... from age three, when her divorcing parents sent her and her brother to live with their maternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, to age sixteen, when, reunited with her mother in San Francisco, she gave birth to her son. Thus her story begins with semi-orphanhood and ends with motherhood. Interpreting her quest for freedom and self-affirmation as representative of that of ... -old Bailey was ordered by a white man to help carry the corpse of a lynched man into the jail, Momma decided that the children must rejoin their mother, now living in San Francisco. In California, Maya found her mo...

• Word Count: 1226
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Maya Angelou writes on her experience living in Southern rural then in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the book is a heartwarming yet tragic story of her life from birth to young adulthood. She grew in unstable home environment, moving between her grandmother, father, and mother with her ... confinement as a result of oppression and racism, book contains a sequence of lesson on how to resist oppression. Maya eventually broke the race barrier, became the first black streetcar operator in San Francisco, and assertively responded to her white employer and embraced racial identity and shed off se...

• Word Count: 649
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... always be black and can find a way to succeed in a world full of prejudice. The best example of this is her dream in becoming the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco. "Attaining the street-car conductor's job becomes not only a victory for civil rights, as a result, but also a personal victory for Maya's sense of self" (Walker). Through experience, Angelou ... ...

• Word Count: 673
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... . She studied drama and dance at night and was a scholar at the California Labor School. As a young adult Maya had already begun displaying signs of her enormous potential by becoming San Francisco's first black female cable car conductor. At age seventeen, she was a high school graduate and was eight months pregnant with her only child Clyde 'Guy' Johnson. In her early twenties ... ...

• Word Count: 884
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate