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The Cages Of Maya Angelou - Online Term Paper

The Cages Of Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou wrote an amazing and entertaining autobiography titled I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, about her hard life growing up as a black girl from the South. Among the hardships are metaphores known as "cages". "Cages" are things that keep people from succeeding in life and being everything they want to be. Some of Maya Angelou's cages include being black in the 1940's, and her overbearing grandmother. For myself a major "cage" is being young.
A major "cage" from Maya Angelou's youth was that she was black in a prejudice southern town. Maya has recounted in her book the times when she was discriminated against. When she was working for a white woman named Mrs. Viola Cullinan, ...

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nice remarks. Maya conveys the words of Mr. Edward Donleavy, one of the people in the masquerade, "The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't included) would try to be Jesse Owens and Joe Louises."(pp.151) Maya was forced to listen to Mr. Donleavy's stereotypes of how white children could be thinkers, and black children can only be athletes. What was supposed to be an encouraging speech, which Mr. Donleavy probably thought was sincere, turned out to be just another racist and stereotypical message. Perhaps it was not so much Mr. Donleavy's fault, because he was trying to be nice, but more of his background. Racism was the most prominent of Maya's "cages" and it is probably due to the society and ignorant ideals.
The second major cage for Maya Angelou was that she has a very strict, religious, and overbearing grandmother. A child's guardian be caring and strict but that ...

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 6/21/2004 07:14:34 AM
Category: English
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 904
Pages: 4

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