Maya Angelou's essay "Graduation in Stamps"

Maya Angelou's given name is Marguerita, and she was born in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She attended public schools in Arkansas and California. She also studied music; dance with Martha Graham, Pearl Primus, and Ann Halprin; and drama with Frank Silvera and Gene Frankel. She has had a career as author, poet, professional stage and screen performer, and singer (Bowden 28). She grew up in poverty in Arkansas and then went on to a productive and multiple career. She was given the nickname Maya by her older brother. Her father was a doorman and a naval dietician. Her mother worked variously as a card dealer, boardinghouse proprietor, and registered nurse. The family moved to Long Beach, California, soon after Maya was born, but when the marriage dissolved, Maya and her brother were sent to live with their maternal grandmother, who owned and managed a general store in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. When Maya was seven, she and her brother went to live with their mother in St, Louis, and a few months after their

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relationship with her brother, Bailey. Critics recognized both the power of the story, the reality of the people, and the vitality of the author's ability to shape her story through language: The story of Maya and her brother Bailey is horrifying 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 beautifully lyrical prose to earthy metaphor, and her descriptions have power and sensitivity (Guiney 1018). Another reviewer refers to her ability to convey "the diminished sense of herself that pervaded much of her childhood" (Gross, 90). In the story of this one girl, readers found what Angelou herself clearly found--evidence of the larger black experience, expressed in her own specific life but extended by her in the book to blacks everywhere in America. She is seen in the book traveling away from her parents, with a strong sense of rejection even as she travels to the new experience of a home with her grandmother: The aura of personal displacement is counterpointed by the ambience of displacement within the larger black community. The black community of Stamps is itself caged in the social reality of racial subordinatio
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)