A Song Flung Up To Heaven, By Maya Angelou
Wenji Li
CWRT-102
Georgia Van Vlient
11/8/2012
“A Song Flung Up to Heaven”, which was published in 2002, begins with Maya Angelou’s return from Africa in 1965, shortly before the assassination of Malcolm X, with whom she had intended to work with. The book covers those devastating periods of her life in civil rights work as the northern coordinator for Marin Luther King, as well as other events of the 1960s. People died and get injured, and thousands of people got arrested. Angelou vividly recalls scenes of rioting in the Watts area of Los Angeles.
Angelou’s life has certainly been a full one: from the hardscrabble Depression-era South to pimp, prostitute, supper-club chanteuse, coordinator for Martin Luther King, comrade …show more content…
The subject is African American life. Around the middle of the fourth book I realized that what Angelou intends is to pose the difficult experienced life that she has led as a framework upon which to hang a celebration and a defense of black American people as a whole. And when regarded in this way, as apologetic writing rather than as autobiographical writing, the gaps and the tics in these books make sense, revealing a meaning and a value in Angelou's …show more content…
Dressing down some whites for a perceived insult, Angelou said: "There was a delicious silence. For the moment, I had them and their uneasiness in the palm of my hand. The sense of power was intoxicating." But soon after she acknowledges that "the old habits of withdrawing into righteous indignation or lashing out furiously against insults were not applicable in this circumstance. Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization." Holiness, sanctity: the words are revealing, as they apply to the general tone of all her works.
Angelou's memoirs are really tracts, and this explains the simple and the transparency of her prose. These literature works sometimes seem written for children rather than adults. They are all on the short side, and divided into ever shorter chapters as the series progresses: the final installment is more a succession of vignettes than a narrative at all. But this format makes sense when we realize that Angelou is, in her way, preaching to the masses. Malcolm X apparently sensed this as one of Angelou's skills, taking her on as a deputy out of admiration for her talent for talking to the common
CWRT-102
Georgia Van Vlient
11/8/2012
“A Song Flung Up to Heaven”, which was published in 2002, begins with Maya Angelou’s return from Africa in 1965, shortly before the assassination of Malcolm X, with whom she had intended to work with. The book covers those devastating periods of her life in civil rights work as the northern coordinator for Marin Luther King, as well as other events of the 1960s. People died and get injured, and thousands of people got arrested. Angelou vividly recalls scenes of rioting in the Watts area of Los Angeles.
Angelou’s life has certainly been a full one: from the hardscrabble Depression-era South to pimp, prostitute, supper-club chanteuse, coordinator for Martin Luther King, comrade …show more content…
The subject is African American life. Around the middle of the fourth book I realized that what Angelou intends is to pose the difficult experienced life that she has led as a framework upon which to hang a celebration and a defense of black American people as a whole. And when regarded in this way, as apologetic writing rather than as autobiographical writing, the gaps and the tics in these books make sense, revealing a meaning and a value in Angelou's …show more content…
Dressing down some whites for a perceived insult, Angelou said: "There was a delicious silence. For the moment, I had them and their uneasiness in the palm of my hand. The sense of power was intoxicating." But soon after she acknowledges that "the old habits of withdrawing into righteous indignation or lashing out furiously against insults were not applicable in this circumstance. Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization." Holiness, sanctity: the words are revealing, as they apply to the general tone of all her works.
Angelou's memoirs are really tracts, and this explains the simple and the transparency of her prose. These literature works sometimes seem written for children rather than adults. They are all on the short side, and divided into ever shorter chapters as the series progresses: the final installment is more a succession of vignettes than a narrative at all. But this format makes sense when we realize that Angelou is, in her way, preaching to the masses. Malcolm X apparently sensed this as one of Angelou's skills, taking her on as a deputy out of admiration for her talent for talking to the common