Maya was born in St. Louise in Missouri, United States. She grew up in St. Louise with her parents until they split apart when she was three years of age. She and her brother, Bailey was sent to live with their grandmother in a town called Stamps in Arkansas.
Maya and her brother had an especially hard life growing up. Her brother was born a year before her and they had a tight relationship. They saw a lot of horrible things kids usually wouldn’t see at their age. They were both African American and had to experience firsthand racism and discrimination. When Maya was at the age of seven she visited her mother, there she was raped by her mother’s new boyfriend. The boyfriend was then killed by Maya’s uncles not long after. Maya, traumatized by the experience she had just witnessed didn’t speak a word for 5 years after.
She moved away to San Francisco where she won a scholarship at California labour school. There she studied dance and acting. During labour school, Maya got a job as a cable car conductor but it didn’t last long. She was the first female to have that job. At only sixteen years of age Maya fell pregnant whilst in a relationship that didn’t last long. Once ‘Guy’ was born, Maya had worked numerous jobs to care for her and her son.
Maya’s career as a performer started during the mid 1950’s when she played a role in the movie ‘Porgy and Bess’. Not long after she appeared in the Calypso Heat Wave, although, it was when she played a role in the movie ‘The Blacks’ when she became well known. Maya Angelou soon moved to Egypt for a change of creative ideas. After living in Egypt, she moved to Gahanna where she was an instructor, administrator at Gahanna University.
During her spare time she studied the languages French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and west African language frantic. She then returned to the United the states, where she was requested by a friend to write about her life experiences, which resulted in a successful 1960, memoir of her life. The Book was called ‘I know why the cage bird sings.’ The book made literary history. It was the number one non-fiction book written by an African American woman. This led her to be an International star. She broke new ground educationally and socially.
Her love life came later in her life when she met Zuzanki Mate a South American civil rights activist in the big city New York.
While Maya was mute for five years she continuously studied and memorized poems. She memorized around 60 sonnets from Shakespear. This was a reason she was so good at writing in her career. You can find a lot of information about Maya’s life by looking into her poems, songs and the types of movies she is in. They show how her mother wasn’t quite in her and her brother, Bailey’s lives when they were growing up. When the two were older, they both became close friends with the mum and grew a good relationship. Her mother was a very strait forward person. She went by a lot of sayings. My favourite saying of hers would be ‘if you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.’ Maya and her brother were told all of the mum’s sayings and learnt to live by them. In Maya’s creations (poems, etc.) she talks about racism and the world around her that she grew up in. The society around Maya reflected heavily in her creations
She came home running
back to the mothering blackness
deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of her face
She came home running
She came down creeping
here to the black arms waiting
now to the warm heart waiting
rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face
She came down creeping
She came home blameless
black yet as Hagar’s daughter
tall as was Sheba’s daughter
threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face
She came home blameless
1. Subject: The subject of this poem in my opinion is that someone is taking advantage of a black young girl. The girl is crying to her mother like something terrible has happened to her. In the last paragraph it says that the girl is blameless. This means that there must be someone else to blame and they have done something to her. It also makes you think that the girl whom was black, was used.
2. Purpose and theme: I think that the purpose of Maya Angelou writing this is to tell us that something terrible happened to her when she was younger. The way she writes it doesn’t say it is about her, although, by finding out information about her I can see it is about when she was raped. The theme of this is a little bit about racism as well, because when Maya was growing up, she experienced a lot of racism. She also wants us to realise that black humans cared about things because back in the day, black humans weren’t respected.
3. Emotion and mood: The mood this poem makes you feel throughout it is odd. You feel sorry for the child running home to her mother in the darkness. At the beginning you feel sadness and desperation, although, in the middle paragraph you feel a warmth and happiness because the child’s mother is caring for her. Towards the end, again you feel sadness because it said that the girl was blameless.
4. Poetic techniques: the poem is full of different types of techniques. She has used a few different rhyming patterns like starting and finishing each paragraph with the same sentence and also in each paragraph the third line rhymes. Also reading this poem, a picture is created. It creates a scene in your head. Many describing words are used, like ‘her rich brown face.’ Repetition is popular in this poem as well. Every lines last word is repeated at least once through the poem.
- Summary: this poem really does give out an impact. Maya tells a sad story of a moment in her life when she was hurt. By telling the story as a poem and not fully indicating that it is about her, it really makes you feel sorry for her. Also t makes you think about how back when she was young the society wasn’t caring for the black.