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Race through a social construct is an incredibly powerful construct that plays the most major role in shaping identity
Race through a social construct is an incredibly powerful construct that plays the most major role in shaping identity
Racial identity development theories
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Question Four
Throughout her life, Marguerite experiences many different situations and people that all contribute to the way she grows up and the person she becomes. Despite some of her tragic circumstances, she learns a lot growing up, mainly because of the African-American women in her life who teach her all different life lessons. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Marguerite gets to absorb teachings from her mother (Vivian), Mrs. Bertha Flowers, and her grandmother (Momma). These women allow Marguerite to learn and grow as an African-American female, all while paving her own way.
Marguerite and her brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother at three and four, so she had little experience with her mother, Vivian, as a young girl. One of her first memorable encounters with her mother happens when Marguerite and Bailey receive Christmas gifts from their parents. However, up until this point, Marguerite had essentially just thought of her parents as being dead. (Angelou, 52) Later, Marguerite goes back to St. Louis to live with her mother. She is astonished by Vivian’s beauty, as Marguerite does not feel she is beautiful. Despite her previous lack of care for the children, Vivian, according to Marguerite, “was competent in providing for us.” Marguerite also says that while her mother was a nurse, she never worked while the children lived for her and “The straight eight-to-five world simply didn’t have enough glamor for her” so she earned extra money by gambling. (70) Despite eventually moving back in with Momma, the time that she spent with Vivian proved to teach her many things. Though she was not a particularly doting parent, she was incredibly strong. She took care of Marguerite throughout her t...
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...rights and fighting against prejudice.
Despite all of Marguerite’s tragic circumstances and traumatic events, she learned what it meant to be an African-American woman during the early to mid- 20th century through the experiences and lessons via the women in her life. They helped her learn certain characteristics and ways to act in the face of bigotry and harshness from others. She followed their footsteps in many ways, but her own experiences, and the combined lessons from her mother, Mrs. Flowers, and Momma all helped her become her own, new version of an African American woman, who can do it all. One who can eventually grow into Maya Angelou, the poet, mother, activist, performer, and even the first female African American streetcar conductor in San Francisco.
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Ballantine, 2009. Print.
This piece of auto biographical works is one of the greatest pieces of literature and will continue to inspire young and old black Americans to this day be cause of her hard and racially tense background is what produced an eloquent piece of work that feels at times more fiction than non fiction
Differences between cultures are not something new. Many of us can still see it in our daily lives. Four hundred years ago two very distinctly different cultures clashed in what we call the American Southwest. The Spanish presence brought new ideas, new culture, and new way of life to the new found Americas much to the demise of the already settled native tribes. Already having controlled much of Mexico and South America, problems were rising in the outskirts of New Spain. Secular and religious authorities were in conflict and the ever growing animosity of its aboriginal tribe made it difficult to maintain Spanish control. Though, for four generations the Spaniards had begun to feel successful in their endeavors of New Mexico. In early August, the sedentary and nomadic tribes banned together and overthrow the Spanish authority. There are many angles needed to be addressed in order to see why this happened. Historians and anthropologists have been trying to go beyond the bias history to uncover what happen. In the book “What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680”, historians try to answer this question, some theories hold more pull then others in terms of what and why. Through reading this anthology I believe the revolt happened for cultural and religious reasons because the Spaniards were threatening the indigenous people’s very way of life through violence, exploitation of land/resources (food), and demoralization of their old ways and practices.
One of those major things is that she pretty much supported Marguerite through everything that she did. Marguerite getting a job was one subject that Mother supported. This is shown when she says “That’s what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you’ve got. I’ve told you many times, ‘Can’t Do is like Don’t Care.’ Neither of them have a home”. This helps Marguerite move forward from her breaking point because besides the fact that her job can make her happy and distract her from her past, it also lets her know that someone is always behind her to support her. Another major thing that Marguerites mother supported was her having a baby. Usually if you have a child at 16 and your parents figure out, they might have you get an abortion, send you away, or even have the child sent to an orphanage. But instead of this, she said that everything was going to be ok, “Well, that’s that. No use ruining three lives”. (Vivian 287) Marguerite then states “There was no overt or subtle condemnation. She was Vivian Baxter Johnson. Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between” (Marguerite 287). But on the contrary, there are some hints later on in the story that Marguerite still hasn't moved on. In the statement “Thank to Mr.Freeman nine years before, I had had no pain of entry to endure…” (Marguerite 282), this statement right here
The novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", by Maya Angelou is the first series of five autobiographical novels. This novel tells about her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her religious grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, are turned over to the care of their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.
