Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

“All my work is meant to say ‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.’ In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure.” these are the words of the famous multi-talented Maya Angelou. Angelo is a fabulous women who has faced numerous situations that could bring down anyone but she has turned them all around and had become one of the most influential African American women. Writer, poet, playwright, editor, preformer,singer,filmmaker, dancer, television personality, educator- Maya Angelou is one of the worlds most inspiring artistic, and articulate women.
Maya Angelou was originally named Marguerite Johnson. She was born April 4,1928 in S. Louis, Missouri to Bailey Johnson and Vivian Baxter. Angelo got the name Maya from her brother Bailey Johnson Jr. who first referred to her as “my sister” which later shortened to “my” and finally extended it to “Maya”. Maya and bailey were three and four years old when their parents divorced and sent then to live with their grandmother and uncle in Stamps, Arkansas. She had a very low self-esteem and racisum was a daily for Angelou and her family. She soon began to hate “being a too big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil” she sometimes fantasised being white to escape a world that did not grant worth or full humanity to African Americans. Her brother bailey was always there for her when she was insulted by adults and bullies. She began to develop a love for reading. The writings of Shakespeare and Dunbar spoke to her sense of isolation and alienation, she also read Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, and Gorky who later influenced her prose writing style.
At the age of seven in 1935 Maya and bailey returned to St Louis to live with their mother , Vivian Baxter. Their stay in St. Louis was unexpectedly short and traumatic for Maya. Vivian Baxter’s live in boyfriend molested and raped...

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