Word: angelou
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...author must create a character out of a woman who has devoted her whole life to forging a character out of artificial roles. Angelou sets an awesome task for herself. She must fill her book with all the negative roles of white American society and Black American culture and then illustrate how these roles conflict with the real woman underneath. Sadly for her, she cannot. Her increased socialization drained the soul from most of her prose; the people she does portray seem like stilted mannequins...
...Angelou described the tightrope on which the Black mother must walk and emphasizes the traumatic implications of the mother's sexuality. Angelou writes that the Black single mother...
...children question her sexuality as they struggle to realize their own in a society which has grossly exaggerated the size of Black libido. And so, Angelou says, the Black mother must offer a strong self to her children that will successfully counter the stereotypes society will offer them...
...point, Maya Angelou enjoys the unique experience of meeting Billie Holiday and even singing for Lady Day. Billie invites herself to Angelou's nightclub act and in the middle of the set begins to scream. "Stop that bitch. Stop her, goddamit. Stop that bitch. She sounds just like my goddam Mamma." When Angelou confronts Billie for interrupting her song, she is told that all Black women sing alike--a mold Billie tried to break. But there is no exploration of why the connection between Black women, particularly mothers, would incite such rage in Billie Holiday. Once the anguish is presented...
Perhaps she figured that the images of the famous Blacks of the 60s and the historical eruptions of that time would be dramatic enough by themselves. They are not strong enough, however, to hold the drama; Angelou's writing style becomes more a chain of name-dropping and weird metaphors than a story. For instance, she walks into her office at SCLC to find Dr. Martin Luther King sitting at her desk. But even with the opportunity to enlarge our concept of this human monument, Angelou fails to present Dr. King in more than a bizarre cameo: "Looking...