"Graduation in Stamps" by Maya Angelou

The crime was discovered, and the child was strained to testify. A fewer days by and by, the assailant was found shell to closing in an alley, probably beaten by slightly of Maya's uncles. The teenaged ladyfriend was shocked by the perception that there was a connection between her words at the trial and the death of a man, and so Maya decided to stop speaking in public (Current Biography 8).

She maintained her silence for five years, in time off after she and her brother were sent back to Stamps to live with their grandmother. The girl immersed herself in books and in the power of language as it is spoken, written, and sung. She showed an primal fondness for the Bible and for such black poets as Langston Hughes, Lawrence Dunbar, and crowd together Weldon Johnson. She also developed a love for Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens, and Matthew Arnold. She graduated from the eighth grade in 1940, by which time she had started to speak again. She would later say that her self-imposed silence had given her the power to harken more intently and to remember all inflection and every nuance of what she heard (Current Biography 8).

Angelou's I Know why the Caged Bird Sings was her first autobiographical book and was very swell up received in 1970 when it was published. She had earlier written a melodic revue called "Cabaret for Freedom" with Godfrey Cambridge in 1960, which was produced at the resolution Gate Theater in New York; "The Least of These," a two-act drama produced in L

The girl is following in the footsteps of her brother, who graduated a year or so before. Both observeed the "black" school in town, the Lafayette County Training School, which unlike the " exsanguinous" school has "neither lawn, nor hedges, nor lawn tennis court, nor climbing ivy" (Angelou 143). The girl seems at this point to study the usual path for young black children in this town--all attend this black training school, then only a few go on to college, with college being one of the agricultural and mechanic schools of the South that trained blacks to be carpenters, farmers, masons, maids, cooks, handymen, and baby nurses.

She sees the onus this places on those around her:

Another reviewer refers to her ability to convey "the decrease sense of herself that pervaded much of her childhood" (Gross, 90).

The story of Maya and her brother Bailey is dismay and painful to read; yet the strong and sensitive young woman who endures and overcomes is fascinating. Angelou is a skillful writer; her language ranges from attractively lyrical prose to earthy metaphor, and her descriptions have power and sensitivity (Guiney 1018).

The white kinds were going to have a change to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises (Angelou 151).

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brute(a) to be young and already trained to sit quiet and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead, I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other (Angelou 153).

os Angeles in 1966; an adaptation of Sophocles "Ajax," produced in Los Angeles at the Mark show Forum in 1974; "And Still I Rise," a one-act musical produced in Oakland at the Ensemble Theatre in 1976; and some(prenominal) unproduced theatrical works. She also wrote ten one-hour television programs under the cognomen "Blacks, Blues, B
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