Maya

Maya Angelou is a poet, author, actress, director, historian, educator, playwright, civil rights activist, producer, and a lecturer. She was born on April 4h 1928 in St. Louis Missouri. She has two brothers and is the oldest of three children. Her parents were Bailey and Vivian Johnson but they did not raise her. Her parents were divorced when she was at the tender age of three. She was raised by her grandmother in segregated Stamps, Arkansas. Her grandmother was called Big Momma. Her father was a naval dietician and her mother was a nurse. Angelou felt that her Grandmother had a “ deep broad loving on everything that she touched” (Spence, 1999). While living with her grandmother, she instilled pride and religion as an important element in their home (Angelou, 1992). Angelou was sent back to live with her mother after five years of not seeing her.

Maya’s childhood was difficult and very much different than the ones today. Her mother’s boyfriend raped her. The rapist told her that if she told anyone what happened, he would hurt her brother Bailey (Angelou, 1992). The rape caused Maya to become mute for five years of her life. She was sent back to Stamps Arkansas because no one could handle her in the state that she was in. The muteness caused her to take an interest in literature. A woman named Mrs. Flowers constantly worked with her during the rough time and eventually it paid off because Maya began to speak again.

In Maya’s Teen and Early adulthood she worked as a waitress, a prostitute, a madam, and a dancer. She was the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco. While living with her mother, she realized that she did not like it there and did not like the way she was living. She moved away with her dad and his girlfriend and they did not treat her right. She ran away from there and lived in a graveyard of wrecked cars where homeless kids lived ( Angelou, 1992 ). She moved back home and got pregnant after which she had a son named Guy at the tender age of sixteen. She realized that she had no way to support him so that is when she discovered that she could dance and got hired at a dance theatre. Later on she met Tosh Angelou and married him. She later divorced him because of his atheism and her belief in God.

Maya Angelou had many careers. Her main career was writing. Her first work of literature was “ I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”. It was the first autobiography in her many works to come. Her life inspired her to write the book (Carter,1998). Her second work of literature was “ Gather Together In My Name”. It focuses on Angelou and her brother’s moving away from her grandmother. It takes place in her late teens and early twenties. Her third novel was “ Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting Merry Like Christmas”. It covers five years of her life, from age twenty-two to twenty-seven. It also centered around her marriage to Tosh Angelou. Her fourth novel was “ The Heart Of A Woman”. It comes from a poem that was written during the Harlem