Maya Angelou: A Model Woman Through Influential Literature

There are many women of today that have become a model for society. In order to have the reputation of the model woman, there is a need for accomplishment in life in addition to being a positive influence on society itself. Maya Angelou is a great example of the model woman. She has beaten the odds and has become one of the most well known African American women of today. She is an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. Her most influential work comes from her extraordinary books and poems. Her literature has influenced the young and old with their contents.

Maya Angelou's literary significance rests primarily upon her exceptional ability to tell her life story as both a human being and a black American woman. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focuses on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , written in 1969, tells of her first seventeen years. It brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award. In the book, Maya confronts the insidious effects of racism and segregation in America at a very young age. She internalizes the idea that blond hair is beautiful and that she is a fat black girl trapped in a nightmare. Stamps, Arkansas, is so thoroughly segregated that as a child, Maya does not quite believe that white people exist. As Maya gets older, she is confronted by more overt and personal incidents of racism, such as a white speaker’s condescending address at her eighth-grade graduation, her white boss’s insistence on calling her Mary, and a white dentist’s refusal to treat her. Thes...

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...: Dramatists and Prose Writers, eds. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris, 1985, pp. 7.

Conversations with Maya Angelou. Ed. Jeffrey M. Elliot. London: Virago Press,1989. pages 158 and 173

Françoise Lionnet, “Con Artists and Storytellers: Maya Angelou's Problematic Sense of Audience,” in Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self Portraiture, 1989, pp. 167.

Hagen, Lyman B. Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou. Lanham: UP of America, 1997. page 128.

Joann Braxton. Maya Angelou's I know Why the Cage Bird Sings: A Casebook, Oxford University Press US, 1999, page 4

John Alfred Avant, “Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement,” in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, ed. Mari Evans, 1984, pp. 6.

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House,1994.