How Maya Angelou Changed The World

The Earth is home to over seven billion people who most of which are ordinary, but sometimes the world is presented with an incredibly unique individual that changes the world for years to come (World Population Clock). Maya Angelou was incredibly diverse with job titles ranging from dancer to civil rights activist, a very interesting childhood that shaped the rest of her life, and a legacy that will forever change the areas she was involved in. The poetry of Maya Angelou was greatly influenced by her early and adult life, the harsh time periods that she had to live through, and the people that surrounded.

Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 2014 in St. Louis Missouri to Vivian Johnson, a nurse and realtor, and Bailey Johnson, a naval
dietician. In 1931 she and her brother, Bailey, moved to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their grandmother due to their parents recent divorce. Like many other southern towns Stamps was racially divided and it took a great level of endurance for her to overcome the challenge of being discriminated against because of her color. In 1936 she moved back to her mother in St. Louis where she faced the most horrific experience of her life. Angelou was raped at the age of eight by her mom’s boyfriend.
She neglected to share what happened until she eventually confided in her brother. This resulted in the murder of her mother’s boyfriend committed by the hands of her uncle. Thinking that it was her words that caused someone’s death she went mute for five years. Since nobody could handle her current unusual state she was sent back to Stamps (Maya Angelou Childhood). In 1941 Angelou moved back to her mother in San Francisco where she attended George Washington High School along with studying drama and dance at California Labor School through a scholarship. She finally regained her confidence to speak again with the help of Ms. Bertha Flowers in 1942. That same year she dropped out of high school to become San Francisco’s first African American female cable car conductor. After that, Maya Angelou returned to school and found out she was pregnant and gave birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks before graduating. In 1952 she worked as a nightclub singer and took the name of Maya Angelou. Six years later she became a civil rights activist and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She quickly
became the northern coordinator for Southern Christian Leadership Conference due to King’s consent. In 1968 Angelou began her most famous yet controversial autobiography that deals with sexual abuse and racism called, “When the Caged Bird Sings” which was published in 1970. Throughout a period of almost forty years from 1970 to 2008 she earned numerous publications and won multiple awards including the “Mother Teresa Award” and she became the first recipient of the “Hope for Peace” and “Justice Voice of Peace” awards (Maya Angelou Timeline). Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014 due to poor health and respiration issues (Poets.org). This poet’s amazing works thankfully did not die along with their creator, but they were severely influenced by the the time period she was alive in and the people and events that were involved in her life.

Maya Angelou’s works of art such as poetry and writings were greatly influenced by the people who entered her life and the events that took place throughout. Angelou’s poems “Caged Bird” and “Still I Rise” were inspired by the differences between black and white citizens during the civil rights era. The poem ”Caged Bird” was a modified poem based off of the autobiography “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.” This poem was also written after the death of two influential civil rights leaders. The poem “Phenomenal Woman” was inspired by all of the strong women in Angelou’s life like Ms. Bertha Flowers and was written to overthrow the typical woman stereotype. The reason she wrote this poem was to empower women to accomplish great things as she had done herself. “On The Pulse of Morning” gives us a view that united humans are stronger and that the more divided we are the more weaker we are. This poem can also be applied to other events and situations but it was written for that purpose. This was her favorite poem and it was so effective that she recited it at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural address. Many events, people, and strong beliefs make up the base of Maya Angelou’s poems and almost all of her collection of poems are significantly influenced in some way by the civil rights era.

The literary period that Maya Angelou was writing in, monumentally altered the type of poems that she wrote.
The civil rights era at the end of middle and end of the 20th century was prevalent at the time that she wrote almost all of her poems. Most of her poems are written about the disputes between blacks and whites and the terrible racial prejudice that was taking place or the stereotypes of a “typical women” which she most definitely was not. The poems “Still I Rise,” “Phenomenal Women,” and “Caged Bird” deal with these issues. All these poems move to strike and defy discrimination and to empower women, more specifically black women, or even blacks in general to rise up and take a stand. This is a result of her being black, female, morally accurate, and her extensive work with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Also, many themes are recurring in Angelou’s poems. Sadness and love are two emotions that fill her poems to the brim as in “Caged Bird” where she feels trapped, lonely, and not free in the land where that is their foundation. The sadness that she felt after Malcolm X was killed and then Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated on her birthday also gave way to the writing of “Caged Bird.” On the contrary she also conveyed much about love in her poems like “Remembrance” and “Touched By an Angel” (Poem Hunter). In these poems love is simply described as being beautiful and calm. Maya Angelou constructed her poems in a chaotic time period and
the messages and themes of the time period show throughout her poems.

In the poem ¨Caged Bird¨ Maya Angelou depicts a scene of sadness, desperation, and the longing for the great gift of freedom. She uses rhyme and symbolization to represent her ideas. In the first stanza when the bird “dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.” Angelou is translating that the black population is on the verge of rebelling and is going to try to grasp freedom. A few lines down we read that “a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage.” Through rhyme and text we can conclude that Angelou is revealing that the black population, having been treated so horribly, can find it hard to react peacefully to get what they desire. Maya Angelou knew that blacks had never seen freedom and it had always surpassed their lives, but “the caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still.” During the civil rights period the white citizens could not relate to the life of a person with color because “the free bird thinks of another breeze” and take the greatest breeze of all [freedom] for granted. Maya Angelou was immovable in her fight for freedom and would never stop protesting no matter how binded she was for “a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams and his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his mouth to sing.” The final section delves back into the longing of freedom. This poem was Angelou’s most famous works and will forever be a rallying point for protesters until the end of time (Poetry Foundation)

In “Phenomenal Women” the overall message portrayed is that not all women are the same and that inner beauty is much more beautiful than outer beauty. This is displayed by Angelou by using rhyme and a wide variety of details that she thought make a woman truly phenomenal. Maya Angelou was certainly not ordinary and was considered by herself as “not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size” because she believed that the “reach of her arms, span of her hips, stride of her step, and curl of her lip” made her phenomenal. Next she states that when a phenomenal women truly enters a room “the fellows [men] stand or fall down on their knees” for she thought it was “the fire in her eyes, the flash of her teeth, the swing in her waist, and the joy in her feet that made her a “phenomenal woman.” Angelou knew that being phenomenal would also mean being rarely liked “men themselves have wondered what they see in me, they try so much but they can’t touch my inner mystery.”Lastly, Angelou end the poem with another set of details and rhymes for she thought that to be phenomenal it was “the click of her heels, the bend of her hair, the palm of her hand, and the need for her care” (Poetry Foundation)

Life is short and swift and it will pass you by in a blink of an eye if you don't take the time that you have and make something of it. Maya Angelou maximized the time that she had on this Earth and contributed over 50 poems and 8 autobiographies that will forever be in our history and our hearts. Angelou was a wonderful person and contributed a fantastic amount of insight to the world and works of art that are second to none.