Book Report: Maya Angelou - I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4th 1928 in St. Louis. She was raised by her grandmother in Arkansas, at the age of eight she was raped by her mother's boyfriend and became mute for several years. In her early teens she became San Francisco's first black street car conductor. By the age of 16 she become pregnant and bore a son and by the age of 18 she was a Madame of a brothel in San Diego. After that she started her dancing and drama career. By the age of 30 she had been a prostitute, a showgirl and an actress as well as the first black female conductor of the San Francisco Orchestra. She married a South African freedom fighter and moved to Cairo, Egypt. During the five years she stayed there, she became the editor of the Arab Observer, wrote for the Ghana African Review and taught at the University of Ghana. In the 1960s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked her to be the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Later,
The novel is based on the experiences the author has made in her childhood. It starts when 3-year-old Maya and her older brother Bailey were sent from California to Stamps to stay with their grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson. She taught them the basic principles of life, such as praying, working hard in school as well as in the little shop they owned. On the 20th of January in 1993, she wrote and delivered " On the Pulse of Mornings" at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton. President Gerald Ford appointed Maya Angelou to the Bicentennial Advisory Commission and Jimmy Carter appointed her to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. In her life, she has received over 30 honorary degrees and she speaks French, Spanish, Italian and west African Fanti fluently. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. "I know why the caged bird sings" was published in 1969 and was criticized because of pornographic content, profane language, premarital sex a
Some common words found in the essay are:
Bailey Maya, San Francisco, Book Award, Louis Bailey, Annie Henderson, Georgia Georgia, San Francisco's, San Diego, St Louis, Women's Maya, age 16, sent california, black female, san francisco, maya angelou, st louis, mother's boyfriend,
Approximate Word count = 679
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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