Maya angelou

1. Maya angelou • Javon Barber • Period 5 • English9 • 5-20-09

2. Table of contents • Biography touched by an angel on page 4 men is on page 5 still I rise is on page 1 the lesson on page 9 alone on page 6. • I think that these five poems this lady wrote were good because they talked about how she felt and how some times she was done an out an about her life style. • Men • Still I rise • The lesson • Touch by an angel • Alone • Glossary

3. Maya began to speak again at 13, when she and her brother rejoined their mother in San Francisco. Maya attended Mission High School and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco's Labor School, where she was exposed to the progressive ideals that animated her later political activism. She dropped out of school in her teens to become San Francisco's first African American female cable car conductor. She later returned to high school, but became pregnant in her senior year and graduated a few weeks before giving birth to her son, Guy. She left home at 16 and took on the difficult life of a single mother, supporting herself and her son by working as a waitress and cook, but she had not given up on her talents for music, dance, performance and poetry. Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents divorced when she was only three and she was sent with her brother Bailey to live with their grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, the young girl experienced the racial discrimination that was the legally enforced way of life in the American South, but she also absorbed the deep religious faith and old-fashioned courtesy of traditional African American life. She credits her grandmother and her extended family with instilling in her the values that informed her later life and career. She enjoyed a close relationship with her brother, who gave her the nickname Maya when they were very young. Biography she married a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos. When she began her career as a nightclub singer, she took the professional name Maya Angelou, combining her childhood nickname with a form of her husband's name. Although the marriage did not last, her performing career flourished. She toured Europe with a production of the opera in. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Alley on television variety shows and recorded her first record album, She had composed song lyrics and poems for many years, and by the end of the was increasingly interested in developing her skills as a writer. She moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and took her place among the growing number of young black writers and artists associated with the Civil Rights Movement. She acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's and wrote and performed a with the actor and comedian Godfrey Cambridge.

4. Biography • During her years abroad, she read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. She met with the American dissident leader Malcolm X in his visits to Ghana, and corresponded with him as his thinking evolved from the racially polarized thinking of his youth to the more inclusive vision of his maturity. • Maya Angelou returned to America in 1964, with the intention of helping Malcolm x build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and his plans for a new organization died with him. Angelou involved herself in television production and remained active in the Civil Rights Movement, working more closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who requested that Angelou serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she found solace in writing, and began work on the book that would become. The book tells the story of her life from her childhood in Arkansas to the birth of her child. was published in 1970 to widespread critical acclaim and enormous popular success.

5. Five Poems • Men- this is about when she was little how she use to watch them boys walk up an down the street and see what they were doing. • Still I rise- this tells how people use to talk about her but yet she still became the person she is. • The lesson- this tells how she used to have memories about things she didn’t want know more. • Alone- this poem talks bout the times she use to be alone in the dark with no one to be their for her. • Touched by an angel-this poem tells how there will be a time when god puts something in your life that u needed at the moment an how you will appreciate it. • Website is Google.com

6. Men • When I was young, I used toWatch behind the curtainsAs men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.Young men sharp as mustard.See them. Men are alwaysGoing somewhere.They knew I was there. FifteenYears old and starving for them.Under my window, they would pauses,Their shoulders high like theBreasts of a young girl,Jacket tails slapping overThose behinds,Men.One day they hold you in thePalms of their hands, gentle, as if youWere the last raw egg in the world. ThenThey tighten up. Just a little. TheFirst squeeze is nice. A quick hug.Soft into your defenselessness. A littleMore. The hurt begins. Wrench out aSmile that slides around the fear. When theAir disappears,Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.It is your juiceThat runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.When the earth rights itself again,And taste tries to return to the tongue,Your body has slammed shut. Forever.No keys exist.Then the window draws full uponYour mind. There, just beyondThe sway of curtains, men walk.Knowing something.Going someplace.But this time, I will simplyStand and watch.

7. You may write me down in historyWith your bitter, twisted lies,You may trod me in the very dirtBut still, like dust, I'll rise.Does my sassiness upset you?Why are you beset with gloom?'Cause I walk like I've got oil wellsPumping in my living room.Just like moons and like suns,With the certainty of tides,Just like hopes springing high,Still I'll rise.Did you want to see me broken?Bowed head and lowered eyes?Shoulders falling down like teardrops.Weakened by my soulful cries.Does my haughtiness offend you?Don't you take it awful hard'Cause I laugh like I've got gold minesDigging's in my own back yard. You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, I'll rise.Does my sexiness upset you?Does it come as a surpriseThat I dance like I've got diamondsAt the meeting of my thighs?Out of the huts of history's shameI riseUp from a past that's rooted in painI riseI'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fearI riseInto a daybreak that's wondrously clearI riseBringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,I am the dream and the hope of the slave.I riseI riseI rise. Still I rise

8. I keep on dying again.Veins collapse, opening like theSmall fists of sleepingChildren.Memory of old tombs,Rotting flesh and worms doNot convince me againstThe challenge. The yearsAnd cold defeat live deep inLines along my face.They dull my eyes, yetI keep on dying,Because I love to live. The lesson

9. Alone • Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don't believe I'm wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.There are some millionairesWith money they can't useTheir wives run round like bansheesTheir children sing the bluesThey've got expensive doctorsTo cure their hearts of stone.But nobodyNo, nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.Now if you listen closelyI'll tell you what I knowStorm clouds are gatheringThe wind is gonna blowThe race of man is sufferingAnd I can hear the moan,'Cause nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.

10. We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life.Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain.Yet if we are bold,love strikes away the chains of fearfrom our souls. We are weaned from our timidityIn the flush of love's lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free. Touch by an angel

11. Glossary • 1. Banshees ,a female spirit in Gaelic believed to presage. • 2. Fiercely, vehement manner • 3. Disdainful,full of or expressing • 4. Veins,is a commune of the vaucluse department in the southern France. • 5. Tombs,is a repository for the remains of the dead. • 6. Excesses, • 7. Encounter,is a educational organization dedicated to providing Jewish. • 8. Bellying,side to side by crawling • 9. Inverting,to turn inside are upside down • 10. Clichty,couldn't find this one

12. My Opinion • Okay my opinion on these five poems were that the lady who wrote these which is Maya Angelo is a smart a smart person because she explains and talks about her life and all the things she been an went threw from when she was little too when she got all the way to how old she is know she tells you how she started form grade schools to high school to college an then the life she chosen be in an also in some of her poems she talks about the things she went threw with boys and how they would try things they shouldn’t have done but she realized that that was not good she also tells how she would stay on track and not get out of the focus she was in . Then the different poems she wrote would tell about the summer times that she spent alone in the dark with no one there with her and some she talked about the cold winters she had when she didn’t think she would be able to make it threw the night times she said that sometimes she would talk to god bout the struggles she had in her family and parents. Maya said growing up as a child was the real times because she was able to do more things with all her family and friends she had but their would be times that she would just say I cant wait until I get all grown up cause I want to be a poet an now her dream is complete an she is just living the life she couldn’t wait for with a husband an everything doing good . But the day she hand the writing an being a poet over too her children will be the Wright day for her to rest.the poem she has completed are very inspiring for some that could want to become a poet because they show how and tell how to become the person you always wanted to be and she helps out the things you would need to do to get your skills up and start to publish your own poems that people would get inspired by then your will become the person you always thought you would be in life times . But she says you have to make it threw school first before you can pressed any dream you think an know you can you have to work hard for what you want too do in life because life is not easy especially if you are a black man are any other color to things just don’t come to you how to u want them to you have to do what you got to do to become someone in life.