English Composition
Dr. Philip Underwood
October 21, 2013
My favorite celebrity I’m writing my essay on is Maya Angelou. The reason why I’ve chosen her as my favorite celebrity is that she has given us the greatness of poems. Her poem’s to me is so remarkable. My favorite poem is “Still I Rise”. This poem is so influential to me because the poem is so powerful. The thing I am going to discuss about Maya Angelou is her childhood, career beginnings, later successes, and her personal life. Marguerite Annie Johnson (Maya Angelou) was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou is known for her 1969 memoir, I know Why the Cage Bird Sings, which made literacy history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. Multi-talented barely cover the depth and breadth of Maya Angelou’s accomplishments. Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Her parents split up when she was very young, and she and her older brother baily were sent to live with their father mother, Anne Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. As an African American, Maya experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas. She also suffered at the hands of a family associate at around the age of seven. It was during a visit with her mother, Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When Maya told her uncle about the rape, her uncle had killed the boyfriend. She was so traumatized by the experience, Maya stopped talking, when she returned to Arkansas, she spent years as a mute. During World War ІІ, Maya Angelou moved to San Francisco, California, where she was won a scholarship to study dance and acting at the California Labor School. Also during this time, Angelou became the first black female cable car conductor. In 1944, when she was 16-years-old she gave birth to a son, named Guy, it was from a short lived high school relationship that led to the pregnancy. In the mid-1950s, Angelou's career as a