Question

In a paragraph format, describe Maya Angelou’s journey towards self-actualization. Discuss some of the difficulties she experienced in her early family life and with racism that and how she worked through those. Include a examples of her organismic valuing process.

Answer 1

Maya Angelou was an African American memoirist and poet, is best known for her autobiographic
novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and her long poem “On the Pulse of Morning” which she was invited
to read at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993. As a contemporary black female writer, she
distinguishes herself by infusing her art with consistent cultural consciousness, personal and cultural experience.
Her poetry reveals themes of survival, development and self-discovery of African Americans. Therefore, the aim is to explore the theme of self-actualization of African Americans in her poetries. By redefining blackness and eulogizing the self-accepted black people, Angelou encourages African Americans to inherit their African cultural heritage and affirm their black identity. It concludes that her work manages to awaken African American’s self-consciousness by encouraging them to preserve and celebrate their black culture. Angelou expresses her love for her body and her African nature through another poem called Phenomenal Women. She shows pride in the expands of her body and how other women get jealous of her though she does not have the figure of a fashion model. She calls herself phenomenal and inspire the othe black women to thing of them as the same too.

Early life and troubles cause of racism

Marguerite Annie Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian, and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer. Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister". When Angelou was three and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage" ended, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone by train, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception" to the harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression and World War II because the general store she owned sold needed basic commodities and because "she made wise and honest investments".

Four years later, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning" and returned them to their mother's care in St. Louis. At the age of eight, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. She told her brother, who told the rest of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was jailed for only one day. Four days after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles. Angelou became mute for almost five years, believing, as she stated, "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone". According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, it was during this period of silence when Angelou developed her extraordinary memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability to listen and observe the world around her.

Shortly after Freeman's murder, Angelou and her brother were sent back to their grandmother. Angelou credits a teacher and friend of her family, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, with helping her speak again. Flowers introduced her to authors such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect her life and career, as well as black female artists like Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.

When Angelou was 14, she and her brother moved in with their mother once again, who had since moved to Oakland, California. During World War II, Angelou attended the California Labor School. Before graduating, she worked as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco.Three weeks after completing school, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his name to Guy Johnson).

organismic valuing process

In various poems Angelou has expressed her love for herself and her body. She was a true believer of self actualisation and had a high self conceopt. Like I mentioned in the former part of this answer, she was proud of her African nature and African looks. She is an inspiration to her race and to every other man and woma. Her principles not only apply to women but also to men who have low self concept.

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