There are many obstacles in which Maya Angelou had to overcome throughout her life. However, she was not the only person affected throughout the story, but as well as her family. Among all the challenges in their lives the author still manages to tell the rough and dramatic story of the life of African Americans during a racism period in the town of Stamps. In Maya Angelou's book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings she uses various types of language to illustrate the conflicts that arise in the novel. Among the different types of languages used throughout the book, she uses literary devices and various types of figurative language. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou the author uses literary devices and figurative language to illustrate to the reader how racism creates obstacles for her family and herself along with how they overcome them.
The roller-coaster life of Maya Angelou has included many ups and downs that have become the stuff out of which she has written a six volume autobiography, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and ending recently with the last installment, A Song Flung up to Heaven. Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri (Weaver G-10). Angelou's life has been filled with chaos and despair as well as success and love. She was raped by her mother's boyfriend at the age of 8 and at various times in her life she toiled in a variety of occupations including Creole cook, calypso dancer, actress, madam, civil-righ...
In her novel, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings';, Maya states “The black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and the lack of black power';. Fortunately Maya was able to move beyond the crossfire, proving that she overcomes opposition that her status throws her way.
# Quote Reaction 1 pg. 8 Chap. 1: "The sounds of the new morning had been replaced with grumbles about cheating houses, weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty rows. In later years I was to confront the stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton pickers with such an inordinate rage that I was told even by fellow blacks that my paranoia was embarrassing.
In perhaps her most notable work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings “Angelou’s account of her childhood and adolescence chronicles her frequent encounters with racism, sexism, and classism at the same time that she ...
Violence has always had a huge impact on the world that is known today. Back then, violence occurred frequently because everyone was greedy for wealth, power, and more property to rule over. In his article, Father Miguel de Molina, tells of the day that the San Saba Mission was attacked in 1758. It was a day that will always be remembered.
The Chichimeca Wars have been a major role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. The wars or mini battles between the two sides occurred from 1550-1590, when much of the new colony of Mexico had already been established. The Spanish ended up engaging in the longest and most expensive conflict they ever had with an Indigenous people. The Chichimeca people were a nomadic group of people who lived in a desert basin that was roughly 60,000 square miles of land, where they were hunters and gathers. They were not a single tribe either; they people of the tribe were made up of four different ethnic tribes that on occasion would join each other in battle. The wars started after the land in which the tribe lived was found to be abundant in silver ore and led to the Spanish establishing mines on the Chichimeca’s territory. This upset the tribe and they started to raid Spanish convoys that were on their way to deliver supplies to the mines and miners. The Spanish then enlisted the help of their native allies by setting up forts along the routes with solders and allied Native Americans to help protect the convoys traveling across Chichimecan territory. The Spanish government then adopted a policy of “War of Fire and Blood” which meant the death and enslavement, as well as mutilation of the Chichimeca people. The policy had no effect and failed. So instead they decided making peace with the natives was a better option. A Bishop proposed a Christian remedy to the problem and that was to convert the Chichimecan people to Christianity. The steps the Spanish followed to end the war and create peace where negotiate peace agreements, covert, resettle Native American allies provide food, commodities and tools to encourage them to become sedentary. T...
While the far-away North American tribes were having their land taken away, and being harassed by white American expansionists, they also faced another threat: Spanish occupation. During the early-1500’s, many Spanish explorers and conquistadors, such as Cabeza de Vaca, wished to find gold and riches and, in the process, they harassed, oppressed, tortured, and spread deadly diseases to the Native tribes. They often used the excuse of racial class-separation, known as “castas,” to justify their rotten, atrocious crimes. Throughout the 1600’s and 1700’s, the focus of the Spanish explorers experienced a shift from conquistadors wishing to acquire gold and wealth to Catholic missionaries wishing to religiously convert the Native tribes and, as a result, they built up many churches on the land. As one might guess, the
Throughout life graduation, or the advancement to the next distinct level of growth, is sometimes acknowledged with the pomp and circumstance of the grand commencement ceremony, but many times the graduation is as whisper soft and natural as taking a breath. In the moving autobiographical essay, "The Graduation," Maya Angelou effectively applies three rhetorical strategies - an expressive voice, illustrative comparison and contrast, and flowing sentences bursting with vivid simile and delightful imagery - to examine the personal growth of humans caught in the adversity of racial discrimination.
During the 1600s to 1700s, the Spanish were settling Texas. They did this by building missions and presidios throughout the land. The purpose was to keep the French out and to change the Indians' ways of life. Some of these missions failed and some succeeded. All in all they were closed after years of trying to change the Indians.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou's novel is a classic tale of growing up black in the American South in the 1930s and 40s. Even though Marguerite's and her brother Bailey's childhood and early youth are probably far from typical for the average black family of that time, the book nonetheless can be read as a parable of what it meant and still means to be a black person in an overwhelmingly white society. The story is told from a "black" point of view and is thus a more "politically correct" representation of race relationship and prejudice than Harper Lee's equally famous To Kill a Mockingbird.