As in many Mexican barrios, where the difference between poor and comfortable is a relative in the United States, her family's conspicuous consumption has bred deep resentment. Poorer kids are banned from the house out of fear that they would steal toys and food.
Ana hasn't seen her son, Misa, now 7, since he was an infant. Her daughter made the trip across the border--with false papers--to New York in , but soon grew rebellious and flew home. I have to be here". Ana's mother sometimes wonders if the family is paying too high a price for their prosperity. Four of her eight children are now in the United States, all illegally. Now we have everything, thanks to them, but they are not here.
Meanwhile, Ana has been sucked into the culture of consumerism. She arrived with one pair of shoes. She now has The shelves of her apartment are filled with videos.
And she admits that it is her new taste of the good life, almost as much as her concern about her family income, that keeps her in the United States. Angelou had a difficult childhood. Her parents split up when she was very young, and she and her older brother, Bailey, were sent to live with their father's mother, Anne Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas.
As an African American, Angelou experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas. She also suffered at the hands of a family associate around the age of 7: During a visit with her mother, Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend.
As vengeance for the sexual assault, Angelou's uncles killed the boyfriend. So traumatized by the experience, Angelou stopped talking. She returned to Arkansas and spent years as a virtual mute. There she won a scholarship to study dance and acting at the California Labor School. Also during this time, Angelou became the first Black female cable car conductor — a job she held only briefly — in San Francisco.
In the mids, Angelou's career as a performer began to take off. She landed a role in a touring production of Porgy and Bess , later appearing in the off-Broadway production Calypso Heat Wave and releasing her first album, Miss Calypso Angelou went on to earn a Tony Award nomination for her role in the play Look Away and an Emmy Award nomination for her work on the television miniseries Roots , among other honors. Angelou spent much of the s abroad, living first in Egypt and then in Ghana, working as an editor and a freelance writer.
Angelou also held a position at the University of Ghana for a time. In , upon returning to the United States, Angelou helped Malcolm X set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which disbanded after his assassination the following year.
One of her most famous works, Angelou wrote this poem especially for and recited at President Bill Clinton 's inaugural ceremony in January Kennedy 's inauguration. Angelou went on to win a Grammy Award best spoken word album for the audio version of the poem. Friend and fellow writer James Baldwin urged Angelou to write about her life experiences. The resulting work was the enormously successful memoir about her childhood and young adult years, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Born 4 April , she lived and chronicled an extraordinary life: rising from poverty, violence and racism, she became a renowned author, poet, playwright, civil rights' activist - working with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King - and memoirist. She wrote and performed a poem, 'On the Pulse of Morning', for President Clinton on his inauguration; she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama and was honoured by more than seventy universities throughout the world.
She wrote three collections of essays; many volumes of poetry, including His Day is Done, a tribute to Nelson Mandela; and two cookbooks. Dr Angelou died on 28 May Lire la suite Fermer.
Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou s path to living well and living a life with meaning. Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that taught Angelou lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.
Whether she is recalling lost friends such as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a lifelong endeavor, or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice, Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.
The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelous words live on in this complete collection of poetry.
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