renowned and celebrated voices in American literature. She was a poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, dancer, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

In the mid-fifties, Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess . She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady . In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom . She also worked for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), under Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership. In the early 1960s, she moved with her son to Africa, where she lived and worked for various news outlets, as a journalist, in Egypt and Ghana. Inspired by James Baldwin to write her story, Angelou published her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) to international acclaim and enormous popular success. Her published verse, non-fiction, and fiction include more than 30 bestselling titles, such as Gather Together in My Name (1974), And Still I Rise (1978), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990). Among her accomplishments, Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia . Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She made numerous television and film appearances, in Alex Haley's Roots (1977) and John Singleton's Poetic Justice (1993), among others. The feature film, Down in the Delta , was Angelou's directorial debut.

Angelou composed and read her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" at President William (Bill) Clinton's first inaugural ceremony in 1993. Angelou served on two presidential committees; was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008; and has received three Grammy Awards. Despite never attending college, she received over thirty honorary degrees from universities across the nationa. Angelou died in 2014, leaving a legacy of artistry for generations to come.

The Maya Angelou papers consist of original manuscripts, computer generated typescripts, galleys, and proofs of published work such as I Know why the Caged Bird Sings , Hallelujah the Welcome Table , I Shall Not Be Moved , A Song Flung Up to Heaven , Heart of a Woman , and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes , among others, as well as manuscripts for unpublished work and dozens of poems. Additionally, there is personal and professional correspondence with such notable figures as James Baldwin, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Mari Evans, Rosa Guy, Coretta Scott King, Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, Julian Mayfield, Malcolm X, and her editors, to name a few.

Also significant are requests to read or perform her work at universities and other organizations, and material related to various organizations' boards and committees on which she participated. Additionally, there are office files; teaching material, such as syllabi and reading assignments; and materials pertaining to Angelou's Hallmark greeting card series. There are a large number of subject files on various individuals, organizations, geographic locations, publications, and schools. Lastly, there is a considerable amount of material about Angelou and includes newspaper clippings, magazine articles, reviews, and other printed material regarding her publications and appearances..

The Maya Angelou papers are arranged in five series:

This first series contains information about Angelou's personal life, including items from her grandmother and uncle, such as a will and financial records; visas for Egypt; correspondence with her mother, son, and other family members; and various awards and honors, including honorary degrees, that she received over the years.

This series is divided into five subseries: (1) Personal; (2) Professional; (3) Agents and publishers; (4) Regrets; and (5) Fan mail, the last of which is restricted until 2030. The personal subseries includes letters, emails, faxes, and telegrams to and from friends and colleagues, including James Baldwin, Coretta Scott King, Julian Mayfield, and Dolly McPherson. Many of the items in this subseries overlap with the professional subseries, but are included here because Angelou had close relationships with the individuals before any professional aspects arose. The same occurs with the professional subseries; Angelou became friendly with many of the individuals associated with organizations in which she participated, but after becoming involved professionally. Most of the professional correspondence involves requests for donations, permissions to publish, or requests for participation in an event or performance. Both the personal and professional subseries are organized alphabetically by last name of individual or name of organization, family, or publication. The agents and publishers subseries consists of correspondence with the three literary agents with whom Angelou worked; most of these files also include contracts for publications and promotional events. This material is arranged alphabetically by agent's name. The publishers' correspondence also is arranged alphabetically by publisher's name, although Random House, as the main publisher of Angelou's work, is first. Most of these files also contain contracts. Most of the publishers, excluding Random House, published paperback, revised, or translated editions of Angelou's published work; additionally, many of these publishers requested quotes or reviews from Angelou about other authors' work. The regrets subseries contains correspondence related to event participation; Angelou marked "no", "sent regrets", or "booked" to indicate that she declined these invitations. In some cases, the events were cancelled, and the related correspondence is included here.

This series is comprised of all aspects of the writing process, from handwritten first drafts to final edited proofs, for Angelou's most well-known publications, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Letter to My Daughter . Additionally, there is a large number of unpublished work, including poems, essays, and articles. This series also consists of work by others, mostly by friends and colleagues or from publishers requesting quotes or comments.

This series contains material related to Angelou's professional activities, such as public appearances, participation on boards and committees, a collaboration with Hallmark, work by her asssistants, teaching material, and research material. The first subseries, appearances and engagements, includes public appearances, participation on boards and committees, and performances; this material mostly consists of printed matter, such as programs and flyers for lectures and performances, and committee- and board-related memos and minutes from various organizations. Additionally, there is some correspondence related to these appearances, mostly involving schedules, travel itineraries, and in some cases, contracts. The second subseries relates to her collaboration with Hallmark; Angelou worked with the company in the early 2000s on a line of greeting cards and accessories. The third subseries involves material from her office, such as correspondence from and with her assistants; party invitations and planning; travel itineraries and schedules; and phone, fax, and mail logs. The teaching files subseries mostly includes material from Wake Forest University, where she spent most of her academic career. This material contains course syllabi, reading lists and material, class rosters, and faculty memos. Finally, the research material is organized as subject files, with subgroups created by Angelou; this material mostly consists of printed matter, such as publications, clippings, brochures, and programs.

This series includes all printed matter about Angelou; the majority of the files contain newspaper and magazine article clippings of her interviews and appearances. Some clippings contain quotes by Angelou or refer to her in some way. In addition, this series includes publicity, such as advertisements for Angelou's work and public appearances. There also are numerous reviews of her work, and a large amount of clippings about President Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremony and Angelou's inauguration poem, "On the Pulse of the Morning". In many instances, the original clippings are included but there are also a number of photocopies.

Source of acquisition

Purchase, Maya Angelou Foundation, 2008.

Processing information

Initially processed by Steven G. Fullwood, Miranda Mims, Natiba Guy-Clement, Christopher Stahling, and Fred Sayles in 2016-2017. Processing completed by Lauren Stark in September 2019.

Separated material

Transferred to the Art and Artifacts Division: Gavel and paperweight from President Clinton; "Colored" and "White" toilet signs; Pacific State Association Daughters of IBPOE of W sash; "Mammy" brand label; "Do Not Stand Idly By—Save Darfur" green bracelet; "I Have a Dream" medal; Marvtastic Society pin; National Organization for Women pin; Christmas in Washington ornament; Horizon's Day '90 pin (with Angelou's photograph); "Still We Rise!" pin; Thurgood Marshall stamp pin.

Transferred to the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division: 3 books.

Transferred to the Moving Image and Recorded Sound (MIRS) Division: audio and moving image materials. For more information, please contact the division at [email protected] or 212-491-2270.

Transferred to the Photographs and Prints Division: 1 paige box and 1 archival box of photographs, mostly of Angelou at various events and appearances (includes two albums from Hallmark events; 1 album from an event sponsored by Oprah Winfrey; various individual snapshots; postcard images from Stamps, Arkansas).

Related Material

Maya Angelou Film and Theater collection, Wake Forest University

Material types

Access to materials, access restrictions.

Fan mail is closed until 2030. Photographs and prints held by the Photographs and Prints Division are unavailable pending processing.

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• Eur J Psychol
• v.17(3); 2021 Aug

A Journey Towards Meaning: An Existential Psychobiography of Maya Angelou

Nadene harisunker.

1 Department of Psychosocial Health, North West University, VTC, Gauteng, South Africa

Carol du Plessis

2 School of Psychology and Counselling, University of Southern Queensland, Ipswich, Australia

This psychobiography focuses on meaning making in the early life and young adulthood of acclaimed African American author Maya Angelou (1928-2014) through the lens of Frankl’s existential psychology with a specific focus on the tri-dimensional nature of human beings and the fundamental triad. The primary data source was Angelou’s own published autobiographies, which contain an in-depth narrative of her early life and young adulthood. Data was extracted, organised and analysed according to established qualitative research methods as well as through the identification of psychological saliences. The search for meaning within Angelou’s own narrative of her life was clearly apparent in the thematic analysis. Angelou’s narrative of her journey through the physical (childhood and adolescence), psychological (travelling and searching years) and spiritual (sensemaking years) dimensions was core to her meaning making. The three tiers of the fundamental triad (awareness of meaning, will to meaning, freedom of will) were present in various aspects of Angelou’s existential journey, manifesting as a focus on choice, responsibility, purpose, and acceptance. This study provides a more in-depth understanding of meaning making processes in the lives of extraordinary individuals, as well as contributing to the development of the research method of psychobiography, with a specific focus on meaning making.

This psychobiographical study explores meaning making processes in the early life and young adulthood of Maya Angelou, an acclaimed African American female poet, author, playwright, and teacher. Angelou chronicled this period of her life through her extensive autobiographies containing personal commentary and reflexive engagement with her socio-historical milieu ( Angelou, 2004 ). The books, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ( Angelou, 2004 ), span the first 40 years of her life and are used in this analysis to chart her engagement with, and relationship to, meaning. As such, this analysis focuses on the first 40 years of her life, in keeping with the focus in her autobiographies.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson on the 4th of April 1928. Her parents separated soon after her birth ( Agins, 2013 ; Angelou, 2004 ; Lupton, 1998 ) and Angelou spent her early childhood years living with her paternal grandmother (Momma) in Arkansas ( Agins, 2013 ; Angelou, 2013 ; Lupton, 1998 ). Momma provided a strict religious upbringing that was devoid of any overt expressions of love – both physical and verbal ( Angelou, 2004 , 2013 ).

In 1934, when Angelou was 6 years old, she moved to live with her mother. Angelou reported experiencing low self-esteem and poor body image and she frequently compared herself unfavourably to her beautiful mother, brother, and father ( Angelou, 2004 ; Lupton, 1998 ). In 1935 Angelou was sexually abused and subsequently raped by Mr F., her mother’s boyfriend. When Angelou told her uncles about her abuse, they responded by beating Mr F. to death. In her autobiography Angelou notes that she came to believe her voice was deadly and poisonous, and she became selectively mute for several years.

Angelou moved between living with her mother, grandmother, and father throughout her teenage years ( Agins, 2013 ; Lupton, 1998 ). Although she excelled academically this was also a time of tumult. For example, in 1943 she spent a month living in a junkyard with fellow teenagers after a physical altercation with her father’s girlfriend. Angelou also became pregnant as a teenager and her son, Guy, was born in 1945.

Following her graduation from high school, Angelou worked at various jobs. She was insecure and acted out in ways she believed would help her fit in ( Angelou, 2004 ). Two specific incidents are highlighted in her autobiographies: once when she prostituted herself for her boyfriend in order to ensure his continued investment in her and once when she argued with a white staff member at a shop due to her need to prove herself superior ( Angelou, 2004 ). During this time Angelou also experienced frequent anxiety and guilt concerning her role as a mother as she felt tension between her desire to be a perfect mother and her desire to explore her career ( Angelou, 2004 ).

Relationships also played an important role in Angelou’s development during this time. In her autobiographies, she notes that she often became submissive and changed who she was in order to be accepted by her partner. In 1953 she married Tosh Angelos, a white man with whom she believed she could have a perfect life. However, she failed to find meaning and purpose in the relationship, and when the marriage ended she rediscovered a love for dance that characterised the next ten years of her life. Angelou worked as a professional dancer, addressing her insecurities and chafing against the control of a second, fairly short, unofficial marriage to Vus, a South African freedom fighter. Following the end of this relationship Angelou moved to Ghana where she grappled with her ‘Africanness’ and eventually accepted her African American identity ( Angelou, 2004 , 2013 ).

Once she returned to America in 1965, Angelou continued to move frequently and her dance career gradually gave way to a career in political activism and writing. She became a successful playwright and author with a career spanning the next five decades. One of her major contributions as an author was a six volume autobiography, published between 1969 and 2002, charting the first 40 years of her life prior to her career as a writer. These volumes, as well as a seventh volume that focuses on her relationship with her mother and grandmother, are the primary data set for this study.

Angelou died on May 28th 2014 at 86 years of age. Her legacy includes her incredible corpus of writing as well as significant contributions to the civil rights movement and to recognition for female black authors. She has been described as a warm, kind, generous, powerful, and phenomenal individual ( Cadet, 2014 ; Snow, 2014 ) and her main message was that “[p]eople must work to overcome their hardships with dignity and view the world with hope and love” ( Agins, 2013 , p. 101).

The Multilayered Chronological Chart (MCC; see Hiller, 2011 ) in Table 1 below captures core moments in Angelou’s life in accordance with various themes evidenced in her narrative – specifically relationships and career. It also illustrates the time period covered by each of the first six volumes 1 of her autobiography.

Theoretical Framework: Frankl’s Existential Psychology

This study explores meaning making using Frankl’s tri-dimensional view of humans as well as his fundamental triad, with a focus on a striving to meaning and meaning through struggle ( Bruner, 2012 ). Frankl’s theory, developed in the 1920s and refined through his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps, is existential in nature and emphasises individual choice and meaning making. Frankl’s theory highlights major concepts that are fundamental to meaning making such as an awareness of the spiritual dimension, the responsibleness to meaning, and the purposeful nature of meaning making ( Wong, 2014 ). The core aspects of Frankl’s theory used in this psychobiography are discussed below.

Tri-Dimensional View of Humans

Within Frankl’s theory, humans are viewed as tri-dimensional, consisting of a biological/physical body, the psychological/inherited self and finally, a noetic (spiritual) dimension. For Frankl, the ‘noos’ or ‘mind’ constitutes the very being of humans ( Wong, 2014 ). While Frankl accepts that there are drives (biological/physical and psychological) within humans and that societal circumstances impact individuals, within his theory the spiritual ‘noetic’ self is in control over and above these ( Morgan, 2012 ). The spiritual dimension is a defiant power within humans that provides for transcendence from both instinctual/internally and externally determined sources and allows for meaning making ( Ras, 2000 ). Within this spiritual dimension, meaning making is unique to each individual, and each individual experiences unique obstacles to meaning making, which usually occur when the spiritual dimension is ignored and conflicts arise. These must be engaged with to ensure meaning making in a human life.

Fundamental Triad

The fundamental triad forms the basis of meaning and consists of three facets: an awareness of the existence of meaning, a will to meaning, and a freedom to will. These are all inherent to the noetic dimension of human beings and are all interlinked ( Mun, 2005 ). An awareness of the existence of meaning is the first aspect of the fundamental triad. The spiritual core within all individuals enables the process of awareness, allowing for the discovery of meaning. Once there is awareness of a spiritual sphere, there is a striving for meaning and therefore a realisation that meaning exists in the world. Meaning can never be created but only discovered through indirect means. Therefore, all that people can do is pursue what fulfils them and gives them a greater purpose. In addition, the discovery of meaning comes as a result of extending beyond the individual self through the acknowledgement of social reality and others within this reality. Meaning exists in every moment of an individual’s life; it is the individual’s responsibility to discover these meaning moments ( Frankl, 1969 ).

The second aspect of the fundamental triad is the will to meaning, and it is this feature that makes every individual unique as they strive to discover their own meaning in life. A pivotal tenet of Frankl’s theory is the motivating and striving force of the human spirit ( Frankl, 1967 , 1969 ). The will is a driving force; defined by its future orientation, its inclination away from self-absorption and the movement towards experiencing meaning outside of the self ( Meyer, 1997 ). The will to meaning is defined by self-awareness and a way of being that is inclined towards growth. Conflicts arise but they are necessary and contribute to the discovery of meaning. An individual can be understood through the situations and experiences that they find meaningful and the way in which they direct their energy to discover meaning ( Frankl, 1967 ).

The third component of the fundamental triad is the freedom to will. Every individual has the freedom to make choices in their lives that lead to the discovery of meaning. Freedom to will lies in the responsibleness of a person: Responsibleness is within the internal locus of control of the individual while responsibility entails an obligation that is imposed from outside the individual ( Fabry, 1987 ). An individual is not driven to meaning but is free to make choices. Individuals are often unaware that allowing their circumstances to control them is making a choice to relinquish their freedom ( Fabry, 1987 ; Frankl, 1965 , 1985 , 2000 ).

The primary aim of this study was to explore meaning making in the early life and young adulthood (until approximately age 40) of Maya Angelou, through the lens of Frankl’s existential framework. This aim was addressed by meeting the following specific objectives:

• Developing a psychological portrait of Maya Angelou using psychobiography methods and an MCC. This portrait focused on her development until the age of 40.
• Explore meaning making in the early life and young adulthood of Maya Angelou through the lens of Frankl’s tri-dimensional view of human nature as well as the fundamental triad.

Psychobiography aims to develop an understanding of an individual life through the application of a theoretical framework ( Ponterotto, 2013 , 2014 ; Runyan 2005 ; Schultz, 2005 ). Psychobiography involves both case study and narrative research ( Schultz, 2005 ). The theoretical framework provides a lens through which to view a biographical account from a psychological perspective in order to arrive at a greater understanding of an individual life ( Elms, 1994 ). In order to ensure credibility and trustworthiness, all psychobiographies follow rigorous methods of data collection and data analysis, and follow certain ethical guidelines. These processes are discussed in detail below.

Data Collection

Angelou produced extensive autobiographies detailing her life story from age three to age 40. These autobiographies, published in seven volumes, constituted the primary source of data for this analysis ( Angelou, 2004 , 2013 ). Information regarding the remainder of her life was accessed through secondary sources, including biographies and critical literary works. However the primary focus of the analysis was on the earlier years of her life, as this is the period presented in her autobiographies. Ethical approval was not sought for this study as the data used is in the public domain and the subject of the psychobiography is deceased. However, ethical guidelines specific to psychobiography were adhered to including ensuring that no confidential information was disclosed in the published psychobiography and ensuring that the psychobiographical subject was treated with respect and dignity ( Ponterotto & Reyonlds, 2017 ).

Data Extraction

The data extraction process for this psychobiography followed the guidelines provided by Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014) . In the first step, data condensation was used to reduce the volume of data. Two methods were selected to condense data into meaningful units: Alexander’s indicators of psychological saliency and Schultz’s prototypical scenes ( Schultz, 2005 ). Both techniques comprised a framework used to elicit the psychologically salient aspects present within the data to ensure that valid conclusions were drawn ( Perry, 2012 ; Schultz, 2005 ). Data identified as psychologically salient was extracted from the primary data sources and collated into a single document. The data was then organised so that patterns and themes could be identified. Data was first organised in a chronological fashion and this chronology forms the basis of the MCC ( Hiller, 2011 ) presented in the introduction to this paper.

Data Analysis

A deductive thematic analysis was conducted, where the two triads from Frankl’s theory (the view of a person and the fundamental triad) were used to identify themes in the data. This resulted in the identification of themes that were directly related to the concepts within Frankl’s theory. In order to ensure that themes were not artificially imposed on the data, Runyan’s (1981) criteria for good psychobiographical interpretation were applied to the analysis. This deductive thematic analysis process was cyclical in nature as there was a continuous vacillation between data and conclusions to ensure trustworthiness and quality of the research ( Miles et al., 2014 ).

