...When you learn, teach- Mya Angelou… Most of my youth and young adult years I spent struggling with accepting the label of leader, or teacher, or even mediator. I imagine two possible reasons why standing in this light is such a challenge. Part of the reason could come from societies dictation that minimizing one's greatness is a desirable sign of humility, especially for women. A more introspective response would say that I was/am simply afraid to accept that I have been gifted with the ability to lead, guide, and nurture others for fear of being misunderstood and rejected. In the past 4 years, I have grown to accept and appreciate my innate ability to relate to and lead diverse groups of individuals in various capacities. When fate and timing...
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...Maya Angelou Name: Institution: Instructor: Date: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Reasons for Choosing Maya Angelou 3 Early Life 4 Educational Life 5 Angelou’s Influence in her Early Career 5 Angelou’s Influence in Africa 6 Angelou’s Career Peak 7 Later Career 7 Qualities That Make Angelou A Great Leader 8 Analysis of Angelou’s Leadership Style 9 Application of Angelou’s Leadership Style to Hospitality Industry 9 Leadership Lesson on Angelou Essential for Hospitality Industry 10 The value of versatility 10 The Value of Spirituality 10 Introspection value 11 Conclusion 11 References 12 Introduction Leadership is essential for the success of a given group, society, or organization. Through leadership, a particular group of people is directed, mobilized, motivated, and encouraged to perform a given task. Leadership is among the roles of a manager. The manager in this case is a person charged with given responsibilities for the success of a given venture. At an individual level, one is supposed to manage his or her own life in an effective way to achieve a lifetime objective. Given that leadership is among the roles of a manager, it means that everyone should cultivate leadership qualities in all aspects of life. This can be done through several ways. One of them is by learning from reputable leaders of both the past and the present generation. The world has witnessed myriads of reputable...
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...English IV CP Blankenship 3/21/14 Maya Angelou Known as one of the most influential voices of our time, Dr. Maya Angelou is a global renaissance woman, a celebrated poet, novelist, educator and holds many other titles. She has proven the point that sex and race cannot hinder dreams and goals. In this paper, Dr. Maya Angelou’s failures as well as successes will be recognized and discussed. Born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou's former name was Marguerite Ann Johnson. Maya got the nickname from her older brother Bailey, who had a speech issue and could not pronounce Marguerite (Longly, 2013). He started calling her Maya because he read a book on Mayan indians, and the name stuck. In Stamps, Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture (Angelou, 2012). Growing up in Stamps, AK, Angelou learned what it was like to be a black girl in a world whose boundaries were set by whites (Longly, 2013). As a child, she always dreamed of waking to find her "nappy black hair" metamorphosed to a long blond bob because she felt life was better for a white girl than for a black girl (Franks, n.d.). Despite the odds, her grandmother instilled pride in Angelou with religion as an important element in their home. Maya Angelou contributed to black history by publicizing...
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...Yasef Gomez Professor Troy English 101 3 December 2013 The Superior Ones Throughout history we have always had people with power, wealth, and fame. But the ones that always stood out were the ones with power. They tend to let the lower people know that they are in charge and we always have to oblige to whatever they say. Sometimes the people who were targeted were the colored people, because of the color of the skin they were automatically put in the lowest of the low. Authors Maya Angelou and Alice Walker claim that people in power oppress African Americans. Back then not many African Americans had power and were known to be oppressed by the superior kind. Firstly, Joel Chandler Harris takes away the slaves' Identity when he creates Uncle Remus. Joel Chandler states, " “He (Uncle Remus) was not an invention, of my own, but hymen syndicate, I might say, of three or four old darkies whom I know. I just walloped them together into one person and called him ‘Uncle Remus’”(27). Joel Chandler Harris treated the slaves like if they were prisoners in his jailhouse. The government gives a prisoner a new identity which is a number that they must go by while in jail so that it would be easier to keep track of them. Joel Chandler Harris simply gave them new names, names that he would remember because of the persons trait or how dark their skin was. From the moment he gave them the name, that was their new identity as long as they were under his ownership. That is why Chandler Harris...
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...Maya Angelou is not only an author; she is a poet, playwright, screen producer, and many more. Growing up, Maya’s life was filled with ups and downs. In spite of her trials and tribulations, Maya Angelou has found a way to accomplish many goals. Throughout her career, she has not only written books, but she as acted in and directed several plays, lived in Ghana for four years, raised a child by herself, and worked as hard as he could to give her and child the best life. Maya Angelou, Marguerite Johnson, was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri (Gale Group 4). She initially lived in St. Louis with her mother, Vivian, who was a nurse, and a maid, and her father Barly, a doorkeeper and navel dietician (Gale Group 4). As she was growing up, Maya’s mother never cared for her as a mother should. Often, her mother would leave her and her brother and would not return for days at a time. This, of course gave Maya no other choice but to take full responsibility for the household and her brother. When she was thirteen, Angelou’s mother decided to leave St. Louis without telling her. It was on that day that she went to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya’s grandmother was a very strict lady and made sure that Maya and her brother would grow up to be the best people they could be. Maya’s grandmother made a great impact on her and her brother’s lives. Because of her grandmother, Maya can often be quoted as saying “ If you don’t appreciate the things you have, other...
