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Lessons from Marie Angelou
When a great jazz singer, professor, poet and an activist Maya Angelou died, we had few lessons we could learn. We were left with so many questions. Is there anything Marie Angelou could not do? One could also notice the how the traditional and social media overflowed with expressions and tributes of gratitude for the work she had done in her entire life. It was easy to pick how she helped people approach life. She helped people feel like they were living a meaningful life. She was the symbol of resilience. She had the capacity to offer persistence amidst adversity and hardship. In addition to that, she was the symbol of boundless creativity. It was her creativity that helped her survive the traumas in her early life. In her famous quote, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” The quote highlighted her tough side of life. This is especially her early life which was full of devastating violence. This is the time she worked as a streetcar conductor. It is the same era in which her friends Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were assassinated. But she fought back and rose to her feet. She wrote the poem, “Still Rise.” She engaged herself in almost all forms of arts. Her creativity was the driving force in her journey to stardom. She is a true picture of what it looks like to survive and flourish on a grind scale.

Reference
Agins, Donna Brown. Maya Angelou: A Biography of an Award-Winning Poet and Civil Rights Activist. Enslow Publishers, Inc, 2013.
Angelou, Maya. The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou. Modern Library, 2004.
Egan, Jill. Maya Angelou: A Creative and Courageous Voice. Gareth Stevens, 2009.