The Influence Of Maya's Graduation

“Graduation Day” illustrates Maya Angelou’s experience on her graduation day. All of Angelou’s feelings, reasoning, and thoughts of her graduation day are depicted between the pages of her short story. Her text covers multiple different aspects of a segregated community’s lifestyle and explains their decisions on coping with their limitations. The power of words impacts the community in several ways during Angelou’s story. Because words impact and shape people, they influence individuals into themselves.

Namely, losing her confidence when her experiment begins to fall apart. It starts to fall apart when her crush doesn’t accept her invitation to her farewell party and then when she finds out everyone’s going to Allison’s birthday party, a girl in her choir, instead. It gets worse when she messes up her solo at the choir concert and everyone makes fun of her. Maya stops talking to others and goes back to her old self. As proof of this, “Why did I believe I was anything but an inside joke?...I’m not special, I’m just a crazy girl in Grandma shoes. I don’t have balls at all...All my confidence and inner strength-how do I find it again?” (227-228).This reflects how Maya feels about herself. Maya brings herself down by letting everyone else get to her. She cancels her party and decides to give up on her experiment because she feels so bad about herself. Maya’s popularity disapears and even her friends have abondened her. Furthermore, Maya realizes that she was closest to popularity when “I was talking to people. It was when I opened up my introverted circle and allowed everyone I met in. It was when I included everyone” (230). As a result of this realization, Maya understands the true meaning of popularity. It was more then looks . It’s more than the right clothes, hair or what you owned, it was who you are and how you treat others. After determining this, Maya decides to invite anyone who doesn’t have a date to prom to go with her. Instead of excluding people like she did for her farewell party, she includes everyone. Maya beomces confident and positive again. By putting the past behind her, Maya can move forward and continue her experiment. In the end, Maya learns that to be confident, she has to let go, find that light inside of her and show it to the

Significance: Maya and the rest of her graduating class are at graduation hoping it will be full of joy and happiness. Instead, they were reminded of how they were “not capable” to be anything but housewives or basketball players. This quote is significant because it shows how

Racial segregation was very dominant in the United States in the mid nineteen hundreds. This is the time that Maya Angelou was graduating from the eighth grade in Stamps Arkansas. The theme of racial segregation is well shown by the how different the schools of the African-Americans was compared to that of whites in the essay “Graduation” by Maya Angelou. In the essay the Angelou points out that Lafayette County Training School didn’t have a lawn, hedges, tennis court, climbing ivy as well as a fence the thing the white high school had. In every stage of life, graduation marks the advancement to the next different phase of life and is usually acknowledged by some ceremonies relating to the growth

The Mayan religion was based in the regions of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and some southern parts of Mexico. It is a southeastern variant of Mesoamerican religion. Death and afterlife beliefs have always played an important role in all religions. Some religions have similar beliefs while others are very different. The Maya religion is very similar to Roman Catholicism. Many Mayas were able to adopt Catholic beliefs while still maintaining their own faith: many of their customs remain evident today.

Are encouraging words the uniting force when fighting injustice? In “Graduation Day,” Maya Angelou addresses how encouraging words affected the injustice she faced as a child. Angelou informs her audience about the influence encouraging words had on her and the people in her community. These uplifting words united her community in a time of overwhelming bias. Encouraging words unite oppressed people to fight injustice.

In 1940, the United States approached the eightieth-year anniversary of the abolition of slavery; however, the social oppression of African American citizens steadily increased. Despite being free for decades, they were still leagues below the white people who owned their ancestors. African American author Maya Angelou recollects on her experience of graduation from the eighth grade in her 1940 piece “Graduation Day.” The narrative not only highlights the importance of the narrator's graduation, but also the expectations of Angelou’s community due to their persecution and separation. Perseverance through separation and persecution forges dignity in an individual.

Maya Angelou’s “Graduation” and Joey Franklin’s “Working at Wendy’s” are similar in that both are challenged to obtain and uphold their self-confidence and self-worth amidst strongly conflicting public opinion. In “Graduation,” Maya must find a way to continue to believe that she, along with her entire race and most specifically the ones at her sides during the graduation speech, is competent and able to remaining strong, keep faith in herself, and believe that she was capable of achieving great things, although the white men giving the speech made it a point to degrade the self-esteem and destroy the dreams of every attendee and graduate present. Likewise, in “Working at Wendy’s,” Joey is forced to rely on his own inner confidence, despite the fact that many of his friends and customers see him as “another wasted life, another victim” (2006/2012, p. 27). Both Joey’s and Maya’s challenges, though rough initially, help build stronger, more self-reliant personalities, which will make it easier for them to navigate conflicts in the future.

Maya Angelou’s “Graduation” conveys a message of self worth. Knowing who you are, believing in yourself and all the great things you can accomplish is all you need despite the negativity and discouragement that will oftentimes, be thrown your way in life. Marguerite and the other members of her community are elated about the upcoming graduation. The whole town is filled with excitement and joy as the big day approaches. Parents, teaches and friends are so eager and proud to witness the commencement of the children.

Words “Be careful what you say. You can say something hurtful in ten seconds but ten years later, the wounds are still there,” quoted Joel Osteen (Quotes, 2016). Angelou, the author of her autobiography a poet, play writer, children’s author, and. Maya Angelou has won multiple awards for her works. “Graduation Day” describes the story of Maya Angelou’s graduation day with all the feelings, reasonings, and thoughts described between the pages of her short story.

The ancient Maya were a group of American Indian peoples who lived in Southern Mexico. Their descendants, the modern Maya,live in the same regions today.

“The children in Stamps trembled visibly with anticipation. Some adults were excited too, but to be certain the whole young population had come down with graduation epidemic.” Maya was so excited that Friday morning she stated: “I hoped the memory of that morning would never leave me.” Her parents closed their store the day of the graduation with a

Throughout life we go through many stepping stones, Maya Angelou's autobiographical essay "Graduation", was about more than just moving on to another grade. The unexpected events that occurred during the ceremony enabled her to graduate from the views of a child to the more experienced and sometimes disenchanting views of an adult. Upon reading the story there is an initial feeling of excitement and hope which was quickly tarnished with the abrupt awareness of human prejudices. The author vividly illustrates a rainbow of significant mood changes she undergoes throughout the story.

The Maya of Mesoamerica, along with the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru, made up the high civilizations of the American Indians at the time of the Spanish conquest. Both the Aztecs and the Incas were late civilizations, between 1300-1533 AD, but the Maya of the Yucatan and Guatemala exhibited a cultural continuity spanning more than 2,000 years, 1000 BC-AD 1542. Many aspects of this culture continue yet today. The Ancient Maya in their time had actually refined writing.

Life is not always easy as we think, each and every one had a bad experience in your life that teaches you a lesson for us in order to win the journey of our life. In the essay, "Graduation", Maya Angelou states about the unfair treatment of whites against the African Americans during the graduation. There are situations in life where we feel discriminated but no matter what we have to gain the strength to prosper.