Findings and Discussion

The analysis process resulted in the identification of all aspects of Frankl’s triads within Angelou’s chronological narrative in the first 40 years of her life. In the sections below the two triads are discussed separately.

Frankl proposed that individuals move through the different dimensions throughout their lives, and this appears to have been true of Angelou’s progression in the first 40 years of her life. Beginning in childhood, she moved from a focus on the biological dimension, through the psychological dimension before finally embracing the spiritual dimension in her early 40s as she moved into travelling and self-discovery. This progression is presented in Figure 1 below and discussed in more detail in the following paragraphs.

Throughout her early life and teenage years, Angelou appears to have been absorbed with her body and her physicality. This is apparent in the opening sections of her first autobiography, where she writes of an intense dissonance between her sense of self and her body: “Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream … [I was] … a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 8). In combination with her dislike of her physical appearance, Angelou also experienced an intense need for physical affection and intimacy that was unmet during her childhood. Angelou was never hugged or held by her grandmother (referred to as Momma) who was embarrassed by any show of emotion that was not directly linked to religion. Angelou recalled that her grandmother would have “been more surprised than I had she taken me in her arms … Her world was bordered on all sides with work, duty, religion” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 47). The lack of physical affection became linked to her dislike of her body, which made her almost desperate for validation and connection. “I wasn’t pretty or even cute. That woman who looked like a movie star deserved a better looking daughter than me.” ( Angelou, 2013 , p. 14). During this stage in her life, the young Angelou equated good looks with worthiness and believed that her physical appearance made her unworthy of receiving love.

The entrenchment within the biological and psychological dimensions continued throughout childhood and was compounded by Angelou’s experience of childhood sexual abuse. Angelou was traumatised by the abuse and was confused by the fact that she also enjoyed the physical intimacy and longed for it ( Angelou, 2004 ), as it was lacking in her other relationships. This event defined Angelou’s relationships with men through most of her adolescent and early adult years and led to Angelou developing distorted views on love and sex. In these relationships, young Angelou would completely ignore her own feelings in favour of those of her partner: “back in the car, it never occurred to me to put up resistance…I wanted to do what he wanted, so I sat quiet” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 241). Angelou wanted to completely immerse her entire being into her relationships and had a poor sense of self as she mentioned that “The naturally lonely person does not look for comfort in love, but accepts the variables in due course” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 341). The most extreme example of this occurred when Angelou willingly worked as a prostitute at the request of her partner.

As she moved into adolescence and early adulthood, Angelou continued to experience unhappiness with her physical appearance, but this became increasingly linked to psychological conflicts related to trying to clarify her identity and roles. She became fixated on certain aspects of herself, such as her need to be a perfect mother and her striving for a dance career. She experienced extreme guilt over her abandonment of Guy (her only child) but was simultaneously intent on ignoring this in her search for temporary happiness. This resulted in her becoming depressed and contemplating suicide ( Angelou, 2004 ). “… I can’t see any reason for living … I’m so unhappy. And I have done such harm to [Guy]” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 611). Angelou’s psychological conflicts (see Frankl, 1965 ; Wessels, 2013 ) were manifested in her continued determination to prove herself to others and her desire to be seen as perfect, admired, and successful. She desperately wanted love, belonging, and acceptance ( Angelou, 2004 ) and believed that she needed to act a certain way in order to achieve these things. Her need for acceptance resulted in her acting in ways that were inauthentic: “I had spent so many years being people other than myself …” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 240).

Angelou’s movement away from the biological and psychological dimensions and into the spiritual dimension appears to be marked by two themes. Firstly, her discovery of herself as a dancer allowed her to reconcile with the physical dimension and secondly, her discovery of her voice through writing appears to have allowed her to enter the spiritual dimension in her ability to find meaning through self-expression. Towards the end of the period covered in her autobiographies, as she approached her 40s, Angelou began to be more accepting towards herself as she wrote that “Love was what I had been waiting for. I had done grown up things out of childish ignorance or juvenile bravado, but now I began to mature” ( Angelou, 2004 , p .242). Angelou’s description of love ( Angelou, 2004 , 2013 ) appears to mark her transcendence beyond self-absorption into the spiritual dimension (see Frankl, 1969 ; Morgan, 2012 ) and she began to start working through her conflicts. She stopped focusing on her image and fearing rejection and moved to embracing the love of family and friends as well as finding ways, through racial activism and her career, to share this love. Based on her ability to reflect back on her early years in her autobiographies, it would appear that this ability to make meaning within the spiritual dimension persisted into the remainder of her life and career.

Reflecting back on her earlier life in one of her autobiographies, Angelou (2013) wrote:

… the ship of my life might or might not be sailing on calm seas. The challenging days of my existence might or might not be bright and promising … I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If pessimism insists on occupying my thoughts, I remember there is always tomorrow. Today, I am blessed (p. 137).

This quote epitomises the journey described in this analysis, where Angelou moved away from the physical and psychological crises that typified her early life and young adulthood and towards a more spiritual dimension.

Her youthful search for hedonism gave way to a search for purpose and fulfilment in her life. She began to feel uncomfortable about her life and these tensions signalled her awareness of meaning. “I decided that the time had come to stop my dangerous habits like smoking, drinking and cursing … Imagine I might really become somebody. Someday.” ( Angelou, 2013 , p. 81). Angelou wanted to transcend beyond herself by helping, loving, and educating others. Once she found her purpose in her career and love and security within her family, Angelou felt comfortable within herself. She had acknowledged that meaning existed, she was motivated to discover meaning, and she believed that she was free to discover it no matter her circumstances ( Frankl, 1985 ). It is interesting that Angelou chose to conclude her autobiographical recount at this point, as it clearly indicated a point at which she felt that a phase of her life had been completed.

Unlike the tri-dimensional view of humans where Angelou clearly progresses through the various dimensions of being, there is no clear chronological development of meaning in Angelou’s life as recounted in her autobiographies. Instead, she appears to have engaged with each of the three components of the triad throughout the period of her adult life (age approximately 20 to 40) recounted in the autobiographies, developing an increasing awareness of and engagement with each aspect of meaning as her life progressed. This may be because the account we have of her meaning making is retrospective (in the form of autobiographies) and so the very process of writing for Angelou constituted a discovery of meaning. However, although there is no chronological development it is still possible to trace each aspect of the fundamental triad within Angelou’s life narrative.

Angelou’s awareness of the existence of meaning was a gradual process. She was aware of the existence of God from childhood but did not have a spiritual connection until her early to mid-adulthood years. Although young Angelou grew up in a religious home and attended church frequently, she was cynical about religion. During her teenage years, Angelou was disconnected from religion and focussed on her career and academics. Angelou initially became aware of meaning not through organised religion, but through the realisation that there was a purpose and a fulfilment to be sought through a career. Angelou’s reaction to her rejection by the Army “… My life has no centre, no purpose…” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 308) was an early foreshadowing of the meaning she attached to her career. She went on to discover meaning throughout her involvement in her careers as a dancer, activist and writer – she wrote that “dancing liberated me and even made me feel as if my body had a reason to be” ( Angelou, 2013 , p. 110). Her involvement in racial politics connected her to the discovery of meaning as she was able to transcend beyond herself to be concerned about other people. Angelou was aware of the tensions within herself and this caused her to search for something beyond herself as is evident in the various movements in her career throughout her life: “My position had always been that no one was responsible for my life except me.” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 755). Although the autobiographies do not cover the later years of Angelou’s life, it seems likely that her career as a writer allowed her to discover meaning through her writing as she reflected on her life. Thus, in adulthood she appears to have experienced a settling down and an increased spirituality and connection with others ( Agins, 2013 ; Angelou, 2004 ; Frankl, 1969 ).

The second component of the fundamental triad, the will to meaning, is evident throughout Angelou’s narrative. As a child, she refused to believe in the passivity of Momma and the people in Arkansas. Instead, she believed that the racial system could be changed, and she was determined to do something about it. One of the first instances of her asserting herself was with her employer Mrs Cullinan: “For a week I looked into Mrs Cullinan’s face as she called me Mary … When I heard Mrs Cullinan scream, “Mary!” I picked up the casserole and … the green cups … I let them fall on the tiled floor” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 87). This became constant in her life and was especially prominent during the years when she was involved in Black activism ( Agins, 2013 ; Angelou, 2004 ). It is important to note the shift in Angelou’s will to meaning. Her assertations and defiance against the entrenched racial political system were initially reactive and involved working through psychological conflicts related to her insecurities surrounding race. Her will to meaning arose from her understanding of the system where “The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimisation. When access to a better life has been denied often enough … one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts.” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 461). For Angelou, this thinking indicated a shift in how she perceived race and relations, where she started to increasingly assert that black people should not just accept a victim identity but instead should fight for their place in society.

Another theme that provides evidence of Angelou’s will to meaning was her involvement in her career. She wanted a career that would fulfil her and give her purpose. She tried several careers throughout her lifetime, each time seeking a career that would provide her with purpose and make her feel fulfilled. She enjoyed dancing and writing and this allowed her to transcend biological and psychological issues and fully engage with life and the meaning making process ( Angelou, 2004 ). She knew that she was free to make her own choices and was also responsible for them ( Frankl, 1967 , 1969 ; Meyer, 1997 ).

The third component of the fundamental triad is freedom to will, where individuals are free to explore their lives in the discovery for meaning but must also accept responsibility for every choice that they make ( Frankl, 1985 ). Angelou believed that it was important to explore and experience life to the fullest. She wanted to be active and engaged in all aspects of her life and was especially vehement against the racial system. She believed that she was free to act against the racial systems imposed on Black people ( Lupton, 1998 ). She was involved in organisations during adulthood as chronicled in her autobiographies and felt free to question her entrenched racial assumptions. Her freedom to will is evident in her movement towards settling down and accepting herself as she realised that “As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls … I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.” ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 143). She began to embrace meaning making in her life as she discovered the freedom within her to do so, as well as accepting the responsibility for her own life. Angelou took responsibility for her choices and felt that she had to carry out racial activism in a responsible manner ( Agins, 2013 ; Angelou, 2004 , 2013 ; Frankl, 1985 ). Angelou also felt responsible for her career; she believed that she had the freedom to choose the jobs that she wanted and the responsibility to be the best she could in these jobs. Racial politics and her career were always a freedom to will for Angelou and motivated her throughout her narrative. Angelou believed that, in general, she was responsible for any choices or decisions that she made, even those that were considered mistakes. This included her becoming pregnant with Guy:

For eons, it seemed, I had accepted my plight as the hapless, put-upon victim of fate and the Furies, but this time I had to face the fact that I had brought my new catastrophe upon myself … so I hefted the burden of pregnancy at sixteen onto my own shoulders where it belonged ( Angelou, 2004 , p. 218).

Her responsibility moved to responsibleness where she felt free to carry out her purpose and therefore have freedom in meaning making. A poignant quote by Angelou perfectly summarises her engagement with life and the importance of meaning making:

… how did I get to be Maya Angelou … I knew that I had become the woman I am because of my grandmother I loved and the mother I came to adore … Love heals … a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions … This book has been written to examine some of the ways love heals and helps a person to climb impossible heights and rise from immeasurable depths ( Angelou, 2013 , p. x).

Limitations and Direction for Future Research

The most notable limitation of this study is the specific focus on meaning making, which precluded the discussion of other aspects of Angelou’s life (e.g. her literary achievements, her activism). Future research should aim to utilise multiple theoretical lenses, such as those that explore creativity or social change, to offer a more comprehensive portrait of this extraordinary life. This study did indicate that Frankl’s theory provides a useful lens through which to analyse the development of meaning in an individual life and as such it is suggested that future research in psychobiography make use of this theory.

A further limitation is the focus on the first 40 years of Angelou’s life. This limitation is based on the period of time covered in Angelou’s autobiographies and as such is inevitable due to the nature of the available data. Future research may wish to expand the data set by including more extensive biographies and perhaps also interviews with Angelou’s friends and family to develop a portrayal of meaning making in the period of Angelou’s life not covered by her autobiographies.

The primary aim of the study was to explore and reach an understanding of meaning making in the early life and young adulthood of Maya Angelou, as illustrated in her autobiographies, through the application of Frankl’s existential psychology. The article utilised two major concepts within Frankl’s theory: that of the tri-dimensional nature of humans and the fundamental triad. The tri-dimensional nature of humans indicated Angelou’s movement from the biological dimension, through the psychological and achieving meaning making in the spiritual dimension. Her childhood, adolescent and early adult years were defined by biological concerns and psychological conflicts. She was able to come to terms with these and move towards transcendence into a spiritual dimension of existence ( Frankl, 1967 , 1969 ), which she seems to have reached by the time that her autobiographical narrative ceases. The fundamental triad draws from and builds on this view of humanity, as there needs to be an internal striving toward meaning making before understanding how meaning making works in a human life. Maya Angelou worked through insecurities and had become aware of meaning during her adult years and had an active will to meaning and freedom to will. She was motivated to create and to educate. She wanted to tell people about her experiences and struggles so that they could learn from them ( Lupton, 1998 ). She wanted to spread love and peace across the world. She had the freedom to choose her attitude and accepted responsibility for her life. She chose to do something worthy and purposeful with her life ( Agins, 2013 ; Angelou, 2013 ; Frankl, 1985 ).

Acknowledgments

This study forms part of a dissertation that was completed by the first author under the supervision of the second author while the first author was a student at the University of Johannesburg. Both authors wish to acknowledge the support of the University of Johannesburg in the completion the original dissertation.

Biographies

Nadene Harisunker is a Clinical Psychologist (registered in South Africa) and a lecturer in the School of Psychosocial Health at North West University. Nadene has an interest in working with severe pathologies such as personality disorders and severe trauma often experienced within South Africa. She is passionate about her work as a psychologist and lecturer and enjoys disseminating knowledge. Nadene is planning on carrying out further research related to meaning making using the psychobiographical method.

Dr. Carol du Plessis is a Clinical Psychologist (registered in Australia and South Africa) and a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. Carol’s research specializes in qualitative small sample and narrative methods, and she is passionate about sharing the stories of vulnerable and marginalized communities. In addition to psychobiography she is currently working on projects related to the experiences of transgender incarcerated people, lived experiences of suicide attempt survivors, and methods of teaching counselling online.

Financial support was received from a merit scholarship for the first authors masters’ dissertation. The merit certificate was awarded at the University of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. The article drew on the dissertation.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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• DOI: 10.24113/ijellh.v8i6.10630
• Corpus ID: 225726026

Maya Angelou’s Growing Up Poor, Black and Female

• Published in SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH 29 June 2020

14 References

Understanding i know why the caged bird sings: a student casebook to issues, sources, and historical documents, maya angelou's i know why the caged bird sings: a casebook, being black and female : an analysis of literature by zora neale hurston and jessie redmon fauset, i know why the caged bird sings, life notes : personal writings by contemporary black women, a land of one’s own, black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment, no crystal stair: visions of race and sex in black women's fiction, nectar in a sieve, related papers.

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Volume 4   Issue 4

Research article, stylistic analysis of maya angelou’s “still i rise”, -by luijim s. jose *, girlie p. barnachea, kathleen kate a. landeza, christine r. santiago, patrick m. soligam, andrixe jaira g. tolentino.

This research paper provides a comprehensive stylistic analysis of Maya Angelou’s iconic poem “Still I Rise,” focusing on phonological, graphological, morphological, and lexical levels. Through the examination of rhyme scheme, rhythm and meter, assonance, consonance, punctuation, affixation, and syntactic features, the analysis uncovers the intricate ways in which Angelou employs linguistic elements to convey themes of resilience, empowerment, and defiance. The phonological analysis reveals the poem’s use of irregular rhyme and varied meter to create a dynamic and engaging rhythm. The graphological analysis highlights the strategic use of punctuation to enhance the poem’s rhetorical impact. The morphological analysis examines the use of affixation to emphasize key ideas, while the lexical-syntactic analysis explores the metaphorical and simile-rich language that deepens the reader’s understanding of the poet’s message. This study underscores the significance of stylistic devices in enhancing the emotional and thematic depth of Angelou’s work, ultimately showcasing the poem’s enduring power and relevance.

Maya Angelou

Introduction.

Hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary African American literature, Angelou is best known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), the first of several autobiographical books. Angelou's literary works have generated critical and popular interest in part because they depict her triumph over formidable social obstacles and her struggle to achieve a sense of identity and self-acceptance. Such themes tie Angelou's writings closely to the concerns of the feminist literary movement. Angelou has also been noted for her vivid portrayals of the strong women in her life—notably Annie Henderson, the paternal grandmother who helped raise her, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a genteel black woman who helped Angelou recover her speech, and her mother, Vivian Baxter. Critics have praised Angelou's dynamic prose style, poignant humor, and illumination of African American history and consciousness through her portrayal of personal experiences. Angelou has stated, "I speak to the black experience but I am always talking about the human condition—about what we can endure, dream, fail at and still survive."

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Bailey, was a doorkeeper and naval dietician; her mother, Vivian, was a nurse and realtor. Angelou's family lived in Missouri, Arkansas, and California during her childhood. Angelou attended public schools and studied music, dance, and drama privately. From 1954 to 1955, she appeared in a twenty-two-nation tour of the musical Porgy and Bess that was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Angelou moved to New York to pursue her acting career and performed in several off-Broadway plays including Calypso Heatwave in 1957 and The Blacks in 1960. Also in 1960, she accepted a position as an assistant administrator in the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana in Africa. Angelou taught and performed in several plays at the university before returning to the U.S. in 1966. In 1970, Angelou published her first book, the autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which focuses on her struggles throughout her formative years and concludes with the birth of her son, Guy, in 1945. In addition to publishing, Angelou continued to produce, direct, and act in stage productions. In 1974 she directed the film All Day Long and, in 1988, directed the film Down in the Delta. Angelou has held teaching positions at several universities, including the University of California and the University of Kansas. She holds honorary degrees from Smith College, Mills College, Lawrence University, and Wake Forest University. Angelou also received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), a Tony Award nomination for best supporting actress in a 1977 production of Roots, and the North Carolina Award in Literature in 1992. In 1993 Angelou performed a reading of her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of U.S. President Bill Clinton.

MAJOR WORKS

After I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou published five subsequent volumes in her autobiographical series: Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), and A Song Flung up to Heaven (2002). These works trace her psychological, spiritual, and political odyssey as she emerged from a disturbing and oppressive childhood to become a prominent figure in contemporary American literature. Angelou's quest for self-identity and emotional fulfillment resulted in a number of extraordinary experiences, among them encounters with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Angelou also describes her involvement with the civil rights and feminist movements in the United States and in Africa, her developing relationship with her son, and the hardships associated with lower-class American life. All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes is distinctive in its examination of black America's intellectual and emotional connections with post-colonial Africa. In this work, Angelou describes her four-year stay in Ghana where she worked as a freelance writer and editor. Angelou finds much to venerate about Africa, but gradually realizes that although she has cultural ties to the land of her ancestors, she is nevertheless distinctly American and in many ways isolated from traditional African society. A Song Flung up to Heaven begins in 1964 when Angelou returns from Africa to the United States. The book covers her plans to assist Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. with various civil rights activities, and her feelings of loss when both are assassinated. The narrative also recounts her experiences as a performer and writer in African American theatre, her friendships with James Baldwin and other writers, and personal anecdotes including details of a painful love affair. The story ends with Angelou putting pen to paper to begin writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou's poetry, in which she combines terse lyrics with jazz rhythms, addresses social and political issues relevant to African Americans and challenges the validity of traditional American values and myths. In "America," for example, she rejects the notion that justice is available to all Americans, citing such deep-rooted problems as racism and poverty. Angelou directed national attention to humanitarian concerns with her poem "On the Pulse of Morning." In this poem, Angelou calls for recognition of the human failings pervading American history and a renewed national commitment to unity and social improvement.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Some critics have faulted Angelou's poetry as superficial, citing its dependence on alliteration, heavy use of short lines, and conventional vocabulary. Others have praised the honest and candid nature of her poetry, lauding the strength and personal pride within her verse. Scholars have asserted that Angelou's struggle to create a sense of identity and self-acceptance in both her poetry and prose aligns her firmly within the feminist literary tradition. R. B. Stepto has noted the strong female presence in poems such as "And Still I Rise," commenting that "the 'I' of Angelou's refrain is obviously female and … a woman forthright about the sexual nuances of personal and social struggle."

Although some critics fault Angelou's autobiographies as lacking in moral complexity and universality, others praise her narrative skills and impassioned responses to the challenges in her life. Many reviewers have acknowledged The Heart of a Woman as sharply focused on women's struggles and issues, and as a self-examination of a mature writer and mother. In a review of this volume, Adam David Miller (see Further Reading) stated, "What she keeps constant throughout the book is that it is the account of a black W-O-M-A-N's life." Overall, while critical response to Angelou's autobiographies has been more favorable than reactions to her poetry, critics generally agree that her writing is an important contribution not only to the autobiography genre, but to American literature as well.

Cite this page as follows:

"Maya Angelou - Introduction." Feminism in Literature, edited by Jessica Bomarito, Jeffrey W. Hunter, Vol. 5. Gale Cengage, 2005, 26 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/maya-angelou/critical-essays/angelou-maya-137937#critical-essays-angelou-maya-137937-introduction-2>

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

SIDONIE SMITH (ESSAY DATE 1974)

SOURCE: Smith, Sidonie. "Black Womanhood." In Where I'm Bound: Patterns of Slavery and Freedom in Black American Autobiography, pp. 121-36. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974. In the following essay, Smith analyzes the plot and characters in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, while also examining the themes of quests for self-acceptance, love, and identity in the book. But put on your crown, my queen. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice

Eldridge Cleaver concludes his spiritual journey when he is prepared to greet the black queen in the voice of the new "Eldridge," the black man who is secure in both his physical and intellectual masculinity. But the black woman has also to make her own spiritual journey, for the Amazon, as Cleaver labels her,

is in a peculiar position. Just as her man has been deprived of his manhood, so she has been deprived of her full womanhood. Society has decreed that the Ultrafeminine, the woman of the elite, is the goddess on the pedestal. The Amazon is the personification of the rejected domestic component, the woman on whom "dishpan hands" seems not out of character. The worship and respect which both the Omnipotent Administrator and the Supermasculine Menial lavish upon the image of the Ultrafeminine is a source of deep vexation to the Amazon. She envies the pampered, powderpuff existence of the Ultrafeminine and longs to incorporate these elements into her own life. Alienated from the feminine component of her nature, her reinforced domestic component is an awesome burden and shame of which she longs to be free. (188)

The oppression of natural forces, of physical appearance and processes, foists a self-consciousness on all young girls who must grow from children into women. But in the black girl child's experience these natural forces are reinforced by the social forces of racial subordination and impotence. Being born black is itself a liability in a world ruled by white standards of beauty which imprison the black girl in a cage of ugliness at birth. "Caught in the crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and Black lack of power," the black and blue bruises of her soul multiply and compound as she flings herself against the bars of her cage. 1

Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, like Wright's Black Boy, opens with a primal childhood scene that brings into focus the nature of the imprisoning environment from which the black girl child seeks to escape. The young, awkward Maya, dressed in a cut-down, faded purple, too-long taffeta gown, stands nervously before an Easter congregation in Stamps, Arkansas, reciting a poem, asking "What you looking at me for?" She cannot remember the next lines, and so this question imprints itself indelibly on the shame-filled silence. Finally, the minister's wife offers her the forgotten lines. She grabs them, spills them into the congregation and then stumbles out of the watching church, "a green persimmon caught between [her] legs." Unable to control the pressure of her physical response, she urinates, then laughs "from the knowledge that [she] wouldn't die from a busted head."

But the cathartic laughter never even begins to mute, much less transcend, the real pain that is this experience, the palpable pain that pulses through her long trip down the aisle of that singing church as urine flows down her grotesquely skinny, heavily dusted legs. "What you looking at me for?"—over and over until it becomes, "Is something wrong with me?" For this child, too much is wrong.

The whole way she looks is wrong, and she knows it. That is why they are all looking at her. Earlier, as she watches her grandmother make over the white woman's faded dress, she revels for one infinitely delicious moment in fantasies of stardom. In a beautiful dress, she would be transformed into a beautiful movie star: "I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world" (4). But between the taffeta insubstantiality of her ideal vision of herself and the raw (fleshy) edges of her substantiality stands the oneway mirror:

Easter's early morning sun had shown the dress to be a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway. It was old-lady-long too, but it didn't hide my skinny legs, which had been greased with Blue Seal Vaseline and powdered with the Arkansas red clay. The age-faded color made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs. (4)

Wrong dress. Wrong legs. Wrong hair. Wrong face. Wrong color. The child lives a "black ugly dream," a nightmare. But since this life is only a dream, the child knows she will awaken soon into a rightened, a whitened reality:

Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten? My light-blue eyes were going to hypnotize them, after all the things they said about "my daddy must of been a Chinaman" (I thought they meant made out of china, like a cup) because my eyes were so small and squinty. Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs' tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a toobig Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number two pencil. (4-5)

In a society attuned to white standards of physical beauty, the black girl child cries herself to sleep at night to the tune of her own inadequacy. At least she can gain temporary respite in the impossible dreams of whiteness. Here in the darkened nights of the imagination, that refuge from society and the mirror, blossoms an ideal self. Yet even the imagination is sometimes not so much a refuge as it is a prison in which the dreamer becomes even more inescapably possessed by the nightmare, since the very self he fantasizes conforms perfectly to society's prerequisites. The cage door jangles shut around the child's question: "What you looking at me for?"

This opening to Maya Angelou's autobiography recreates vividly the dynamics of the black girl child's imprisonment in American society. Grier and Cobbs summarize this predicament of the black woman in Black Rage :

If the society says that to be attractive is to be white, she finds herself unwittingly striving to be something she cannot possibly be; and if femininity is rooted in feeling oneself eminently lovable, then a society which views her as unattractive and repellent has also denied her this fundamental wellspring of femininity. 2

Maya is a black ugly reality, not a whitened dream. And the attendant self-consciousness and diminished self-image throb through her bodily prison until the bladder can do nothing but explode in a parody of release. Such momentary freedom from the physical pressure of her displacement becomes a kind of metaphor for the freedom from the psychological pressure of her displacement after which she will quest.

After establishing the psychic environment out of which the black girl child must achieve maturity, against which she must struggle for self-hood, Angelou returns to the beginning of her quest. Two children, sent away to a strange place by estranging parents, cling to each other as they travel by train across the southwestern United States—and cling to their tag: "'To Whom It May Concern'—that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson, Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson" (6). The autobiography of black America is haunted by these orphans, descendants of the orphaned slave narrators, who travel through life desperately in search of a home where they can escape the shadow of lonely displacement. Although Maya and Bailey are traveling toward the home of their grandmother, it is more significant that they are traveling away from the home of their parents. A child may internalize and translate such rejection into rejection of self; thus, the loss of home ultimately occasions the loss of self-worth. For this reason, the quest for a new home is tantamount to the quest for acceptance, for love, and for the resultant feeling of self-worth. Like that of any orphan's, such a quest is intensely solitary, making it all the more desperate, immediate, and demanding, and, making it, above all, an even more estranging process. So long as the "place" is conceived as a function of others' (society's) acceptance, it always recedes into the distance, moving with the horizon, as the "North" receded for the escaped slave and later for the free black American.

Stamps, Arkansas, does not offer a sense of place to Maya:

The town reacted to us as its inhabitants had reacted to all things new before our coming. It regarded us a while without curiosity but with caution, and after we were seen to be harmless (and children) it closed in around us, as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly, but not too familiarly. (7)

The aura of personal displacement is counterpointed by the ambience of displacement within the larger black community of Stamps, which is itself caged in the social reality of racial subordination and impotence. The cotton pickers must face an empty bag every morning, an empty will every night, knowing all along that they would end the season as they had begun it—with no money and no credit. This undercurrent of social displacement, this fragility of the sense of belonging, are evidenced in the intrusion of white reality. Poor white trash humiliate Momma as she stands erect before them singing a hymn. Uncle Willie hides deep in the potato barrel the night the sheriff warns them that white men ride after black, any black. The white apparition haunts the life of Stamps, Arkansas, always present though not always visible.

Against this apparition, the community shores itself up with a subdued hominess, a fundamental faith in a fundamental religion, and resignation. The warmth mitigates the need to resist, or, rather, the impossibility of resistance is sublimated in the bond of community. The people of Stamps, including Momma Henderson, adapt in the best way they know—"realistically": Momma "didn't cotton to the idea that white-folks could be talked to at all without risking one's life. And certainly they couldn't be spoken to insolently" (46). If the young girl stands before the church congregation asking, "What you looking at me for?" the whole black community might just as well be standing before the larger white community and asking that same question. High physical visibility means self-consciousness within the white community. To insure his own survival, the black tries not to be looked at, tries to become invisible. Such a necessary response breeds an overriding self-criticism and self-depreciation into the black experience. Maya Angelou's diminished self-image reflects at the same time that it is reinforced by the entire black community's diminished self-image.

Nevertheless, there is a containedness in this environment called Stamps, just as there was in the black community surrounding young Richard Wright, a containedness which in this case mitigates rather than intensifies the child's sense of displacement. Here is a safe way of life, certainly a hard way of life, but finally a known way of life. Maya, like Richard, does not really want to fit here, but the town shapes her to it. And although she is lonely and suffers from her feelings of ugliness and abandonment, the strength of Momma's arms contains some of that loneliness.

Then suddenly Stamps is left behind as Maya moves to another promise of place, to her mother, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and St. Louis. But even here there is displacement since St. Louis remains a foreign country to the child, with its strange sounds, its packaged foods, its modern conveniences:

In my mind I only stayed in St. Louis for a few weeks. As quickly as I understood that I had not reached my home, I sneaked away to Robin Hood's forest and the caves of Alley Oop where all reality was unreal and even that changed every day. I carried the same shield that I had used in Stamps: "I didn't come to stay." (68)

For one moment only, the illusion of being in place overwhelms the child. For that moment Mr. Freeman, her mother's boyfriend, holds her pressed to him:

He held me so softly that I wished he wouldn't ever let me go. I felt at home. From the way he was holding me I knew he'd never let me go or let anything bad ever happen to me. This was probably my real father and we had found each other at last. But then he rolled over, leaving me in a wet place and stood up. (71)

The orphan hopes, for that infinite moment, that she has been taken back home to her father; she feels loved, wanted, special, lovely. Ultimately Mr. Freeman's arms are not succor, but seduction: the second time he holds Maya to him it is to rape her. In short minutes, Maya becomes even more displaced: she becomes a child-woman. Moreover, she is doubly victimized by the experience. As a female child, she is subject to the physical superiority of the male. Then later, when she denies the first incident in court and Mr. Freeman is afterwards found dead, she connects his death with her lie and is psychologically victimized. Her only recourse is to stop talking: "Just my breath, carrying my words out, might poison people and they'd curl up and die like the black fat slugs that only pretended. I had to stop talking" (85).

In total solitude, total self-condemnation, total silence, Maya retreats to Stamps, to gray barren nothingness:

The resignation of its inhabitants encouraged me to relax. They showed me a contentment based on the belief that nothing more was coming to them, although a great deal more was due. Their decision to be satisfied with life's inequities was a lesson for me. Entering Stamps, I had the feeling that I was stepping over the border lines of the map and would fall, without fear, right off the end of the world. Nothing more could happen, for in Stamps nothing happened. (86)

Her psychological and emotional devastation find a mirror in Stamps' social devastation. Stamps returns Maya to the familiarity and security of a well-known cage. This imprisoning physical environment, like the prisons holding both Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver, becomes a literal metaphor for her spiritual imprisonment. At the nadir of her quest for selfhood, she climbs readily back in, losing herself in her silent world, surrendering herself to her own ugliness and worthlessness: "The barrenness of Stamps was exactly what I wanted, without will or consciousness" (86).

Maya lives in solitude for one year until the lovely Mrs. Flowers walks into her grandmother's store and comes to play the role for Maya that Beverly Axelrod plays for Cleaver. It is Mrs. Flowers who opens the door to the caged bird's silence with the key of loving acceptance. For the first time, Maya is accepted as an individual rather than as a relation to someone else. Her identity is self-generated rather than derivative: "I was liked, and what a difference it made. I was respected not as Mrs. Henderson's grandchild or Bailey's sister but for just being Marguerite Johnson" (98). Such unqualified acceptance allows her to experience the incipient power of her own self-worth.

But while a consciousness of her own self-worth germinates inside her, outside, in the life that revolves around her, hovers the stagnant air of impotence and frustration. And precisely because she has always remained an outsider to the way of life in Stamps and precisely because she is beginning to feel the power of her own self-hood, Maya gradually becomes conscious of such powerlessness. The older autobiographer recalls vividly specific moments illustrative of such powerlessness: the evening Bailey comes home later than usual and Maya watches her grandmother worry, "her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose"; the church meeting during which she comes to realize that her neighbors used religion as a way of "bask[ing] in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden." Even the Joe Louis fight, which sends a thrill of pride through a black community vicariously winning victory over a white man (the white community), becomes a grotesque counterpoint to the normal way of life. Then at the graduation ceremony, during the exciting expectations of the young graduates and their families and friends are exploded casually by the words of an oblivious and insensitive white speaker, who praises the youths for being promising athletes and indirectly reminds them all that they are destined to be "maids and farmers, handymen and washer-women," the young girl comes to understand fully the desperation of impotence: "It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead" (176). Finally, when Maya and her grandmother make an humiliating attempt to see a white dentist who refuses them, informing them cursorily that he would "rather stick [his] hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's," the child finds compensation for her impotence the only way she can—by fantasizing that her grandmother has ordered the white dentist to leave town and that he actually obeys her.

One gesture, however, foreshadows Maya's eventual inability to sit quietly and is very much an expression of her growing acceptance of her own self-worth. For a short time, she works in the house of Mrs. Viola Cullinan, but for a short time only, for Mrs. Cullinan, with an easiness that comes from long tradition, assaults her ego by calling her Mary rather than Maya. This oversight, offered so casually, is a most devastating sign of the black girl's invisibility in white society. In failing to call her by her name, the symbol of her uniqueness, Mrs. Cullinan fails to respect her humanity. Maya understands this perfectly and rebels by breaking Mrs. Cullinan's most cherished dish. The black girl is assuming the consciousness of the rebel as the stance necessary for preserving her individuality and affirming her self-worth.

But now there is yet another move, to wartime San Francisco. Here in this big city everything seems out of place: "The air of collective displacement, the impermanence of life in wartime and the gauche personalities of the more recent arrivals tended to dissipate my own sense of not belonging. In San Francisco, for the first time, I perceived myself as part of something" (205). Maya had been on the move when she entered Stamps and thus could not settle into its rigid way of life. She chose to remain an outsider and, in so doing, chose not to allow her personality to become rigidified. The fluidity of her new environment, however, matches the fluidity of her physical, psychological, and intellectual life. She feels in place in an environment where everyone and everything seem out of place.

Even more significant than the total displacement of San Francisco is Maya's trip to Mexico with her father. The older autobiographer, in giving form to her past experience, discovers that this moment was a turning point in her quest after authentic selfhood. Maya accompanies her father to a small Mexican town where he proceeds to get obliviously drunk, leaving her with the responsibility of getting them back to Los Angeles by car, although she had never driven one. For the first time, Maya finds herself totally in control of her situation. Her new sense of power contrasts vividly with her former despair that as a Negro she has no control over her fate.

Then, when Maya and her father return home, an argument between Maya and her stepmother Dolores ensues: Dolores calls Maya's mother a whore; Maya slaps her; Dolores cuts her severely with a knife; Maya's father rushes Maya to a friend's house and leaves her. Because she fears a scene of violence if she returns to her mother, who would certainly discover the wounds, Maya runs away and finds a new home in a wrecked car in a junkyard. Here among a community of homeless youths, "the silt of war frenzy," she lives for a month and discovers warmth, acceptance, security, brotherhood.

These experiences provide Maya with a knowledge of self-mastery and a confirmation of self-worth. With the assumption of this power, she is ready to challenge the unwritten, restrictive social codes of San Francisco. Mrs. Cullinan's broken dish prefigures the struggle for her job on the streetcar as the first black money collector. Stamps' acquiescence is left far behind as Maya assumes control over her own social destiny and engages in the struggle with life's forces. She has broken through the rusted bars of her social cage.

But Maya must still break open the bars of her female sexuality. Although she now feels power over her social identity, she feels insecurity about her sexual identity. She remains the embarrassed child who stands before the Easter congregation asking, "What you looking at me for?" The bars of her physical being close in on her, threatening her peace of mind. The lack of femininity in her small-breasted, straight-lined, hairless physique and the heaviness of her voice become, in her imagination, symptomatic of latent lesbian tendencies. A gnawing self-consciousness plagues her. Even after her mother's amused knowledge disperses her fears, the mere fact of her attraction to a classmate's breasts undermines any confidence that reassurance had provided: it was only brief respite against her fears. The only remedy available to her seems to be a heterosexual liaison. But even making love with a casual male acquaintance fails to quell her suspicions; the whole affair is an unenjoyable experience.

Only her pregnancy provides a climactic reassurance that she is indeed a heterosexual woman: if she can become pregnant, she certainly cannot be a lesbian (a specious argument in terms of logic but a compelling one in terms of the emotions and psychology of a young girl). The birth of the baby brings Maya something totally her own. More important, it brings her to a recognition and acceptance of her full, instinctual womanhood. The child, father to the woman, opens the caged door and allows the fully developed woman to fly out. Now she feels the control of her sexual identity as well as her social identity. The girl child no longer need ask, embarrassed, "What you looking at me for?" No longer need she fantasize any other reality than her own. Like Cleaver, the black man, she has gained physical, intellectual, and spiritual self-mastery.

Maya Angelou's autobiography comes to a sense of an ending: the black American girl child has succeeded in freeing herself from the natural and social bars imprisoning her in the cage of her own diminished self-image by assuming control of her life and fully accepting her black womanhood. The displaced child has found a "place."

With the birth of her child, Maya is herself born into a mature engagement with the forces of life. In welcoming that struggle, she refuses to live a death of quiet acquiescence: "Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity" (231).

One way of dying to life's struggle is to suppress its inevitable pain by forgetting the past. Maya Angelou successfully banished the memories of past years to the unconscious where they lay dormant while she continued on to her years of dance and drama, of writing in Africa and in New York. She specifically alludes to this loss when in the acknowledgments she thanks her editor at Random House, "who gently prodded me back into the lost years." To the extent that these years were lost, a part of herself was lost. Once she accepted the challenge of recovering them, she accepted the challenge of rediscovering and thus reaffirming her own selfhood. Maya Angelou, like Richard Wright, comes to understand more fully who she is by remembering who she has been and how she came to be who she is. Unlike a large number of black autobiographers who have achieved a sense of freedom in the achievement of fame, Maya Angelou chooses not to focus on the traditional success story of her life but rather on the adolescence that shaped her and prepared her for those later achievements.

Moreover, she makes the journey back into her past in its own terms by immersing herself once again in the medium of her making. Stamps, Arkansas, imprinted its way of life on the child during her formative years: the lasting evidence of this imprint is the sound of it. Maya Angelou's vitality and genius as a writer lies in her acute sensitivity to the sound of the life around her, in her ability to recapture the texture of the way of life in the texture of its rhythms, its idioms, its idiosyncratic vocabulary, and especially its process of image making. This ability is a product of several factors in her past experience. First of all, she entered Stamps as an outsider, which gave her a conscious ear for all that was said and done around her. She was not born into the life; she adopted it, and to do so most effectively involved learning and then adopting its language. Then, when her experience with Mr. Freeman sent her into a hibernation of silence, she read even more avidly than before and always continued to do so. Her desire to read was by and large a need to fantasize a more ideal existence, a more ideal self.

To be allowed, no, invited, into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter worm-wood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist. When I said aloud, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done …" tears of love filled my eyes at my selflessness. (97)

And also Mrs. Flowers, her surrogate mother, taught her certain "lessons of living," one of which had directly to do with Maya's sensitivity to the language of Stamps:

She said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations. (97)

The "collective wisdom of generations" is part of what shaped Maya Angelou's identity. That she chooses to recreate the past in its own sounds suggests that she accepts the past and recognizes its beauty and its ugliness, its strengths and its weaknesses. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, not only does the black girl child struggle successfully for the freedom of self-worth; the black self also returns to and accepts the past in the return to and full acceptance of its language, a symbolic construct of a way of life. The liabilities inherent in the way of life are transformed through the agency of art into a positive force.

• Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, p. 5. Further citations will appear in the text.
• William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs, Black Rage, p. 40.

"Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Feminism in Literature, edited by Jessica Bomarito, Jeffrey W. Hunter, Vol. 5. Gale Cengage, 2005, 26 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/maya-angelou/critical-essays/angelou-maya-137937#critical-essays-angelou-maya-137937-title-commentary-know-why-caged-bird-sings>

The Heart of a Woman

SHIRLEY NELSON GARNER (ESSAY DATE 1991)

SOURCE: Garner, Shirley Nelson. "Constructing the Mother: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theorists and Women Autobiographers." In Narrating Mothers: Theorizing Maternal Subjectivities, edited by Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy, pp. 86-93. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. In the following excerpt, Garner focuses on The Heart of a Woman as a work that places mothers in a social and cultural context.

Setting women autobiographers beside these therapists and theorists [D. W. Winnicott, Nancy Chodorow, and others], I think of several who deal with mothers: Maxine Hong Kingston, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Kim Chernin. Published between 1975 and 1983, The Woman Warrior, The Heart of a Woman, Zami, and In My Mother's House, like the more recent theoretical works I have been describing, show the influence of the Women's Movement in their focus on mothers or mothers and daughters, who tend to be less prominent in earlier autobiographies by women. Another feature these autobiographers have in common is that their mothers—and sometimes their fathers—are immigrants. This is not true, of course, of Maya Angelou's mother; coming from a poor, southern black family, however, she, like the immigrant mothers, is outside the dominant culture.

Though mother-daughter relationships are not so central in The Heart of a Woman or Zami, all of these stories attest to the power of the mother over her children. They are also stories about growing up and leaving home. For all of these writers, leaving home is both literal and metaphorical. In its metaphorical sense, it means separating from one's family, which tends to be only or mainly the mother. To the extent that psychoanalysis highlights the separation and individuation process, it provides a perspective on these texts. Each writer reveals her efforts to establish her difference from her mother, sometimes at a moment of painful confrontation; at the same time, we see each of them consciously or unconsciously incorporating or recognizing aspects of their mothers in themselves.

In most of these works, we see the mother, as we have so often seen her in psychoanalytic theory, through the eyes of her child. Though all of these writers had children when they wrote their autobiographies, only two of them—Kim Chernin and Maya Angelou—write about themselves as mothers. For Chernin, this is a secondary and often submerged theme. There are some obvious reasons for these writers to exclude this part of their lives. To the extent that they have chosen to write a "growing up" story, their reaching maturity seems not to have anything to do with having children. Growing up has more to do with their coming to terms with their families, particularly their mothers. Another apparent motive for Kingston, Chernin, and to some extent Lorde, is to give voice and meaning to their mother's stories, which none of their mothers could write. Quite wonderfully, Chernin's mother asks her daughter to write her story. Chernin's response recalls what the psychoanalysts tell us: "I am torn by contradiction. I love this woman. She was my first great aching love. All my life I have wanted to do whatever she asked of me, in spite of our quarreling." "I'm afraid. I fear, as any daughter would, losing myself back into the mother." (12) Of course, it is probably easier to write about your mother than your children in autobiography, because it is easier to assume—even if it is not true—that your mother is less vulnerable than your children to anything hurtful you might say.

But more significantly, I think, it is harder to see yourself as a parent than to see someone else as a parent, especially if she is your parent. Finally, literature has not provided us with enough stories written from the mother's point of view to encourage us to write from this perspective. The absence of these stories leaves us with the special burden of creating our own forms and language for telling them, as well as suggests that they are not interesting or not the proper subject of literature. Literature, psychoanalysis, and even life have conspired to keep us from knowing our own feelings as mothers, much less telling our own stories. It is perhaps here that Muriel Rukeyser's notion—that if one woman told the truth of her life, the world would split open—awakens some of our greatest fears.

All of these writers in some sense make their mothers' cases, even while coming to terms with their own ambivalences toward their mothers. They do not write in the vein of Nancy Friday's My Mother My Self, a mother-blaming book. While confronting their mothers and their difficulties with these mothers, they also want to put those difficulties in a context such that they are understandable, to delineate the hardships of their mothers' lives as they see them. They also want to affirm their mothers' strengths, to validate their mothers' lives in a way the world at large does not. They are often making clear why their mothers are not nurturing, even valuing the sides of them that are not nurturing, even though as children they were hurt or puzzled by their mothers' responses to them and their actions.

The most important way these stories suggest the limitations of psychoanalytic theory in their portrayal of mothers is the way they place them in a social and cultural context. I want to look at Maya Angelou's Heart of a Woman to illustrate my point because she is the one of these writers who has written mainly from the point of view of a mother. Her position as a daughter and her depiction of her own mother are only secondary.

Having already written autobiographies about her younger life, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Gather Together in My Name (1974), and Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), Angelou is present in The HeartofaWoman when she is in her thirties and is the mother of a fourteen-year-old son, who in the course of the book turns seventeen.

To begin with, she is an unmarried mother, made pregnant by a shockingly deliberate and almost arbitrary encounter on her part, described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1 She depicts herself as having an "immaculate pregnancy" without a man around, and she is proud of her independence. There are men who are significant for Angelou in the course of The Heart of a Woman, particularly the charismatic African Vus Make, whom she marries without legal ceremony, follows to Egypt to foster their mutual political aims, and finally leaves. But in her family of origin and in the family she makes with her son, she does not count on fathers or men as mates in child-rearing. Her reference to her mother's husbands is casual and dismissive: "My mother had married a few times, but she loved her maiden name. Married or not, she often identified herself as Vivian Baxter" (25). Angelou merely alludes to her own first marriage (which was not to her child's father) to explain something else.

When Angelou describes her mother, she, like Chernin, attests to the strength of the bond between them: "She smiled and I saw again that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen" (25). In her depiction of her mother, she makes her larger than life and retains a certain romanticism and idealization, but also draws her vulnerable and with frailties. As nurturer writ large, she is admirably tough. When they meet in Fresno in 1959 to spend the night at the Desert Hotel, where desegregation is a legal requirement but only that, the drama is very powerful. As Angelou walks through the lobby to the bar to meet her mother, she describes the scene: "The crowd made an aisle and I walked through the silence, knowing that before I reached the lounge door, a knife could be slipped in my back or a rope lassoed around my neck" (24). Sensing Angelou's fear, her mother tells her:

Animals can sense fear. They feel it. Well, you know that human beings are animals, too. Never, never let a person know you're frightened. And a group of them … absolutely never. Fear brings out the worst thing in everybody. Now, in that lobby you were as scared as a rabbit. I knew it and all those white folks knew it. If I hadn't been there, they might have turned into a mob. But something about me told them, if they mess with either of us, they'd better start looking for some new asses, 'cause I'd blow away what their mammas gave them. (26)

Laughing, according to Angelou, "like a young girl," the mother tells her daughter to open her purse, where half-hidden under her wallet lies a German luger.

Yet, when this gun-wielding woman bids good-bye to her daughter, she reveals her vulnerability as she says to Angelou, "I hate to see the back of someone I love" (29). Later we see Vivian Baxter struggling to shore up her own marriage to an alcoholic man and to cope with loneliness, calling upon Angelou to be "the shrewd authority, the judicious one, the mother" to her (210). Angelou's mother is always there for financial support in an emergency, someone from whom Angelou can gather strength. In a crisis, when Angelou goes to visit her mother, she tells us, "I needed to see my mother. I needed to be told just one more time that life was what you make it, and that every tub ought to sit on its own bottom. I had to hear her say, 'They spell my name W-O-M-A-N, 'cause the difference between a female and a woman is the difference between shit and shinola'" (210). At the same time, this romanticism is undercut by the stark, harsh memory that Angelou's mother deserted her when she was a child. She recounts being sent with her brother, unescorted, when he was four and she was three, with wrist tags for identification, from Long Beach, California, to Stamps, Arkansas, the home of her grandmother.

As the story surrounding Angelou and her mother suggests, a mother in the world of this book cannot simply negotiate the domestic realm. She must be of the world and in it. As the Fresno episode reveals, Angelou's mother is continually showing her how to survive in a racist society and also as a woman alone. As Angelou goes into a Brooklyn bar for the first time, she follows her mother's advice and example in ordering a large drink, offering her largest bill, and inviting the bartender to take out enough for a drink for himself. "Vivian Baxter told me when I was seventeen and on my own that a strange woman alone in a bar could always count on protection if she had treated the bartender right" (98).

When Guy, through no fault of his own, runs into difficulties with the Savages, a gang at school, Angelou follows her mother's example. Borrowing a gun from a friend, she confronts the head of the gang and his girlfriend at the home of his girlfriend: "If the Savages so much as touch my son, I will then find your house and kill everything that moves, including the rats and cockroaches." After she shows the gang leader the borrowed pistol, he recovers his voice to reply: "O.K., I understand. But for a mother, I must say you're a mean motherfucker" (83-84). Angelou suggests that she is probably up to doing what she needs to do to survive, as is her son. While one could say that this is an example of woman as mother in her caretaking and protective role, since her interests and her son's are, after all, the same, I do not think this kind of action is contemplated by psychoanalytic descriptions of mother-child relationships or the mother as nurturer.

But let me turn to Angelou's actions that are not in her son's behalf or which may be, but may not be felt by him to be. Because Angelou recognizes her and her mother's ambivalences about each other, she understands the complexities of Guy's feelings toward her as well as her own toward him. At the heart of their relationship are three significant factors: their positions as members of a black minority in a predominantly white culture; their economic status, which fluctuates but often is very low; and the fact that Angelou is a single parent. Both Guy and Angelou are sensitive about the extent to which they have had to move around. Angelou recounts: "I followed the jobs, and against the advice of a pompous school psychologist, I had taken Guy along. The psychologist had been white, obviously educated and with those assets I know he was also well to do. How could he know what a young Negro boy needed in a racist world?" (29). By the time Guy is fourteen, he has developed a cynical response to Angelou's announcements that they are going to move yet once again: "Again? Okay. I can pack in twenty minutes. I've timed myself" (29).

This moving continues throughout the autobiography and is a source of Guy's hostility and weary resignation and a cause of Angelou's considerable maternal guilt. Yet she faces their situation head on and doesn't dwell on the guilt:

My son expected warmth, food, housing, clothes and stability. He could be certain that no matter which way my fortune turned he would receive most of the things he desired. Stability, however, was not possible in my world; consequently it couldn't be possible in Guy's. Too often I had had to decline unplayable hands dealt to me by a capricious life, and take fresh cards just to remain in the game. My son could rely on my love, but never expect our lives to be unchanging. (123)

Angelou is talking here in part about economic necessity, but she is also talking about making a life for herself rather than having merely an existence. As her life proceeds, we see her finding work that is meaningful to her and important apart from the necessary income it provides; and some of her choices and her moves have to do with taking advantage of good opportunities.

She outlines some of the particular anxieties she feels as a black and single mother:

The black mother perceives destruction at every door, ruination at each window, and even she herself is not beyond her own suspicion. She questions whether she loves her children enough—or more terribly, does she love them too much? Do her looks cause embarrassment—or even more terrifying, is she so attractive her sons begin to desire her and her daughters begin to hate her. If she is unmarried, the challenges are increased. Her singleness indicates she has rejected, or has been rejected by her mates. Beyond her door, all authority is in the hands of people who do not look or think or act like her and her children. Teachers, doctors, sales clerks, librarians, policemen, welfare workers are white and exert control over her family's moods, conditions and personality; yet within the home, she must display a right to rule which at any moment, by a knock at the door, or a ring of the telephone can be exposed as false. In the faces of these contradictions, she must be a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged. (37)

Apart from the circumstances Angelou cannot escape, she makes choices as a single woman that affect her relationship with her son. Because she chooses to fulfill her sexual desires rather than deny them, she brings men and even "fathers" into Guy's life, inevitably causing emotional tumult for both of them. When Angelou settles down with a man, partly because she imagines he will be a good father to Guy and a good role model, the experience, though interesting, is a disaster in emotional terms. An African who is involved in politics and works for black rights internationally, Vus is a caricature of a sexist male. Angelou finds herself in conflict: "I wanted to be a wife and to create a beautiful home to make my man happy, but there was more to life than being a diligent maid with a permanent pussy" (143).

Vus begins to have affairs, which he justifies as his "right," spends money he doesn't have, and brings collectors and disgrace to Angelou and her son. He exerts or tries to exert control over Angelou and prevent her from working, even when they can't pay their bills. Enraged when he learns that she has taken a job as associate editor of the Arab Observer, he rages at her, "You took a job without consulting me? Are you a man?" (226). For a time, Guy, coming into adulthood, turns away from Angelou and begins to follow Vus's cues; to see her, in her words, as a "kind and competent family retainer." He begins to incorporate Vus's machismo more surely than his politics. Thus the experiment of marriage and the family fails for Angelou and finally for Guy.

The last image that Angelou evokes of herself as mother may seem contradictory. After Guy is in a very serious car accident, he lies before her unconscious:

I looked at my son, my real life. He was born to me when I was seventeen. I had taken him away from my mother's house when he was two months old, and except for a year I spent in Europe without him, and a month when he was stolen by a deranged woman, we had spent our lives together. My grown life lay stretched before me, stiff as a pine board, in a strange country, blood caked on his face and clotted on his clothes. (263)

When he recovers and leaves for college, she comments, "My reaction was in direct contrast with his excitement. I was going to be alone, also, for the first time. I was in my mother's house at his birth, and we had been together ever since. Sometimes we lived with others or they lived with us, but he had always been the powerful axle of my life" (271). Yet, when he walks out the door, she describes something different from what we have been led to expect:

I closed the door and held my breath. Waiting for the wave of emotion to surge over me, knock me down, take my breath away. Nothing happened. I didn't feel bereft or desolate. I didn't feel lonely or abandoned. I sat down, still waiting. The first thought that came to me, perfectly formed and promising, was "At last, I'll be able to eat the whole breast of a roast chicken by myself." (272)

This move from sadness to contemplated pleasure strikes me not as contradiction or ambivalence. It rather suggests the balance and complexity of feeling that exists where love and life are full, as both are when presented in Angelou's story. Angelou clearly struggled with maternal guilt as her son was growing up. 2 This feeling at times must have masked the kind of maternal rage that Adrienne Rich describes so powerfully in Of Woman Born. The close of the novel suggests further the way Angelou tends to sublimate that feeling in humor.

