Maya Angelou Essay

Jaylyn Shamberger
Professor Remington
English 1102
12/9/2014
Maya Angelou
According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography Maya Angelou was born in ST.Louis, Missouri, in 1928.When she was only three years old her parents split and her and her older brother Bailey were sent to stay with their aunt in Arkansas. Maya spent her formative childhood years in the royal south where racism was a daily presence for Angelou and her family. She learned at an early age that blackness was abhorred while whiteness was honored. After Angelou was raped at the age of eight by her mother’s boyfriend, she stopped speaking, and later regained her voice in her early teens. Angelou advanced in school, and she won a scholarship to attend evening classes at the
one critic of Maya Angelous poem “Harlem Hopscotch” is David Kelly, a freelance writer and instructor at Oakton Community College,Des Plaines,IL. Kelly “discusses the elements of a traditional African music to support a claim by Angelou that both her poem “Harlem Hopscotch” and black children who play the game share a similar rhythm. Kelly says that when Maya Angelou wrote the poem “Harlem Hopscotch” that she was writing from her gut experience ,not from a study of ethnomusicology. He also says that a good poet‘s instinct is valuable precisely for the truths it somehow knows. The critic also says “If it is true that African music has more complex rhythms than European music ,that still does not prove that a black child in Harlem is more likely to be in touch with Africa than a white child in Boise, Idaho.”.Lastly he says that this poem leaves us with no choice but to wonder if Angelou’s statement about African rhythm is not coming dangerously close to making up some sort of “rhythm gene.”This critic comes to the conclusion that Angelou might be wrong and that it could be that a child in Harlem would have sung a playground chant in exactly the same way as children all over America.Another critic of Angelous writings is Annie Gottlieb.Annie says that Maya Angelou writes like a song and like the truth.She also says that Angelou was born to be a writer.Annie goes on to say that after reading Angelous book titled “Gather together in my name” you may learn, too, the embrace and ritual,the dignity and solace and humor of the black community.Carol Weubauer is also another critic of Angelous writings .Carol details the consistent themes of Angelous poetry and the realistic presentation of African American images.She says that Angelou’s peoms are sensitive treatment of both love and black identity which are the poet’s own defense against the