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...Maya Angelou Introduction Leadership is essential for the success of a given group, society, or organization. Through leadership, a particular group of people is directed, mobilized, motivated, and encouraged to perform a given task. Leadership is among the roles of a manager. The manager in this case is a person charged with given responsibilities of handling affairs of a given business venture. At an individual level, one is supposed to manage his or her own life in an effective way to achieve a lifetime objective. Given that leadership is among the roles of a manager, it means that everyone should cultivate leadership traits in all phases of life. This can be accomplished through several ways. One of them is by learning from reputable leaders of both the precedent and the current generation. The world has witnessed myriads of reputable leaders with profound influence on the community. Their utterances, Way of life, and formulas of handling situations is worthy emulating. As a result, one ought to assess the same and emulate their style of leadership. One area where leadership is essential is in the hospitality industry. Hospitality generally involves accommodating people at a given place. Accommodation in this case involves providing, comforting, guiding, and instructing people on the type of food, entertainment, and recreation facilities available for them. This paper investigates a reputable leader. The leader in consideration is Maya Angelou. The consideration...
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...If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine O, Mother Earth by Ernesto P. Santiago O, Mother Earth, O, Mother Earth, you’re so rich, with butterflies’ songs and full of olden lullabies, sung by mountains and valleys while rivers keep flowing through the ever-changing seasons of life. Youspeak the language I hardly know, but...
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...Maya Angelou I suppose anyone who was entering into early adolescence without the proper love, care and nourishment from their biological parents would have had an uneasy go of things. Now let us add to it the era of the 1920’s and the culture of the Deep South. Stamps, Arkansas was a land that ran rich with racism and the segregation of Blacks and Whites, no place for a child to grow up and be expected not to have their defenses up and shield their true identities. Personal growth and development took a back seat to survival when growing up in the South. In the South children didn’t get to be children. Children were taught to grow up to be miniature adults without any of the information and experience that comes with being an adult. They were taught to respect their elders, do their chores, mind their manners, and do their schoolwork, to fear God and no “Tom Foolery”. For Maya Angelou, being a little Black girl in the South without a Mother to guide her and to help shape and mold her growing up was especially hard. Maya’s Momma (grandmother) had raised her as best as she could. According to psychologist Diana Baumrind parent styling’s; Momma had an authoritative style of parenting mixed with only a touch of an authoritarian undertone. Momma was a God fearing woman and used the good Lord and the Bible to raise her and Maya’s brother Bailey and to teach them both. At times I found her to be tender and nurturing when she needed to be. Momma was a strong religious woman and...
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...Since human beings have been able to think, they were asking themselves about their life, their meaning: they have taken into consideration their existence. The deepest discussed ethical questions are about life, innocence and experience. The purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate that experience can improve human life where disappointment is the essential passage from innocence to experience. Admittedly it is going to far to assert that experience also can't improve the life, for instance if a little boy affront to be subjected to the war, he could be psychologically shock for all his life. In this sense experience can destroy the future boy life. The disappointment has for result the experience which is something indelible in our memory. In the following pages we will first look at the relationship between innocence and experience at the beginning of life before seeing that all the illusions of childhood are destroyed by a gain of experience in the beginning of adulthood. To qualify experience through human life, we have firstly to define it. The notion of experience is, of course, quite difficult to determine. But , according to some people, it is the experience of our own being. In this sense, it exists a need of experience, demonstrated by Shopenhawer ( French philosopher), which is a constituent of our humanity. Indeed, experience is a fact of acquiring a moral knowledge, a process which starts at your birth. Now we will try to describe children' innocence trough...
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...Maya Angelou was a very influential woman who had an interesting life. She was a poet, civil rights activist, and much more. She got many awards for her work and overcame segregation. Since we are learning about Maya Angelou, the beginning would be a better place to start. Maya Angelou was born in 1928 which was a time when segregation was very real. To make matters worse, her parents got divorced early on. At the time of the divorce, she was only two, so of course this event influenced her greatly. She went to live with her uncle and grandmother. Her brother came too. Her uncle decided that even though they were of color, they needed to flourish their minds. He taught them to read and write, and that is what started Maya’s love of poetry....