Angelou's image of herself as daughter and mother within a kind of matriarchal structure, an image that shows her chafing when she is brought within partriarchal bounds, simply falls outside Winnicott's system. While Chodorow's analysis of the relationships of mothers and daughters may not be entirely irrelevant, it is hard to squeeze this story into psychoanalytic theories. When Angelou and her mother have needed to or wanted to, they have been able to give up their roles as nurturers without disabling and overwhelming guilt or sadness. As for Chodorow's solution to what she views as an unfortunate entanglement of mothers and children, there are no men drawn in this story who are willing and capable participants as childrearers. The conflicts between autonomy and dependence that Dorothy Litwin describes seem for the most part a luxury in terms of this story. Autonomy is survival and is not something to be chosen or rejected. Susan Spieler's analysis is more to the point, for Angelou's portrait of herself and her mother subverts the categories of masculine and feminine. Because Angelou and her mother are heterosexual, the analysis in Lesbian Psychologies introduces issues that do not pertain to them. Yet the attention to class, race, and difference that those essays incorporate may alert us to the perspective we must bring to reading the mother in this autobiography.

To understand the roles, feelings, conflicts, and possibilities of mothers, we must turn to the fiction and autobiography of women writers, and to women's individual essays, and to collections of their writing. Psychoanalysts must learn to listen to mothers as well as to children and recollections of childhood. They must consider the limits of psychoanalytic understanding of class and race and reach for a broader perspective. They must sharpen the analysis of gender issues that some psychoanalysts have begun to elaborate. At this time, stories of mothers may enrich psychoanalytic theories more than these theories may aid us in interpreting mother's stories.

• Quotations from The Heart of a Woman, by Maya Angelou. Copyright 1981 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
• In "Singing the Black Mother: Maya Angelou and Autobiographical Continuity," Mary Jane Lupton discusses Angelou's expression of maternal guilt in autobiographical works written before The Heart of a Woman.

LYMAN B. HAGEN (ESSAY DATE 1997)

SOURCE: Hagen, Lyman B. "The Autobiographies: The Heart of a Woman. "In Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou, pp. 96-117. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997. In the following essay, Hagen examines such themes within The Heart of a Woman as motherhood, responsibility, family, self-identity, and independence.

The title of Angelou's fourth autobiography, while less striking or oblique than titles of her preceding books, is taken from a poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson, a Harlem Renaissance writer. This poem is marvelously appropriate as it refers to a Caged Bird, thus providing linkage with Angelou's initial series volume. This addition to the ongoing story of Maya Angelou looks into the heart of the maturing woman and focuses on relationships. The relationships with her son, with men, with her racial responsibilities, and with her writing are the thrust of the narrative. These are the normal, everyday concerns, less venturesome and startling. Racial confrontations such as that of Angelou with white school authorities and that of the renowned Billie Holiday versus a nondescript white woman fulfill elements of the black canon of autobiography and therefore discount any drift from the interest of her people. Thus The Heart of a Woman (1981) is truly a story of an African-American female. It does not depart much from the factual happenings except for dramatic effect. It is a far more sober assessment of her wide ranging activities.

The Heart of a Woman does not disappoint the Angelou readers who are accustomed to crisp, poetic prose interspersed with "down home" homilies. It is another professionally written work, exhibiting increasing literary competence. The appellation "poetic temperament" holds as true here as in her other books. The prose is captivating; it maintains the richness and texture of her style. The metaphors are still striking: "Time wrapped itself around every word." 1 Angelou continues to use scatology to capture individual speech practices. The essence of Billie Holiday cannot be captured without quoting her colorful, uncensored responses. Angelou is proud of Billie Holiday's friendship and would never demean it by scrubbing street-smart Billie's less than sanitary language. What you hear is what she is.

Angelou fictionalizes dialogue to re-create a sense of place and a sense of history. She incorporates fantasy to reveal her illusions and unfulfilled desires and to acknowledge her lack of control over the future. A degree of fatalism is woven throughout this and other Angelou works. There is a consistent acquiesence to fate. These rhetorical devices are commonly employed by autobiographers for realism and conviction, according to Carol E. Neubauer. 2 Angelou does not stray far from traditional structure.

Critics responded favorably to the professional quality of The Heart of a Woman. Janet B. Blundell calls it "lively, revealing, and worth the reading"; however, she saw a weakness in that it is at times "too chatty and anecdotal." 3 But this is the very crux of Angelou's narratives. They are generally a mosaic of episodes—anecdotes—linked by theme and character. Sheree Crute seems to appreciate this approach and says Angelou "makes the most of her wonderfully unaffected story telling skills." 4 Choice writes that "while (Angelou's) first book remains her best … every book since has been very much worth the reading and pondering." 5 Caged Bird gains much of its strength from an extensive use of folklore, a significant omission in The Heart of a Woman. However, this and other books since Caged Bird are less general in scope. The reviews of all Angelou's books are marked by a uniformity of light praise but great admiration. No critic suggests that any of the works in the series is less than a delight to read. The courage of the author's revelations is always applauded.

The Heart of a Woman, as Singin' and Swingin', entails constant movement. Angelou is still seeking to find an appropriate home for herself and her son. This is made more difficult by her ongoing efforts to define herself. This is another volume covering a lot of geography and growth. Angelou moves from San Francisco to a Sausalito houseboat commune trying out the beatnik life style; thence to ultra conservative Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. Lack of acceptance and racial attacks send her off to the Harlem Writers Guild in New York. She restlessly followed her fate to London to Egypt to Ghana, where the book ends. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, Angelou inserts her rich descriptive passages about these places visited. These descriptions enhance the specific experiences recalled as well as the general credibility of the narrative and also show an appreciation of the diversity of the world. This reflects Angelou's growing familiarity with an enlarging sphere and her comfort within it.

The Heart of a Woman picks up Angelou's story after she has left the cast of the European traveling company of Porgy and Bess and returned from Hawaii to the night club circuit in America. The book begins at the precise end of its predecessor. Angelou is still the unmarried African-American female with a rapidly growing now adolescent son to support. She is principally concerned during the seven years covered by The Heart of a Woman with her relationship with her son—her love of him and her pride in his developing personality and character. Uppermost in her mind is his welfare and helping him cope as a black young man-child trying to mature in a generally unsympathetic white world. He has been taken care of on occasion by others, but Angelou continuously accepts motherhood and its attendant responsibility to monitor his development. This sense of duty incorporates a family relationship, and Angelou is concerned with establishing a complete family, which includes a father figure for Guy.

This quest for family brings Angelou to describe her encounters with a number of lovers and potential fathers. In the time-frame of the book, she reports on relationships with several men, the last of which is her ill-fated common law marriage to her second "husband," Vusumzi Make, a colorful African radical. This is the liaison that carried her to London, Egypt and Ghana. She eventually finds Make to be a less than desirable role model for Guy and a trying mate for herself. They part after a few years.

A large portion of the book concerns involvement with the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. Here, she seizes the opportunity to express her pride in her race and in its struggle for equality and acceptance. Like Norman Mailer in his Armies in the Night, Angelou serves as an informed personal historian of the moral crisis of the period—racial injustice—that was of popular concern. She is an enthusiastic participant in the movement and not just an outside observer. Daisy Aldan's previously quoted concern regarding the book's "… hostility … toward all white people" 6 is an outgrowth of the barrage of negative racial experiences Angelou relates. Every possible slur, slight, and affront is visited upon Angelou and her son solely because of their color. This emphasis also seems to be a justification of the motivations of the black activists who people the book. The more moderate views of Martin Luther King are reported too, and with great admiration. When Angelou chooses to work with an organized group, it is the Southern Leadership followers of Doctor King.

In the early books, Angelou's mother and grandmother command a considerable amount of attention. Grandmother Henderson has died and is now rarely mentioned, but Angelou still calls on her mother when she needs reinforcement. Vivian provides her with pragmatic advice in the form of proverbs derived from Mother Wit: "Ask for what you want and be prepared to pay for what you get" ( HW [ The Heart of a Woman ] 29), a statement that encourages Angelou to be self-reliant and not to expect handouts. This and a lengthy Br'er Rabbit story are the few touches of folklore in The Heart of a Woman. This type of imbedded preachment covertly conveys its message.

Angelou accepts the demands of womanhood and is fiercely independent, but is grateful for her mother's support, be it financial or moral. This does not diminish her strength or independence, but rather increases them by knowing that there is a safety net in the person of Vivian Baxter. Angelou does take her son and move away from Vivian's immediate vigilance. Overcoming racial discrimination, she seeks greater independence and middle-class respectability in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

Angelou's love of her son and involvement in his upbringing cause her to realize the special problems faced by African-American mothers when raising their children. Authority, she notes, is "in the hands of people who do not look or think like the (black mother) and her children. Teachers, doctors, sales clerks, librarians, policemen, welfare workers are white and exert control over her family's moods, conditions and personality" ( HW 37). The African-American parent of that time is obliged to adhere to the existing and white societal coda. The red tape and restrictions may chafe as reported by Angelou, but they maintain order of sorts for all persons.

In spite of the problems articulated in The Heart of a Woman, Angelou succeeds in raising a son who turns out well. She does not fail him, and others in her position can thus hope for the same. One particular problem faced by single parent Angelou is that Guy has been hurt by the brief but frequent family separations. Having endured her own feelings of betrayal when passed to different relatives, Angelou knows she must compensate so Guy does not harbor resentment to her and turn to outsiders for guidance. She realizes how much Guy feels the need of a father. It was also painful for him to be a young man "who had lived with the certainty of white insolence and the unsureness of moving from school to school, coast to coast, and … made to find his way through another continent and new cultures" ( HW 267). Therefore the determined search for family and father is so much a part of The Heart of a Woman that it cannot be isolated from the situational responses.

This search allows the introduction of a variety of male characters and allows Angelou to express normal sexual interests. This is an accepted topic of the culture of the time. Angelou reports on a series of lovers associated with her search for a suitable husband and father. Most fall short of her requirements. Angelou does try throughout the book to balance an honest appreciation of ordinary sexual adventures with the wholesome and desirable goal of stability. This is another message of hope for those young women disturbed by their sexuality and unable to come to terms with desires and expectations.

Angelou writes in this book much more graphically about her own sexual activities than in any of the preceding volumes. She is at an age and stage where this is natural and acceptable. One may tend to wonder how much of this detailed interest is real or romanticized. Her admission of shouting in the bedroom and such personal pleasure seems to be atypical material. In previous books, Angelou appears to contradict any extreme preoccupation with base pleasures. For example, in Gather Together in My Name, she imagines that the ideal husband made desultory love a few times and never asked for more and this was acceptable. In another instance, she said physical sex only once a month was satisfactory. Her stance was quite Victorian. This expectation may be closer to her real feelings than her "liberated" statements. Each of the contradictory positions may, however, merely reflect thinking of a particular time or circumstance. At the time of her writing The Heart of a Woman, more liberal and open talk of human interactions was developing. African-American female writers were not only taking pride in their race but also in themselves as women. 7 The "liberated" modern woman was free to proclaim that she too had sexual urges. Sometimes women seemed inclined to outdo each other for sheer shock value. Frank talk about sex seemed to be almost requisite for a commercially successful book of that era. Despite relating various affairs, Angelou always advocates monogamy and stresses fidelity in relationships. She honors commitment.

Angelou and Guy move from Los Angeles to New York. It was here that she met many of the men she discusses. Several friends had encouraged Angelou to pursue a writing career. She was accepted by the Harlem Writers Guild which was composed of black writers both neophyte and established. Angelou's work was roundly criticized, but the tough lessons provided needed direction. Her night club background supplied a living. Being in the cauldron of New York allows much of The Heart of a Woman to be devoted to the major and minor players of the Civil Rights movement and political activism of that period. Angelou's role as personal historian covers both the Civil Rights movement and the black literary movement. She meets and writes about such national figures as Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and other prominent African Americans caught up in the push for equal treatment for their race. The inclusion of these prominent familiar figures allows for their lessons and messages to be passed along unobtrusively. When Angelou is a coordinator of the SCLC, she is totally involved in the cause. She is an excellent organizer and coordinates volunteer efforts, raises funds, keeps the office running, and attends innumerable functions with groups of various names. All this is for the purpose of furthering the advancement and recognition of black people throughout the world. She has been faulted by some for not being sufficiently involved in the "cause." This is not true; she just chose to be less strident. Her efforts were eminently successful, and her contributions to civil rights causes were effective. Together with Godfrey Cambridge she wrote and directed a well-received musical revue, Cabaret for Freedom, which was intended to raise funds and consciousness.

Angelou's sure ear allows her to re-create fictionally scenes of encounters with people with an uncanny touch of reality. She mimics dialogues with notable personages with ease. According to several informed friends, her descriptions of exchanges with Martin Luther King or Malcolm X capture the very essence of the responses they would give, although they are not quoted directly. Angelou is attuned to the intent of a message as well as its delivery.

Many Civil Rights advocates were not shy about acknowledging their African heritage. It is quite natural for them to mingle with and offer their support to Cuban and African Freedom Fighters. These foreign activists solicited assistance and appeared at many related functions. It is therefore not surprising that Maya Angelou aligns herself emotionally as a helpmate to one of these, Vusumzi Make, and fantasizes that together they can free all of Africa from white oppression. This is an unusual lapse from reality for Angelou. She is quite taken with Make and he steps into the role of the strong male she has been seeking. He relates well with Guy, relieving Angelou of sole concern. This largely influences her acceptance of him.

Throughout The Heart of a Woman, Angelou continues her indictment of the white power structure and her protests against racial injustice. She again re-creates scenes wherein the dialogue allows comment about shoddy white behavior. She sometimes utilizes flashbacks to youthful indignities endured and sometimes she relates experiences of friends and colleagues. The sketch of a scene involving Mother Vivian at the Desert Hotel in Fresno, California, is a classic. Vivian's every move and word is calculated to instruct Maya and deflate the ignorant whites they encounter. Vivian Baxter displays the ultimate in panache and carries off a put-down of her antagonists with dignity and distinction. Public negative treatment of African-American people validates their sometimes radical responses. The references to earlier affronts and reactions serve to provide continuity to the series.

Not all attitudes expressed regarding whites are negative. Angelou learns from Martin Luther King that he feels that there are many "white people who love right" ( HW 94). Dr. King was optimistic. He had travelled to and from jails across the south and marched and preached throughout the United States, frequently with whites at his side or in his audience. He felt both white and black people were changing. Angelou herself was surprised by the white volunteers at the SCLC New York office. Although Angelou harbored a suspicion of white liberals, she was impressed by the honesty of actress Shelley Winters who ardently wanted only a peaceful future for her daughter in a mixed society. This idealism was somewhat misplaced; inequality and turmoil are extant today.

In relating experiences with whites, Angelou never offers solutions to the problems exposed. She simply reports, reacts, or dramatizes events. The closest she comes to an analysis or solution for racial problems is the time when she repeats Vivian Baxter's statement that "Black folks can't change because white folks won't change" ( HW 29). Nevertheless the times were exciting and hopes ran high for progress toward equality.

Angelou's continuing role as a literary historian for the time of the book provides an opportunity to report on some African-American literature that is being published, despite her observation that it is difficult to get black literature accepted and printed. This is a somewhat inaccurate assessment, as many African-American writers were beginning to be published and publicized. Actually it was a time when book sales were in decline and all writers were encountering difficulties. There was a vast amount of publishable material and competition was keen. Talent, like seeping water, found someplace to go, and various movements enjoyed the efforts of the best and the brightest.

Vusumzi Make is called to London to present his cause and Angelou decides she will accompany him. She is committed to freedom for Africa and mixes with black women from many nations. The women did not actively participate in the conference but many exchanged ideas and objectives for their nation-states and people.

Make tells Angelou to find a New York apartment for himself, herself, and Guy. A family of sorts is born. They live well as befits a country's representative. Angelou keeps up her Harlem Writers Guild contacts and takes a leading role in Genet's The Blacks. Disturbing phone calls and events intrude upon the solidarity of the marriage, but Angelou was pleased with Guy's progress. This outweighed all other things. They are suddenly evicted from their New York apartment. Angelou and Guy make a quick visit to Vivian in San Francisco while Make arranges to pack them off to Cairo.

For a time, the excitement of the exotic and the foreign mask the realities for Angelou. She soon finds, however, that Make is not faithful or truthful or capable of supporting them.

Initially in Cairo, Angelou is exposed to an increasingly sumptuous life style. But again, reality imposes, and mounting debts become burdensome. Work, to Angelou, becomes a necessity. A meeting with the president of a news service leads to employment for Angelou as an assistant editor for a new magazine, the Arab Observer. She avidly pursues knowledge of her new career and accepts her disillusionment with Make. Angelou took on additional work writing commentary for Radio Egypt. An inevitable breakup with Make left her heading to Ghana to enroll Guy in the university in Accra. She shakes off another betrayal by a man and is prepared to accept a job offer in Liberia and to loosen the ties with Guy and let each move along independently. Fate, in the form of an auto accident, intervened. Guy was seriously injured while with friends. Angelou was needed at his side and for a long recuperative period. Friends managed to get her a job at the University as an administrative assistant. She tends to Guy until he once again can function on his own. He moves into a university dormitory to finally begin his independent life. Angelou stays near to quietly launch this venture toward full manhood for her son. She is, however, contemplating following her own single personhood.

The Heart of a Woman follows Angelou's established pattern of ending on a strong note of hope. Angelou and her son Guy have advanced to the point where each of them can move toward divergent, independent paths. Angelou can relish a sense of achievement as Guy looks forward eagerly to his future. She can anticipate a future for herself centered on herself. Again closure brings the cycle to a place that portends a new life for both Guy and Maya, a re-birth: a closing door and an opening door. Both characters are now citizens of a large world. Faithful to the ongoing themes of survival, sense of self, and continuing education, The Heart of a Woman moves its central figures to a point of full personhood. Its light humor and bantering carries a message of achievement.

• Maya Angelou, The Heart of a Woman (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 9. Hereafter cited in the text as HW.
• Carol E. Neubauer, "Displacement and Autobiographical Style in Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman, " Black American Literature Forum 17 (1983): 123-129.
• Janet B. Blundell, Library Journal 106, October 1981, 1919.
• Sheree Crute, MS 10, July 1981, 27.
• Choice 19, January 1982, 621.
• Daisy Aldan, World Literature Today 56, 4 (Autumn, 1982): 697.
• Estelle C. Jelinek, The Tradition of Women's Autobiography (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986), 149.

"Maya Angelou - The Heart of a Woman." Feminism in Literature, edited by Jessica Bomarito, Jeffrey W. Hunter, Vol. 5. Gale Cengage, 2005, 26 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/maya-angelou/critical-essays/angelou-maya-137937#critical-essays-angelou-maya-137937-title-commentary-heart-woman>

Primary Sources

SOURCE: Angelou, Maya. “Woman Work.” In And Still I Rise, pp. 31-2. New York: Random House, 1978. In the following poem, the narrator enumerates her many daily chores, juxtaposing them against pleas to Nature as her source of relief from the domestic burdens. I’ve got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry The baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I’ve got the shirts to press The tots to dress The cane to be cut I gotta clean up this hut Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick. Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again. Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky Till I can rest again. Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight. Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You’re all that I can call my own.

"Maya Angelou - Primary Sources." Feminism in Literature, edited by Jessica Bomarito, Jeffrey W. Hunter, Vol. 5. Gale Cengage, 2005, 26 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/maya-angelou/critical-essays/angelou-maya-137937#critical-essays-angelou-maya-137937-maya-angelou-poem-date-1978>

General Commentary

SOURCE: Lupton, Mary Jane. "Singing the Black Mother: Maya Angelou and Autobiographical Continuity." Black American Literature Forum 24, no. 2 (summer 1990): 257-76. In the following essay, Lupton analyzes the plot, characters, and structure of Angelou's first five autobiographies, noting the themes of hope and renewal at the conclusion of each work. Now my problem I have is I love life, I love living life and I love the art of living, so I try to live my life as a poetic adventure, everything I do from the way I keep my house, cook, make my husband happy, or welcome my friends, raise my son; everything is part of a large canvas I am creating, I am living beneath. (Chrisman interview 46)

This energetic statement from a 1977 interview with Maya Angelou merely hints at the variety of roles and experiences which sweep through what is presently her five-volume autobiographical series: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), TheHeartofaWoman (1981), and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). 1 It is fitting that Angelou, so adept at metaphor, should compare her "poetic adventure" to the act of painting: "… everything is part of a large canvas I am creating, I am living beneath." Like an unfinished painting, the autobiographical series is an ongoing creation, in a form that rejects the finality of a restricting frame. Its continuity is achieved through characters who enter the picture, leave, and reappear, and through certain interlaced themes—self-acceptance, race, men, work, separation, sexuality, motherhood. All the while Angelou lives "beneath," recording the minutest of details in a constantly shifting environment and giving attention to the "mundane, though essential, ordinary moments of life" (O'Neale 34).

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first and most highly praised volume in the series. It begins with the humiliations of childhood and ends with the birth of a child. At its publication, critics, not anticipating a series, readily appreciated the clearly developed narrative form. In 1973, for example, Sidonie Smith discussed the "sense of an ending" in Caged Bird as it relates to Angelou's acceptance of Black womanhood: "With the birth of her child Maya is herself born into a mature engagement with the forces of life" (374). But with the introduction in 1974 of Angelou's second autobiographical volume, Gather Together in My Name, the tight structure appeared to crumble; childhood experiences were replaced by episodes which a number of critics consider disjointed or bizarre. Selwyn Cudjoe, for instance, noted the shift from the "intense solidity and moral center" in Caged Bird to the "conditions of alienation and fragmentation " in Gather Together, conditions which affect its organization and its quality, making it "conspicuously weak" (17, 20). Lynn Z. Bloom found the sequel "less satisfactory" because the narrator "abandons or jeopardizes the maturity, honesty, and intuitive good judgment toward which she had been moving in Caged Bird " (5). Crucial to Bloom's judgment is her concept of movement toward, which insinuates the achievement of an ending.

The narrator, as authentic recorder of the life, indeed changes during the second volume, as does the book's structure; the later volumes abandon the tighter form of Caged Bird for an episodic series of adventures whose so-called "fragments" are reflections of the kind of chaos found in actual living. In altering the narrative structure, Angelou shifts the emphasis from herself as an isolated consciousness to herself as a Black woman participating in diverse experiences among a diverse class of peoples. As the world of experience widens, so does the canvas.

What distinguishes, then, Angelou's autobiographical method from more conventional autobiographical forms is her very denial of closure. The reader of autobiography expects a beginning, a middle, and an end—as occurs in Caged Bird. She or he also expects a central experience, as we indeed are given in the extraordinary rape sequence of Caged Bird. But Angelou, by continuing her narrative, denies the form and its history, creating from each ending a new beginning, relocating the center to some luminous place in a volume yet to be. Stretching the autobiographical canvas, she moves forward: from being a child; to being a mother; to leaving the child; to having the child, in the fifth volume, achieve his independence. Nor would I be so unwise as to call the fifth volume the end. For Maya Angelou, now a grandmother, has already published a moving, first-person account in Woman's Day of the four years of anguish surrounding the maternal kidnapping of her grandson Colin.

Throughout the more episodic volumes, the theme of motherhood remains a unifying element, with Momma Henderson being Angelou's link with the Black folk tradition—as George Kent, Elizabeth Schultz, and other critics have mentioned. Since traditional solidity of development is absent, one must sometimes search through three or four books to trace Vivian Baxter's changing lovers, Maya Angelou's ambivalence towards motherhood, or her son Guy's various reactions to his non-traditional upbringing. Nonetheless, the volumes are intricately related through a number of essential elements: the ambivalent autobiographical voice, the flexibility of structure to echo the life process, the intertextual commentary on character and theme, and the use of certain recurring patterns to establish both continuity and continuation. I have isolated the mother-child pattern as a way of approaching the complexity of Angelou's methods. One could as well select other kinds of interconnected themes: the absent and/or substitute father, the use of food as a psycho-sexual symbol, the dramatic/symbolic use of images of staring or gazing, and other motifs which establish continuity within and among the volumes.

Stephen Butterfield says of Caged Bird : "Continuity is achieved by the contact of mother and child, the sense of life begetting life that happens automatically in spite of all confusion—perhaps also because of it" (213). The consistent yet changing connection for Maya Angelou through the four subsequent narratives is that same contact of mother and child—with herself and her son Guy; with herself and her own mother, Vivian Baxter; with herself and her paternal grandmother; and, finally, with the child-mother in herself.

Moreover, in extending the traditional one-volume form, Angelou has metaphorically mothered another book. The "sense of life begetting life" at the end of Caged Bird can no longer signal the conclusion of the narrative. The autobiographical moment has been reopened and expanded; Guy's birth can now be seen symbolically as the birth of another text. In a 1975 interview with Carol Benson, Angelou uses such a birthing metaphor in describing the writing of Gather Together : "If you have a child, it takes nine months. It took me three-and-a-half years to write Gather Together, so I couldn't just drop it" (19). This statement makes emphatic what in the autobiographies are much more elusive comparisons between creative work and motherhood; after a three-anda-half-year pregnancy she gives birth to Gather Together, indicating that she must have planned the conception of the second volume shortly after the 1970 delivery of Caged Bird.

Each of the five volumes explores, both literally and metaphorically, the significance of motherhood. I will examine this theme from two specific perspectives: first, Angelou's relationship to her mother and to mother substitutes, especially to Momma Henderson; second, Angelou's relationship to her son as she struggles to define her own role as mother/artist. Throughout the volumes Angelou moves backwards and forwards, from connection to conflict. This dialectic of Black mother-daughterhood, introduced in the childhood narrative, enlarges and contracts during the series, finding its fullest expression in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas.

In flux, in defiance of chronological time, the mother-child configuration forms the basic pattern against which other relationships are measured and around which episodes and volumes begin or end. Motherhood also provides the series with a literary unity, as Angelou shifts positions—from mother to granddaughter to child—in a non-ending text that, through its repetitions of maternal motifs, provides an ironic comment on her own sense of identity. For Angelou, despite her insistence on mother love, is trapped in the conflicts between working and mothering, independence and nurturing—conflicts that echo her ambivalence towards her mother, Vivian Baxter, and her apparent sanctification of Grandmother Henderson, the major adult figure in Caged Bird.

Annie Henderson is a solid, God-fearing, economically independent woman whose general store in Stamps, Arkansas, is the "lay center of activities in town" ( Caged Bird 5), much as Annie is the moral center of the family. According to Mildred A. Hill-Lubin, the grandmother, both in Africa and in America, "has been a significant force in the stability and the continuity of the Black family and the community" (257). Hill-Lubin selects Annie Henderson as her primary example of the strong grandmother in African-American literature—the traditional preserver of the family, the source of folk wisdom, and the instiller of values within the Black community. Throughout Caged Bird Maya has ambivalent feelings for this awesome woman, whose values of self-determination and personal dignity gradually chip away at Maya's dreadful sense of being "shit color" (17). As a self-made woman, Annie Henderson has the economic power to lend money to whites; as a practical Black woman, however, she is convinced that whites cannot be directly confronted: "If she had been asked and had chosen to answer the question of whether she was cowardly or not, she would have said that she was a realist" (39). To survive in a racist society, Momma Henderson has had to develop a realistic strategy of submission that Maya finds unacceptable. Maya, in her need to re-image her grandmother, creates a metaphor that places Momma's power above any apparent submissiveness: Momma "did an excellent job of sagging from her waist down, but from the waist up she seemed to be pulling for the top of the oak tree across the road" (24).

There are numerous episodes, both in Caged Bird and Gather Together, which involve the conflict between Maya and her grandmother over how to deal with racism. When taunted by three "powhitetrash" girls, Momma quietly sings a hymn; Maya, enraged, would like to have a rifle ( Caged Bird 23-27). Or, when humiliated by a white dentist who'd rather put his "hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's" (160), Annie is passive; Maya subsequently invents a fantasy in which Momma runs the dentist out of town. In the italicized dream text (161-62), Maya endows her grandmother with superhuman powers; Momma magically changes the dentist's nurse into a bag of chicken seed. In reality the grandmother has been defeated and humiliated, her only reward a mere ten dollars in interest for a loan she had made to the dentist (164). In Maya's fantasy Momma's " eyes were blazing like live coals and her arms had doubled themselves in length "; in actuality she "looked tired" (162).

This richly textured passage is rendered from the perspective of an imaginative child who recreates her grandmother—but in a language that ironically transforms Annie Henderson from a Southern Black storekeeper into an eloquent heroine from a romantic novel: " Her tongue had thinned and the words rolled off well enunciated. " Instead of the silent "nigra" (159) of the actual experience, Momma Henderson is now the articulate defender of her granddaughter against the stuttering dentist. Momma Henderson orders the "contemptuous scoundrel " to leave Stamps " now and herewith. " The narrator eventually lets Momma speak normally, then comments: " (She could afford to slip into the vernacular because she had such eloquent command of English.) "

This fantasy is the narrator's way of dealing with her ambivalence towards Momma Henderson—a woman who throughout Caged Bird represents to Maya both strength and weakness, both generosity and punishment, both affection and the denial of affection. Here her defender is " ten feet tall with eight-foot arms, " quite capable, to recall the former tree image, of reaching the top of an oak from across the road. Momma's physical transformation in the dream text also recalls an earlier description: "I saw only her power and strength. She was taller than any woman in my personal world, and her hands were so large they could span my head from ear to ear" (38). In the dentist fantasy, Maya eliminates all of Momma Henderson's "negative" traits—submissiveness, severity, religiosity, sternness, down-home speech. It would seem that Maya is so shattered by her grandmother's reaction to Dentist Lincoln, so destroyed by her illusions of Annie Henderson's power in relationship to white people, that she compensates by reversing the true situation and having the salivating dentist be the target of Momma's wrath. Significantly, this transformation occurs immediately before Momma Henderson tells Maya and Bailey that they are going to California. Its position in the text gives it the impression of finality. Any negative attitudes become submerged, only to surface later, in Gather Together, as aspects of Angelou's own ambiguity towards race, power, and identity.

In Caged Bird Momma Henderson had hit Maya with a switch for unknowingly taking the Lord's name in vain, "like whitefolks do" (87). Similarly, in Gather Together Annie slaps her granddaughter after Maya, on a visit to Stamps, verbally assaults two white saleswomen. In a clash with Momma Henderson that is both painful and final, Maya argues for "the principle of the thing," and Momma slaps her. 2 Surely, Momma's slap is well intended; she wishes to protect Maya from "lunatic cracker boys" and men in white sheets, from all of the insanity of racial prejudice (78-79). The "new" Maya, who has been to the city and found a sense of independence, is caught in the clash between her recently acquired "principles" and Momma's fixed ideology. Thus the slap—but also the intention behind it—will remain in Maya's memory long after the mature Angelou has been separated from Annie Henderson's supervision. Momma makes Maya and the baby leave Stamps, again as a precaution: "Momma's intent to protect me had caused her to hit me in the face, a thing she had never done, and to send me away to where she thought I'd be safe" (79). Maya departs on the train, never to see her grandmother again.

In the third volume Angelou, her marriage falling apart, is recuperating from a difficult appendectomy. When she tells her husband Tosh that she wants to go to Stamps until she is well, he breaks the news that Annie Henderson died the day after Angelou's operation. In recording her reaction to her grandmother's death, Angelou's style shifts from its generally more conversational tone and becomes intense, religious, emotional:

Ah, Momma. I had never looked at death before, peered into its yawning chasm for the face of the beloved. For days my mind staggered out of balance. I reeled on a precipice of knowledge that even if I were rich enough to travel all over the world, I would never find Momma. If I were as good as God's angels and as pure as the Mother of Christ, I could never have Momma's rough slow hands pat my cheek or braid my hair. Death to the young is more than that undiscovered country; despite its inevitability, it is a place having reality only in song or in other people's grief. ( Singin' and Swingin' 41)

This moving farewell, so atypical of Angelou's more worldly autobiographical style, emerges directly from a suppressed religious experience which Angelou narrates earlier in the same text—a "secret crawl through neighborhood churches" (28). These visits, done without her white husband's knowledge, culminate in Angelou's being saved at the Evening Star Baptist Church. During her purification, Angelou cries for her family: "For my fatherless son, who was growing up with a man who would never, could never, understand his need for manhood; for my mother, whom I admired but didn't understand; for my brother, whose disappointment with life was drawing him relentlessly into the clutches of death; and, finally, I cried for myself, long and loudly" (33). Annie Henderson is strangely absent from this list of family for whom Angelou cries during the short-lived conversion. But only a few pages later, Angelou remembers her grandmother's profound importance, in the elegiac passage on Momma's death.

In this passage Angelou creates a funeral song which relies on the Black gospel tradition, on the language of Bible stories, and on certain formative literary texts. 3 Words like chasm, precipice, angels, and beloved have Sunday School overtones, a kind of vocabulary Angelou more typically employs for humorous effects, as in the well-known portrait of Sister Monroe ( Caged Bird 32-37). 4 The gospel motif, so dominant in the passage, seems directly related to Angelou's rediscovery of the Black spiritual: "The spirituals and gospel songs were sweeter than sugar. I wanted to keep my mouth full of them and the sounds of my people singing fell like sweet oil in my ears" ( Singin' and Swingin' 28). During her conversion experience Angelou lies on the floor while four women march round her singing, "Soon one morning when death comes walking in my room" (33); in another spiritual the singers prepare for the "walk to Jerusalem" (31). These and similar hymns about death had been significant elements of the "folk religious tradition" of Momma Henderson (Kent 76). Now, for a brief time, they become part of the mature Angelou's experience. That their revival is almost immediately followed by the death of Momma Henderson accounts, to a large extent, for Angelou's intensely religious narrative.

Angelou's singing of the Black grandmother in this passage contains other refrains from the past, most notably her desire to have "Momma's rough slow hands pat my cheek." These are the same hands that slapped Maya for having talked back to the white saleswomen—an event that was physically to separate grandmother and granddaughter ( Gather Together 86-88). That final slap, softened here, becomes a loving pat on the cheek akin to a moment in Caged Bird in which Maya describes her grandmother's love as a touch of the hand: "Just the gentle pressure of her rough hand conveyed her own concern and assurance to me" (96). Angelou's tone throughout the elegy is an attempt, through religion, to reconcile her ambivalence towards Momma Henderson by sharing her traditions. Angelou wishes to be "as good as God's angels" and as "pure as the Mother of Christ," metaphors which seem to represent Angelou's effort to close off the chasm between herself and Momma Henderson through the use of a common language, the language of the church-going grandmother.

As Momma Henderson, the revered grandmother, recedes from the narrative, Angelou's natural mother gains prominence. By the third volume Maya Angelou and Vivian Baxter have established a closeness that somewhat compensates for Maya's having been sent off to Stamps as a child, a situation so painful that Maya had imagined her mother dead:

I could cry anytime I wanted by picturing my mother (I didn't quite know what she looked like) lying in her coffin.…The face was brown, like a big O, and since I couldn't fill in the features I printed M O T H E R across the O, and tears would fall down my cheeks like warm milk. ( Caged Bird 42-43)

Like Maya's fantasy of her grandmother and Dentist Lincoln, the above passage is an imaginative revision of reality, Maya's way to control the frustrations produced by Vivian's rejection. The images of the dream text invoke romance fiction and Amazonian strength. Here the images concern, first, the artist who fills in the empty canvas (the O) with print; second, the mother-like child who cries tears of "warm milk" in sympathy for her imagined dead mother. These interlaced metaphors of writing and nurturance appear frequently in the continuing text, as Angelou explores her relationships with mothers and children.

When Maya is eight years old, she and Bailey visit their mother in St. Louis, where Maya discovers her exquisite beauty: "To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rain-bow.…She was too beautiful to have children" ( Caged Bird 49-50). Ironically, this mother "too beautiful to have children" is to a large degree responsible for her own child's brutal rape. Vivian's beauty attracts a lover, Mr. Freeman, who is constantly in the house waiting for a woman who is not there, and he "uses Angelou as an extension of her mother" to satisfy his sexual urges (Demetrakopoulos 198). It could also be suggested that Vivian uses Maya, somehow knowing that in her own absence Maya will keep her lover amused. When Maya becomes ill, Vivian responds in a motherly manner: making broth, cooking Cream of Wheat, taking Maya's temperature, calling a doctor. After she discovers the rape, Vivian sends Maya to a hospital, bringing her flowers and candy ( Caged Bird 69).

It is Grandmother Baxter, however, who sees to it that the rapist is punished; after the trial a policeman comes to the house and informs an unsurprised Mrs. Baxter that Freeman has been kicked to death. Mrs. Baxter is a political figure in St. Louis, a precinct captain and gambler whose light skin and "six mean children" bring her both power and respect (51). Like Momma Henderson, Grandmother Baxter is a source of strength for Maya. Both grandmothers are "strong, independent[,] skillful women who are able to manage their families and to insure their survival in a segregated and hostile society" (Hill-Lubin 260).

Despite their positive influence, however, Maya has ambivalent feelings towards her powerful grandmothers. Maya feels guilty for having lied at the trial, a guilt compounded when she learns of Grandmother Baxter's part in Freeman's murder. To stop the "poison" in her breath, Maya retreats into a "perfect personal silence" which neither of the Baxter women can penetrate, and which Maya breaks only for Bailey (73). The disastrous St. Louis sequence stops abruptly, without transition: "We were on the train going back to Stamps …" (74). Thus, the end of the visit to Grandmother Baxter parallels chapter one of Caged Bird ; a train moves from an urban center to rural Arkansas and to the protection of Annie Henderson.

