Maya Angelou :: Biography Biographies Essays

Maya Angelou   I had decided that St. Louis was a foreign country. In my mind I had solitary(prenominal) stayed there for a few weeks. As quickly as I understood that I had not reached my home, I sneaked away to Robins Hoods Forest and the caves of lane Oop where all reality was unreal and even that changed my mean solar day. I carried the same defense that I had used in Stamps I didnt come to stay. In Maya Angelous autobiographical novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tender-hearted Marguerite Johnson, renamed Maya by her refined buddy Bailey, discovers all of the splendors and agonies of growing up in a prejudiced, early ordinal century America. Rotating between the slow country life of Stamps, Arkansas and the fast-pace societies in St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco, California taught Maya several random aspects of life while demo her segregated America from coast to coast. When Maya was three years old, her beautiful and boffo mother sent her and Bailey from California to Stamps to stay in the care of their grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson. in brief thought of as their real mother, Momma raised her grandchildren with the strict Confederate principles such as, wash your feet before you go to bed always beseech to the savior and you shall be forgiven chores and school come before play and attend those in need and you shall be helped yourself. Bearing those basic principles, Maya and Bailey grew older and wiser in Stamps, each year watching the Negro cotton-pickers come and go with the burdens and fealty comparable to no white person in the county. However, one day their father rode extravagantly into Stamps and called for his children to return home with him to St. Louis. Bailey, an adventurer eager to pass along the quaint, simple family life in Arkansas, agreed immediately, but tender-hearted Maya was frightened by the idea of big cities and strange people. In St. Louis, where she was presented an entirely different lifestyle, M aya see harrowing moments that caused her yearning for the quiet safety of Stamps. Her Mother Dears boyfriend, Mr. freeman, sexually ill-treat her twice, and when she testified in court against him, the important connections her mother had to the gangsters in St. Louis beat Mr. Freeman to death to disburden the shame from the family. In court, Maya lied, saying that he yet touched her once, and the guilt of lying to her closest friend, her brother Bailey, cause Maya to smother herself.