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Maya Angelou Research Paper

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“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” - Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was an author, poet, dancer, actress, singer, and civil rights activist, born on April 4, 1928. She published three books of essays, several books of poetry, and seven autobiographies, she was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows. Angelou is best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first non-fiction that got best-seller by an African-American woman, which made literary history.

Maya Angelou had a troubled childhood, when her parents separated at the age of 3, she and her brother went and lived with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, this is where she first experienced racial discrimination. At the age of 7, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When her uncle found out, he killed Angelou’s rapist, traumatized she stopped speaking for 5 years. During WWII, she won a scholarship to study dance and acting at the California Labour School. By 1944, she gave birth to her son, Guy, at 16 years old, who she supported by herself. In 1952, she married a Greek …show more content…

Shortly after, Malcolm X was assassinated. Although she stayed active in the Civil Rights Movement, working closely with Martin Luther King Jr, whose assassination fell on her birthday, leaving her devastated. But with the help of friends she found peace in writing and that’s how her memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” came about. From then on she has received countless of honours. A Pulitzer Prize nomination for her first book poetry “Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Die”, the Lincoln Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and many

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