Back at her grandmother's general store, Maya meets Mrs. Bertha Flowers, "the aristocrat of Black Stamps" (77). This unambivalently positive mother figure helps Maya to recover her oral language through the written text—reading A Tale of Two Cities. In a series of sharp contrasts, the narrator conveys Maya's divided feelings between the sophisticated mother figure, Mrs. Flowers, and her more provincial grandmother. Mrs. Flowers wears gloves, whereas Mrs. Henderson has rough hands. Mrs. Flowers admires white male writers, whereas Annie Henderson will not tolerate them. And in a set of contrasts that occurs almost simultaneously in the text, the literary Mrs. Flowers rewards Maya's language with sweets, whereas the religious grandmother punishes Maya's spoken words ("by the way") without making any effort to explain her anger. In an earlier passage, however, the narrator merges these basic oppositions into a dynamic interaction between two Black women: "I heard the soft-voiced Mrs. Flowers and the textured voice of my grandmother merging and melting. They were interrupted from time to time by giggles that must have come from Mrs. Flowers (Momma never giggled in her life). Then she was gone" (79). These contrasts appear following Maya's failed relationship with Vivian Baxter. They are indications of the split mother—the absent natural mother, the gentle Mrs. Flowers, the forceful Annie Henderson—whose divisions Angelou must articulate if she is to find her own autobiographical voice.

Although most critics have seen a wholeness in Maya's personality at the conclusion of Caged Bird, a few have observed this division of self, which Demetrakopoulos relates to Maya's conflicts about the mother: She "splits the feminine archetype of her mother's cold Venus and her grand-mother's primal warm sheltering Demeter aspects" (198). The Jungian metaphors may jar in this African-American context, but I agree with Demetrakopoulos that at the end of Caged Bird the narrator is split. She is a mother who is herself a child; a daughter torn by her notions of mother love; an uncertain Black teenager hardly capable of the heavy burden of closure placed on her by Sidonie Smith, Stephen Butterfield, Selwyn Cudjoe, and other critics.

Nor is this split mended when Angelou gives birth to Gather Together. Here she introduces herself by way of contradictions: "I was seventeen, very old, embarrassingly young, with a son of two months, and I still lived with my mother and stepfather" (3). Vivian Baxter intermittently takes care of Guy while his young mother works as a cook or shopkeeper. When Momma Henderson forces Maya and her son to leave Stamps, they go immediately to the security of Vivian's fourteen-room house in San Francisco. One gets a strong sense throughout Gather Together of Maya's dependence on her mother. Angelou admires her mother for her self-reliance, her encouragement, and her casual approach to sexuality. She also continues to be captivated by Vivian's beauty, by her "snappy-fingered, head-tossing elegance" ( Singin' and Swingin' 70). On the other hand, she recognizes Vivian Baxter's flaws: "Her own mind was misted by the knowledge of a failing marriage, and the slipping away of the huge sums of money which she had enjoyed and thought her due" ( Gather Together 24).

As for her son, Angelou reveals similar contradictory feelings. After quitting a job to be with Guy, Angelou writes: "A baby's love for his mother is probably the sweetest emotion we can savor" ( Gather Together 90). In a more depressed mood, however, she comments that her child's disposition had "lost its magic to make me happy" (174). What Angelou does in these instances is to articulate her feelings as they convey the reality of her experiences, even though some of these negative emotions might not represent her best side.

The most dramatic mother-child episode in Gather Together occurs while Angelou is working as a prostitute. She leaves Guy with her sitter, Big Mary. Returning for Guy after several days, she learns that her son has been kidnapped. Angelou finally recovers her child, unharmed; at that moment she realizes that they are both separate individuals and that Guy is not merely a "beautiful appendage of myself" (163). Angelou's awareness of the inevitable separation of mother and child, expressed here for the first time, is a theme that she will continue to explore through the remaining autobiographical volumes.

Gather Together closes with Angelou's and Guy's returning to the protection of Vivian Baxter, following Angelou's glimpse at the horrors of heroin addiction: "I had no idea what I was going to make of my life, but I had given a promise and found my innocence. I swore I'd never lose it again" (181). In its tableau of mother, child, and grandmother, this concluding paragraph directly parallels the ending of Caged Bird.

In the next volume, Singin' and Swingin', the closeness between mother and daughter continues. As she matures, Angelou becomes more in control of her feelings and more objective in her assessment of Vivian Baxter's personality. Additionally, the separation of egos that Angelou perceived after locating her kidnapped son would extend to the mother-daughter and grandmother-granddaughter relationships as well. But Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas is, despite its joyful title, a mesh of conflicts—many of them existing within the autobiographical self; many of them involving separations which, although consciously chosen, become unbearable. A number of ambiguities appear throughout the book, especially as they concern the mother-child pattern which is to dominate this and the subsequent texts.

The underlying drama in Singin' and Swingin' is played out between Angelou, the single parent of a young son, and Angelou, the actress who chooses to leave that son with Vivian Baxter in order to tour Europe with the company of Porgy and Bess. Angelou is keenly aware that putting Guy in the care of his grandmother is an echo of her own child-mother experience:

The past revisited. My mother had left me with my grandmother for years and I knew the pain of parting. My mother, like me, had had her motivations, her needs. I did not relish visiting the same anguish on my son, and she, years later, told me how painful our separation was to her. But I had to work and I had to be good. I would make it up to my son and one day would take him to all the places I was going to see. (129)

Angelou's feelings are compounded by the fact that, as a young, Black, single mother, she alone is finally responsible for giving her child a sense of stability. 5 In identifying the conflict between working and mothering, Angelou offers a universalized representation of the turmoil which may arise when a woman attempts to fulfill both roles.

Angelou suffers considerably on the European tour. In some instances her longings for Guy make her sleep fitfully (147) or make her distracted—as when she sees some young Italian boys with "pale-gold complexions" who remind her of her son (148). When she is paged at a Paris train station, Angelou fears that something dreadful has happened to Guy, and she blames herself: "I knew I shouldn't have left my son. There was a telegram waiting for me to say he had been hurt somehow. Or had run away from home. Or had caught an awful disease" (151-52). On other occasions she speaks quite directly of her guilt: "I sent my dollars home to pay for Clyde's [Guy's] keep and to assuage my guilt at being away from him" (153). 6

Of the many examples in Singin' and Swingin' which address this conflict, I have selected one particular passage to illustrate the ways in which Angelou articulates her ambivalence about mothering. While she is in Paris, Angelou earns extra money by singing in a nightclub and decides to send the money home rather than spend it on a room with a private bath: "Mom could buy something wonderful for Clyde every other week and tell him I'd sent it. Then perhaps he would forgive my absence" (157). The narrator shows no qualms about lying to her son; Vivian could "tell him I'd sent it." Additionally, she makes no connection between her efforts to buy forgiveness and the anger she felt as a child when her absent mother, the same "Mom" of the above passage, sent Maya a tea set and a doll with yellow hair for Christmas: "Bailey and I tore the stuffing out of the doll the day after Christmas, but he warned me that I had to keep the tea set in good condition because any day or night she might come riding up" ( Caged Bird 43). Liliane K. Arensberg interprets the tea cups as "symbols of a white world beyond Maya's reach of everyday experience," whereas the torn doll "serves as an effigy of her mother by virtue of being female and a gift" (281). Although I agree with Arensberg's interpretation, I tend to read the gifts as metaphors for Maya's divided self. The preserved tea set, the torn doll—what better signifiers could there be for the split feelings of the abandoned child, who destroys one gift to show anger but saves the other in anticipation of the mother's return? I would also suggest that the seemingly inappropriate title Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas may be intended to signal the reader back to the very unmerry Christmas of Caged Bird.

In the Paris sequence the narrator seems to have suppressed, in her role as mother, some of the anguish she had experienced during childhood—although in the passage previously cited ( Singin' and Swingin' 129), she recognizes the similarities between her own "pains of parting" and her son's. Angelou refers to this separation from her son so frequently in the text that he becomes a substantial part of the narrative, the source of Angelou's guilt but also the major factor in the development of dramatic tension. Angelou, in this most complex of the autobiographies, is richly and honestly rendering the split in her own psyche between being a "good" mother (being at home) and being a "bad" mother (selfishly staying in Europe). The narrator pretends to herself that her son wants a gift, thus prolonging the admission that he really wants his mother—as Maya had wanted hers.

To arrive at this interpretation the reader must move back and forth among the texts, perceiving parallels in order to decipher the narrator's motivations. The frequent references in Singin' and Swingin' to separation and to guilt give one considerable access to the narrator's complex personality; at the same time, these references demand to be read against and with the entire series—intertextuality in its strictest sense.

Angelou returns from Europe to find her son suffering from a skin disease that is an overt expression of his loneliness. In a promise that recalls the last lines of Gather Together (never again to lose her innocence), Angelou vows to Guy: "I swear to you, I'll never leave you again. If I go, you'll go with me or I won't go" ( Singin' and Swingin' 232). She takes Guy with her to Hawaii, where she has a singing engagement. Singin' and Swingin' closes in a sentence which highlights, through its three nouns, the underlying tensions of the book: "Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son " (242, emphasis added). Dialectical in phrasing, this statement not only functions to close the first three books but also opens itself to the mother-son patterns of the future volumes: fluctuations between dependence and independence.

In TheHeartofaWoman the tension between mothering and working continues, but to a lesser extent. Guy is now living with his mother and not with Vivian Baxter. But Angelou, despite her earlier vow, does occasionally leave her son. During a night club engagement in Chicago, Angelou trusts Guy to the care of her friend John Killens. One night Killens phones from Brooklyn and informs her that "there's been some trouble" (75). In a moment of panic that recalls her fears at the Paris train station ( Gather Together 151-52), Angelou again imagines that Guy has been injured, stolen, "struck by an errant bus, hit by a car out of control" (75). 7

Angelou confronts these fears in the Brooklyn adventure, the most dramatic episode of The Heart of a Woman. Unlike the internal conflicts of Gather Together, this one operates outside of the narrator, showing Maya Angelou as a strong, aggressive Black mother rather than a mother torn by self-doubt. While Angelou was in Chicago, Guy had gotten in trouble with a Brooklyn street gang. In order to protect her son, she confronts Jerry, the gang leader, and threatens to shoot his entire family if Guy is harmed. Jerry's response is an ironic comment on the motherhood theme of the autobiographies: "O.K., I understand. But for a mother, I must say you're a mean motherfucker" (84). Powerful, protective of her son, Angelou has become in this episode a reincarnation of Momma Henderson.

Unfortunately, no mother or grandmother or guardian angel, no matter how strong, can keep children forever from danger. Near the end of The Heart of a Woman, Guy is seriously injured in a car accident. In a condensed, tormented autobiographical passage, Angelou gazes at the face of her unconscious son and summarizes their life together:

He was born to me when I was seventeen. I had taken him away from my mother's house when he was two years old, and except for a year I spent in Europe without him, and a month when he was stolen by a deranged woman, we had spent our lives together. My grown life lay stretched before me, stiff as a pine board, in a strange country, blood caked on his face and clotted on his clothes. (263) 8

Guy gradually recovers, moving, during the process of physical healing, toward a position of greater independence from his mother.

But Angelou, too, moves towards a separateness, much as she had predicted in Gather Together (163). In The Heart of a Woman the texture of Angelou's life changes significantly. She travels a lot, seeing far less of Vivian—although she does write to her mother from Ghana asking for financial help after Guy's accident (268). She strengthens her public identity, becoming a coordinator in the Civil Rights Movement and a professionally recognized dancer and actress. She also, for the first time in the autobiographies, begins her account of self as writer. Angelou attends a writer's workshop; publishes a short story; becomes friends with John Killens, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and other Black novelists. Most important, writing forces her into a conscious maturity: "If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance" (41). By extension, the rich ambivalence of Singin' and Swingin' could only have been achieved by a writer who had abandoned "ignorance" for a conscious self-exploration.

Paradoxically, the independent writer/mother establishes this "kind of concentration" in maternal solitude. Singin' and Swingin' had ended with mother and son reunited, both dependent and independent. The Heart of a Woman ends in separation. Guy, now a student at the University of Ghana, is moving to a dormitory. In the last two paragraphs we find Angelou alone:

Angelou's reaction to having "closed the door" on her son is, like so many of her feelings in this complicated relationship, ambivalent. The language of the passage is initially charged with negativity: "Nothing happened. I didn't feel.… I didn't feel.…"Thesonshehad loved through all of "our lives together" (263) is gone. Angelou sits waiting for something dreadful to happen to herself—as she had earlier imagined Guy's being stolen or being hit by a bus. But the narrator counters this negative attitude with a note of irony in which she reverses the biological assumption of the mother as she-who-nourishes: She can now have the "whole breast" to herself.

The family chicken dinner is a recurring motif in the autobiographical series. Recall the marvelous scene from Caged Bird in which Maya and Bailey watch Reverend Howard Thomas gobble down Momma Henderson's chicken dinner: "He ate the biggest, brownest and best parts of the chicken at every Sunday meal" (28). Now there is no competition. Angelou has the best part, the breast, to herself. On the negative side, Angelou is left, at the end of the fourth volume, in isolation; the last word of TheHeartofaWoman is "my-self." But the negativity is outweighed by the more "promising" aspects of being alone, the word promising an echo of the resolutions of Gather Together and Singin' and Swingin', which end in vows of innocence and of commitment. The "perfectly formed" thought at the end of The Heart of a Woman is Angelou's realization of a new "myself," of a woman no longer primarily defined as granddaughter or daughter or mother—a woman free to choose herself.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes opens by going back in time to Angelou the mother, who anxiously waits at the hospital following Guy's car accident. In an image that parodies the well-fed mother of The Heart of a Woman, Angelou compares her anxiety over Guy to being eaten up:

July and August of 1962 stretched out like fat men yawning after a sumptuous dinner. They had every right to gloat, for they had eaten me up. Gobbled me down. Consumed my spirit, not in a wild rush, but slowly, with the obscene patience of certain victors. I became a shadow walking in the white hot streets, and a dark spectre in the hospital. (4)

The months of helplessly waiting for Guy to heal are like fat, stuffed men, a description that evokes memories of Reverend Thomas, who ate Momma Henderson's chicken, and of Mr. Freeman, who ate in Vivian Baxter's kitchen and raped her daughter. Guy's accident has an effect similar to the rape; Angelou retreats into silence. She is a "shadow," a "dark spectre," a Black mother silenced by the fear of her son's possible death.

Guy does recover. Their relationship, which like the autobiographical form itself is constantly in flux, moves once again from dependence to independence, climaxing in a scene in which Angelou learns that her son is having an affair with an American woman a year older than herself. Angelou at first threatens to strike him, but Guy merely pats her head and says: "Yes, little mother. I'm sure you will" (149). Shortly afterwards Angelou travels to Germany to perform in Genet's The Blacks. Guy meets her return flight and takes her home to a dinner of fried chicken he has cooked for her. Then, asserting his independence, he announces that he has "plans for dinner" (186).

Reading between the texts, we see Angelou alone again before a plate of chicken, as she was at the conclusion of The Heart of a Woman. In the Traveling Shoes episode, however, the conflicting feelings of love and resentment are more directly stated:

He's gone. My lovely little boy is gone and will never return. That big confident strange man has done away with my little boy, and he has the gall to say he loves me. How can he love me? He doesn't know me, and I sure as hell don't know him. (186)

In this passage Angelou authentically faces and records the confusions of seeing one's child achieve selfhood, universalizing the pain a mother experiences when her "boy" is transformed into a "big confident strange man" who refuses to be his mother's "beautiful appendage" ( Gather Together 162).

Yet through much of the fifth volume, Angelou continues to separate herself from Guy and to form new relationships. She shares experiences with other women, including her two roommates; she befriends an African boy named Koko; she enjoys her contacts with the colony of Black American writers and artists living in Ghana; and she continues her sexual involvements with men. The love affair which seems most vital in Traveling Shoes, however, is with Africa herself. In her travels through West Africa Angelou discovers certain connections between her own traditions and those of her African ancestors. She takes great satisfaction in her heritage when she is mistaken for a Bambara woman. Among African women she discovers strong mother figures, most notably Patience Aduah, whose custom of giving away food by the campfire evokes memories of Momma Henderson's having shared her table with Black American travelers denied rooms in hotels or seats in restaurants during the era of segregation in much of America ( Traveling Shoes 102). Through her identification with Africa, Angelou reaffirms the meaning of motherhood. 9

Although captivated by the oral traditions of Mother Africa, Angelou chooses to leave, at the conclusion of Traveling Shoes, in order to return to the rhythms of Southern Black churches, the rhythms of her grandmother. In so doing, however, she must also leave her son. The final scene in the book is at the Accra airport. Angelou is saying farewell to her friends and, most specifically, to Guy, who "stood, looking like a young lord of summer, straight, sure among his Ghanaian companions" (208). Through this suggestion of Guy as an African prince, Angelou roots him in the culture of West Africa.

If we look at the closure of Traveling Shoes on a literal level, then Angelou's son is a college student, staying on to complete his degree. But if we accept a grander interpretation, Guy has become, through his interaction with the Ghanaians, a "young lord" of Africa, given back to the Mother Continent freely, not lost, like so many other children, in mid-passage or in slavery. Angelou lovingly accepts the separation, knowing that "someone like me and certainly related to me" will be forming new bonds between himself and Mother Africa (209). Guy is making an essentially free choice that centuries of Black creativity in America have helped make possible: "Through the centuries of despair and dislocation we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope" (208).

As in the four earlier autobiographies, this one closes with the mother-son configuration. But in the final, puzzling line of Traveling Shoes Angelou swings the focus away from Guy and towards the edge of the canvas: "I could nearly hear the old ones chuckling" (209). In this spiritual call to her ancestors Angelou imaginatively connects herself to the Ketans and the Ghanaians, to the people placed in chains, to all of God's children who had "never completely left Africa" (209). Ironically, the narrator herself has not completely left Africa either. The rhythmic prose that concludes the fifth volume is an anticipated departure to a new world, with the narrator still at the airport. As in the other volumes, the closure is thus another opening into the next narrative journey.