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...Importance of Religion throughout African Americans in the 1900’s Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing” and Solomon Northrup, “Twelve Years a Slave” are two memoirs with similar themes that encompassed their societies. These literally works depicts many life stories in which thematic concerns of religion, racism, chauvinism, education, poverty and seclusion carry an American dream. One quickly notices that they both relate in the way they pass out their different themes especially the theme of religion in this case. Religion is the main concern in this article considered for literary analysis. Therefore, the two authors used religion as part of their larger story to bring out a more or less the same thematic concept. Maya Angelou composed a stunning and energizing personal history titled “I know why the caged birds sing” of her hardship in her growth as a dark young woman in the southern states of America. Set in the 1930's the place the legacy of subjection remained. One thing, which made this literature work so fascinating to peruse, was the way that this book had such a variety of topics, which are both relative and imperative to us today like the absence of equivalent chances, prejudice, bias, training, neediness, seclusion, religion and The American Dream. On the other hand, in his work Solomon Northrup’s, “Twelve Years a Slave” shows the pain and ill-use encountered by Solomon Northrup in his 12 years of subjugation. For instance, the huge number of different...
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...To what extent do you agree that Angelou’s poetry presents the female struggle for identity more effectively than the male struggle? Angelou writes from many different viewpoints, the main one tending to be from a female perspective. The poem ‘men’ focuses on the admiration and vulnerability a woman may feel towards a man – ‘they knew I was there. Fifteen years old and starving for them.’ By saying ‘they knew I was there’ shows the reader that everywhere the young girl goes men are constantly watching her, looking for her even with the age that she is at. ‘Starving’ is a sense of desperation for something, in this case the young girl may want sexual experience this links to a later line ‘it is your juice’ this is also a simile, which may connote to the physical point, referring to a sexual encounter. However, with the sentence being short it shows us that a lack of detachment was there this also relates back to the young girl wanting experience. Angelou portrayed to us the image of a young girl struggling for identity due to want of a man’s touch, making the female struggle more effective than a man’s struggle. Whereas, in the poem ‘Willie’ Angelou shows the struggle for a man’s identity in a more negative view than the girl in ‘men’. During the poem it states that people call him ‘uncle’ ‘boy’ and ‘hey’ this shows us that Willie does not have a true identity to anybody – meaning nobody actually knows him, suggesting to the reader that he is on his own and has no body. This...
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...Hear Her Roar: The Feminist Strengths in Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise Trista James English Composition 1102 Professor Cameron Indian River State College April 10, 2013 Maya Angelou Maya Angelou Abstract Growing up during times of common race and gender discrimination, Maya Angelou has proven to people she is a strong African American woman who would not allow inequality of any kind bring her down. This paper describes the feminist strengths Angelou refers to and implies in her two famous poems Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise. Hear Her Roar: The Feminist Strengths in Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise Maya Angelou was born in the South on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri. Throughout most of her life she was raised in Arkansas, which in turn subjected her to a life full of brutal discrimination. Angelou was given a gift that no other of her time had. Over a hundred poems published, they all consist of words of wisdom and strength to some degree. In her two poems Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise, Angelou reveals her, “I am a woman hear me roar” attitude she is best known for. This paper depicts the feminist strengths in her two poems Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise. For a female to have an “I am a woman hear me roar” attitude, she must have patience, confidence in herself, and never rely on anyone else for financial or...
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...will not give up. The writer then asks the public if she should appear crushed and broken, but she will not let that happen. She may be sad on the inside, but on the outside, she will present as strong and confident. During the poem, she is still concerned about public opinion. This is evident when she says “does my haughtiness offend you?” ( Angelou, M. 1978 ).In general, we the people, do not like to be judged or be different. We tend to conform to society’s expectations and rules. This poem illustrates how strong a person can be. It tells the story that a person can overcome pain, criticism and past experiences. It tells us in the end, that a person’s will power cannot be defeated. A 2. The one aspect that most interested me was when she wrote about how she would, “ still I’ll rise”. While reading this, it immediately made me think of Jesus. He is my saviour and he rose again from the dead. This is so strong and powerful. I love how she sees each day as a new beginning. I interpreted the paragraph, “ J ust like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I’ll rise .” (Angelou, M. 1978) as meaning that each dayis a new...
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...English 322.001 December 4, 2014 “Phenomenal Woman” Poem Analysis “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou celebrates the feminine qualities of womanhood, and highlights the different traits for a woman to become ‘phenomenal.’ Maya shows the reader despite what society tells her she still feels great about herself. She believes that it is your inner beauty that makes the woman “phenomenal” instead of your outer beauty. Throughout the poem Maya illustrates how no one seems to understand what it is that makes her attractive because she is not considered to be physically beautiful by society’s standards. So what exactly makes this woman phenomenal? The woman in the poem is appealing to others because of her internal beauty and how she feels about herself. What makes her so phenomenal is that she does not care how others view her society, as well as the opposite sex. Even other woman try to understand what it is about this woman that makes her so attractive, because she does not portray what is considered beautiful by society standards when you look at her. The poem opens up by saying “Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size” She tells the reader in the beginning that it is not her physical attributes that make her attractive. “Men themselves have wondered what they see in me. They try so much but they can’t touch my inner mystery.” This line illustrates that it is not an actual feature that makes her attractive to men...
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