• I use the name Maya in discussing the protagonist either as child or as the young woman of Gather Together. When I refer to the mature woman or to the narrator, I use Angelou or Maya Angelou.
• In Fielder Cook's 1978 Learning Corporation of America teleplay of Caged Bird, the slap occurs following Annie Henderson's confrontation with the "powhitetrash" girls. Maya, played by Constance Good, says: "I would tell them to go to Hell. I would spit on their faces." Momma, played by Esther Rolle, soundly slaps Maya. The corrective slap is of course not unique in Black drama; the same actress, Esther Rolle, slaps her daughter for blaspheming in the 1988 production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun directed by Harold Scott at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore.
• I wish to thank Nellie McKay and Julia Lupton, respectively, for pointing out to me the echoes of James Weldon Johnson and William Shakespeare in this passage. In Johnson's "Go Down Death—A Funeral Sermon," Jesus "smoothed the furrows" from Sister Caroline's face while angels sing to her. Angelou incorporates these images into her own funeral sermon. Angelou's comparison of death to "that undiscovered country" is a direct allusion to Hamlet (3.1.79-80): "The undiscover'd country from whose bourn / No traveller returns." These references, then, are further articulations of the conflicts in language and culture which Angelou introduces in Caged Bird (11); to please their grandmother, Maya and Bailey would recite from Johnson's "The Creation" and not from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
• See Stephen Butterfield, who discusses Angelou's sense of humor in the church scenes of Caged Bird and compares it to humorous techniques used by Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson (209).
• According to Carol E. Neubauer, Angelou "identifies her own situation and the threat of displacement as a common condition among black families in America and acknowledges the special responsibilities of the black mother" (124).
• Guy is the name Angelou's son chooses for himself ( Singin' and Swingin' 237-38) instead of Clyde, the name he was given at birth.
• In her study of style and displacement in The Heart of a Woman, Carol E. Neubauer discusses the Killens phone call and other episodes as aspects of a "pattern of fantasy" through which Angelou reveals "the vulnerability she feels as a mother trying to protect her child from any form of danger" (128).
• The "strange country" of this passage recalls the "undiscovered country" of the elegy to Annie Henderson.
• Like David Diop, Léopold Senghor, and other contemporary African writers included in The African Assertion, Angelou adopts the image of Africa as mother, expressing this image through the African oral tradition rather than through her own written reflections. Thus Angelou has Ghanaian chief Nana Nketisia extol Mother Africa in "a rhythm reminiscent of preachers in Southern Black churches" ( Traveling Shoes 112).

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. 1986. New York: Random House, 1987.

——. Gather Together in My Name. 1974. New York: Bantam, 1975.

——. The Heart of a Woman. 1981. New York: Bantam, 1982.

——. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1970. New York: Bantam, 1971.

——. "My Grandson, Home at Last." Woman's Day Aug. 1986: 46-55.

——. Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. 1976. New York: Bantam, 1977.

Arensberg, Liliane K. "Death as Metaphor of Self in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. " CLA Journal 20 (1976): 273-96.

Benson, Carol. "Out of the Cage and Still Singing." Writer's Digest Jan. 1975: 18-20.

Bloom, Lynn Z. "Maya Angelou." Dictionary of Literary Biography. 38. Detroit: Gale, 1985. 3-12.

Butterfield, Stephen. Black Autobiography in America. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1974.

Chrisman, Robert. " The Black Scholar Interviews Maya Angelou." Black Scholar Jan.-Feb. 1977: 44-52.

Cudjoe, Selwyn. "Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement." Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Ed. Mari Evans. Garden City: Doubleday, 1984. 6-24.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie A. "The Metaphysics of Matrilinearism in Women's Autobiography: Studies of Mead's Blackberry Winter, Hellman's Pentimento, Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Kingston's The Woman Warrior. " Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Estelle Jelinek. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980. 180-205.

Hill-Lubin, Mildred A. "The Grandmother in African and African-American Literature: A Survivor of the Extended Family." Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature. Ed. Carole B. Davies and Anne A. Graves. Trenton: Africa World, 1986. 257-70.

Kent, George E. " I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Black Autobiographical Tradition." Kansas Quarterly 7.3 (1975): 72-78.

Neubauer, Carol E. "Displacement and Autobiographical Style in Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman. " Black American Literature Forum 17 (1983): 123-29.

O'Neale, Sondra. "Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography." Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Ed. Mari Evans. Garden City: Doubleday, 1984. 25-36.

Schultz, Elizabeth. "To Be Black and Blue: The Blues Genre in Black American Autobiography." Kansas Quarterly 7.3 (1975): 81-96.

Shelton, Austin J., ed. The African Assertion: A Critical Anthology of African Literature. Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1968.

Smith, Sidonie. "The Song of a Caged Bird: Maya Angelou's Quest after Self-Acceptance." Southern Humanities Review 7 (1973): 365-75.

"Maya Angelou - General Commentary." Feminism in Literature, edited by Jessica Bomarito, Jeffrey W. Hunter, Vol. 5. Gale Cengage, 2005, 26 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/maya-angelou/critical-essays/angelou-maya-137937#critical-essays-angelou-maya-137937-mary-jane-lupton-essay-date-summer-1990>

Further Reading

Bibliography

Gerry, Thomas M. F. Contemporary Canadian and U.S. Women of Letters: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993, 287 p.

Bibliography of North American women writers.

Lisandrelli, Elaine Slivinski. Maya Angelou: More Than a Poet. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow Publishers, 1996, 128 p.

Biography of Angelou with lengthy bibliographical index.

Braxton, Joanne M., ed. Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, 162 p.

Collection of critical essays on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Burr, Zofia. "Maya Angelou on the Inaugural Stage." In Of Women, Poetry, and Power: Strategies of Address in Dickinson, Miles, Brooks, Lorde, and Angelou, pp. 180-94, 219-21. Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2002.

Comparison of Robert Frost's reading of his poem "The Gift Outright" at President Kennedy's 1961 inauguration to Angelou's reading of "On the Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration.

Kent, George E. "Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Black Autobiographical Tradition." Kansas Quarterly 7, no. 3 (summer 1975): 72-8.

Argues that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings occupies a unique place within the African American autobiographical tradition.

Lupton, Mary Jane. " I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. "In Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion, pp. 51-73. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1998.

Explores the thematic and stylistic aspects of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

McPherson, Dolly A. Order out of Chaos: The Autobiographical Works of Maya Angelou. New York: Peter Lang, 1990, 176 p.

Examines the major thematic concerns in Angelou's autobiographical novels.

Megna-Wallace, Joanne. Understanding I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings : A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998, 189 p.

Collection of essays placing Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings within political, historical, and literary contexts.

Miller, Adam David. Review of The Heart of a Woman. Black Scholar 13, nos. 4/5 (summer 1982): 48-9.

Positive review praising Angelou's storytelling abilities, characterizations, insights, and conclusions in The Heart of a Woman.

O'Neale, Sondra. "Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography." In Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, pp. 25-36. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984.

Provides examination of black American female stereotypes and Angelou's development of new images for black women in her autobiographies.

Vermillion, Mary. "Reembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. "In Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings : A Casebook, edited by Joanne M. Braxton, pp. 51-73. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Explores the parallels between Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

OTHER SOURCES FROM GALE:

Additional coverage of Angelou's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: American Writers Supplement, Vol. 4; Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vols. 7, 20; Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: Biography & Resources, Vol. 1; Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults, Vol. 2; Black Literature Criticism; Black Writers, Ed. 2; Children's Literature Review, Vol. 53; Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography Supplement ; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 65-68; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 19, 42, 65; Contemporary Poets ; Contemporary Popular Writers ; Contemporary Southern Writers ; Contemporary Women Poets ; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 38; DISCovering Authors ; DISCovering Authors: British Edition ; DISCovering Authors: Canadian Edition ; DISCovering Authors Modules: Most-Studied Authors, Multicultural, Poets, and Popular Fiction and Genre Authors ; DISCovering Authors 3.0 ; Exploring Novels ; Exploring Poetry ; Literature and Its Times, Vol. 4; Literature Resource Center ; Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults Supplement ; Major 20th-Century Writers, Eds. 1, 2; Modern American Women Writers ; Nonfiction Classics for Students ; Novels for Students, Vol. 2; Poetry Criticism, Vol. 32; Poetry for Students, Vols. 2, 3; Reference Guide to American Literature ; Reference Guide to Short Fiction ; St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers ; Something About the Author, Vol. 49; World Literature Criticism Supplement ; and Writers for Young Adults.

"Maya Angelou - Further Reading." Feminism in Literature, edited by Jessica Bomarito, Jeffrey W. Hunter, Vol. 5. Gale Cengage, 2005, 26 June 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/maya-angelou/critical-essays/angelou-maya-137937#critical-essays-angelou-maya-137937-further-reading-2>

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Angelou, Maya (Poetry Criticism)

Maya Angelou Thesis

The fact that African-Americans were prejudiced and treated in an ill manner stands as a well-accepted historical statement, but the injured emotions, identity and cultural heritage of them are often neglected. is an autobiography of Maya Angelou in which she recollects her childhood memory and sends a strong message to the reader. Her life, marked by being abandoned by her nonchalant parents, dealing with racism and poverty, sexual assaults and following traumatic consequences, was not an easy one. It is indeed her strong character which enabled her to become a renowned representative of her society: even when problems were everywhere, she strives to overcome them. Being an Southern, African-American without parents, she was "caged"

Research Paper On Maya Angelou

Oppressed women have been unjustly held back from achieving full equality for much of human history. A woman no matter neither color nor education faces discrimination on a day to day basis. Barriers that are place in their way to advancing includes: lack of mentoring, lack of opportunities for career development, biased rating and testing system and counterproductive behavior and harassment by colleges (Schaefer, pg 15). In the past, women did not have jobs and were to clean, cook and care for the children, also did not have the right to vote. While the man work long hours to provide for his family and gave orders as the women followed. As time went on and rights were given to women, the men did not like the idea that controlled was being lost. They refused to let women become equal to males. Women are allow to work the same career as males, but will never be paid the same as males. This paper addresses Maya Angelou life and how her writing and public speaking inspired women to overcome discrimination.

New Direction Maya Angelou Analysis

I'm going to be analyzing the short story, New Directions, By Maya Angelou. It's a story with a strong theme of courage. A book that reminds us that we can still make a name for ourselves, even if we have to do it alone. I'll be discussing a few of the key elements of the story such as the plot, setting, and mood in this analysis.

Why Is Maya Angelou Important

Maya Angelou, named at birth, Marguerite Johnson was on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her and her family moved from St. Louis to Stamps, Arkansas, where she was raised growing up. Maya Angelou was an American author, dancer, screenwriter, actress, poet and civil rights activist. Angelou gained a majority of her fame with the memoir she wrote in 1969, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This memoir made literary history as being the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. Angelou received many awards and honors throughout her entire career. These awards included two NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category, in 2005 and 2009. Angelou became one of the most legendary and influential

Maya Angelou Research Paper

Maya Angelou is a phenomenal woman. She rises through all things that come her way and she refuses to back down. Angelou chose at a very young age to be a writer and a role model for many people. She believes that everyone should be treated equally and that the world should come together as a unity. Angelou had many careers but is known mostly for her poetic creations. She has come a long way from where she started and I think anyone can agree with me when I say, she has made us all proud with her accomplishments. Angelou writes poetry to inform and encourage others to carry on through the worst of times. She is a strong, confident, inspirational woman and I am more than honored to be doing my senior paper on her.

Essay on Maya Angelou

• 2 Works Cited

Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928. Her real name is Marguerite Johnson, but she later changed it to Maya. She was born in St. Louis, shortly after her birth her family up and move to Arkansaw. Maya grew up there in the rural parts of Arkansaw, and later married to a South African Freedom Fighter. She lived in Cairo with him, there she began her career as editor of the Arab Observer.

Maya Angelou's Influences Essay

Maya Angelou is a leading literary voice of the African-American community. She writes of the triumph of the human spirit over hardship and adversity. “Her style captures the ca-dences and aspirations of African American women whose strength she celebrates.” (Library of Chattanooga State, n. d.) Maya has paved the way for children who has had a damaged

Paper On Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born on April 28, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri to Bailey and Vivian Johnson. Her given name was Marguerite Ann Johnson, but she was nicknamed “Maya” by her older brother. Over the course of her life, Angelou had many jobs ranging from a fry cook to a sex worker. She broke through as both an author and poet with her publication of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969. (Wikipedia.com) From that point on, Maya Angelou would become a very prominent figure in American literature.

Maya Angelou Analysis

“You have tried to destroy me and although I perish daily I shall not be moved,” (Angelou, 2014), says Maya Angelou in her Commencement speech to the 1992 Spelman College graduates. Poet and award-winning author, Maya Angelou, is most well known for her poetry, essay collection, and memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou happened to be the first black female cable car conductor who later started a career in theatre and music (Maya Angelou: Poet and Historian, n.d.). Once her acting and musical career began to take off, Angelou began touring with productions and released her first album Miss Calypso (Maya Angelou Fast Facts, 2017). Later, Angelou earned a Tony Award nomination for her role in the play Look Away and an Emmy Award nomination for the work she performed in the television mini-series Roots (Maya Angelou: Poet, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Activist, 2017). Angelou was also the first African American woman to have her screenplay produced (Maya Angelou: Poet, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Activist, 2017). Out of the number of poetry collections Angelou published, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die happened to be her most famous collection that was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (Maya Angelou: Poet, Civil Rights Activist, Author, Activist, 2017). The focus of this paper is to critique Angelou’s credibility, sincerity, and appeal to her whole audience in her delivery during the Spelman Commencement Address in 1992.

Maya Angelou Accomplishments

So, she moved to Egypt and Ghana for a while to write-freely. Not only did she write, but she excelled at it and being an African American female with knowledge she was bound to encounter discrimination. While she was in Ghana, she met one of the most historical African American activists, Malcolm X, and decided to come back to America to accommodate him build his organization. Sadly, not much time went by when he was assassinated after her return. During her return to America, she was convinced by friends and family to write about her adolescent life, including the trials and tribulations she

I love being an African American woman “We keep on keeping on, don’t we? I’m so grateful. I’m grateful to be party to this party. I’m grateful that you won’t forget me because I won’t forget you. I call on you all the time. I make myself available to you and you know this is so. You can call on me all of the time and I’m there. I always come when you call me. Isn’t it true? The most important thing, I think, is to be present—to be present all the time, all the time to be present. Bring your whole self all the time. Don’t shuck and jive. Bring your whole self.”( Angelou) This only part of what was recited by Miss Maya Angelou in New York City on Oct. 14, 2011, for the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. Words like these are only a sample of Angelou has reflected on to the world.

Singer, writer, dancer, and much more were careers in which Maya Angelou studied throughout her life(Maya Angelou DISCovering Authors). Born in St. Louis in 1928, her and her brother were brought up by her grandmother. Through the course of her life, she moved around quite a bit due to her jobs as well as marriages. Maya Angelou decided to join the civil rights movement as an activist(Maya Angelou UXL). Soon after that, Dr. Martin

Dr Maya Angelou Research Paper

Dr. Maya Angelou were born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, MO on April 4, 1928, Maya were childhood name given to her by her brother Bailey. She were a child of a divorced parent raised by her grandmother (whom she called momma) along with her brother in Stamp, Arkansas. A single mother that held many titles to her name that evolve from experience she dealt in her lifetime. To the world, she is an educator, dancer, poets, activist, author and many more. Angelou publishes numerous bestselling book during her career-breaking barrier for African American and women that isn’t expected for a single African woman. Her career had earned her a nomination for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘For I Diee. She became one of the first African American

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. ”- Aristotle This quote is so true for some people especially Maya Angelou. Maya has been through a lot in her life some would not even believe some of the things she has been through. She did not let her dark paths consume her writing was her light.

Eighty Six Years of Inspiration “If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.” - Maya Angelou. This quote is extremely relevant because if you are not to like something then you need to change it or you need to change how you feel about it.

In America, freed slaves dreamed of freedom and equality for their children after emancipation, but their hopes slowly died due to Jim Crow laws. Their eyes and ears forced them to dismiss from their minds on how their children's lives should be, but their hearts refused. A handful of their children that grew up with false hope of freedom started to write about the effect of the broken promise of emancipation on African Americans. Paul Dunbar was one those children, born to freed slave parents; he experienced first-hand what it meant to have false freedom. Dunbar used the pain and loneliness he endured growing up in the late twentieth century to write many of his poems including “Sympathy.” A generation later, Dunbar would inspire Maya Angelou, an African American poet, to develop a love for literature and language. Maya Angelou even used the last line of “Sympathy” to title her famous book, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Despite Angelou being born a generation after Dunbar, Angelou also faced similar oppression and segregation. However, Angelou had a community that protected and made her feel she belonged, despite living in a country full of danger towards African Americans. Both authors explore the ideas of racism, oppression, and freedom as African Americans. Dunbar's poem emphasizes his lonely and powerless fight for freedom, while Angelou, in her story, “Champion of the World” emphasizes the unity of her community and a hero that

Related Topics

• Maya Angelou
• Black people
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou Research Papers

February 19, 2020

Dr Jana Martiskova

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Are you looking Maya Angelou Research Papers thesis statement samples? Yes you are at right place.

Three Sample Thesis Statements for Maya Angelou Research Papers

Thesis statement writing needs a theme and a viewpoint which is then claimed true with the help of sturdy evidences and concrete research work. There is no magic involved in writing a thesis statement, all you have to do is dig down deep the subject of your paper. Same goes with Maya Angelou research papers writing. Because thesis statement based on research and thorough knowledge about it if you are able to explore new ideas, thoughts, and want to provide innovative knowledge then you will surely score good marks.

You can write a perfect thesis statement only if you know the tactics involved. You must study different types and ways of writing a thesis statement and then study the life of Maya Angelou to develop great ideas while we can also help you develop this research papers thesis statement by giving away three different ideas dealing with different facets of Maya’s life.

Thesis statement idea # 1:

“Regardless of the fact that Maya Angelou was subjected to racial discrimination throughout her life, she struggled to become one of the finest writers of her time and an American African activist”

Here, you will be shedding lights on different facets of her life along with the circumstances she been throughout her life. She was a black African American who was subjected to racialism but still she managed to become what she is today. Provide her various achievements both as a writer and as an activist.

Thesis statement idea # 2:

“Maya Angelou, the great writer and activist was heavily inspired by St. Loius which is exhibited in her work as well at various instances”

Not everyone can deal with this kind of thesis statement. Here, you will have to highlight a direct inspiration of Maya for St. Louis. Have a read of her books and St. Loius life otherwise you won’t be able to find out at what point both meets.

Thesis statement idea # 3:

“Although, Maya Angelou’s life was full of miseries and unhappiness but she still managed to rise above the norms of the society to leave unprecedented example behind her”

The preceding thesis statement is in a generalized form; therefore, you have an enough room to play with it in the this research paperwriting. It is prudent that you go for an inspirational tone for writing the paper. If we are talking about the miseries and mishaps she been through her life then you can lucubrate these two words in your assignment. Like, why did her life was miserable and unhappy? What were the mishaps of her life? How did she fight with those tragedies?

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